Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: More short stories in the Life+70 public domain, many of which have not been reprinted since first published. Sourced from magazines and newspapers, and in some cases collections or anthologies which themselves have not been reprinted in years. 1: The Djinnee of El Sheyb / G. G. Pendarves 2: Alicia goes a-Burgling / Arthur Somers Roche 3: The Little Affair of the Eiffel Tower / Arthur Morris Crosby 4: Mirage / Ernest M. Poate 5: The Compass of Fortune / Eugene Shade Bisbee 6: A Hundred Thousand Dollar Trance / Eugene Shade Bisbee 7: Mr. Barling's Income / W. Pett Ridge 8: The Red and Black Dea

PAST MASTERS 101

Produced and Edited by Terry Walker ("Pulpmeister") from short stories in magazines, newspapers and other sources, and all in the Life + 70 years public domain.

11 October 2022

Contents

1: The Djinnee of El Sheyb / G. G. Pendarves

2: Alicia goes a-Burgling / Arthur Somers Roche

3: The Little Affair of the Eiffel Tower / Arthur Morris Crosby

4: Mirage / Ernest M. Poate

5: The Compass of Fortune / Eugene Shade Bisbee

6: A Hundred Thousand Dollar Trance / Eugene Shade Bisbee

7: Mr. Barling's Income / W. Pett Ridge

8: The Red and Black Death / H. Havelock Ettrick

9: Young Magic / Helen Simpson

10: The Ordeal By Fire / C. Ranger Gull

11: Why Mrs. Wetherton Went Home / Carlton Dawe

12: Spy! / Max Brand

13: The Mother / C. J. Dennis

14: The Ghost City / Fred MacIsaac

15: On the Turn of a Coin / Cleveland Moffett

16: The Demon of the Opal / W. B. Wallace

17: The Mystery of Dave Regan / Henry Lawson

18: The Dance of Life / H. Bedford-Jones

19: On The Tucker Track / Henry Lawson

________________

1: The Djinnee of El Sheyb

G. G. Pendarves

Gordon Trenery, 1885-1938

Oriental Stories, Spring 1932

1. The Haunted City

"IF THE effendi would but wait until I daylight! At all times the city is evil, a place for men to avoid. But now the sun is gone, all the devils that haunt El Sheyb come with the darkness! Master, master, be warned by others! In the beginning many dwellers in El Sheyb did not wish to leave their city— rich merchants who had built great palaces within the walls, and the old and sick who desired to die where they had lived so long. Yet, in the end, all left... all!"

"What do you mean— in the beginning people stayed? Beginning of what?" asked Graham Trent, his thin clever face and steady eyes turned on his panic-stricken servant.

"The beginning of the haunting!" The Arab's eyes rolled fearfully toward the distant massive walls of El Sheyb, where they loomed up on the crown of a great rounded hill against the fading glory of the western sky. "Ten years ago El Sheyb was a rich city, where all the caravans going south across the Red Wilderness rested to buy provisions, to trade, to hire guides and camel-drivers. The great fonduk hummed like a hive of bees, effendi! Men and beasts flowed in and out like the waters of a great sea. And the market-place"— Musa glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice— "the market-place was filled with all the treasures of the Sahara. There was nothing one could not purchase there. Ivory, gold, ostrich feathers, salt, sheep, horses, camels— the Iforas traded their finest mehara at El Sheyb. The Hoggar Touareggs exchanged their plunder of merchandise there for salt and grain. Moors, in satins and velvets like the sunrise itself, bought and sold rare and costly trifles of perfume, silks, jewels for the women of their hareems. All the news of the desert— from Adrar to the Nile, and from the coast cities of the Middle Sea to the Hausa States in the south—all passed through the market-place of El Sheyb!"

Musa shook his head and sighed with extreme mournfulness.

"Well?" Trent was interested. He had chosen Musa for his intelligence, and was finding him worth the high wages he demanded. "What happened?"

"All is gone... all is gone!" The sleeves of Musa's wide burnous flew up like two white wings from his out-stretched arms. "Only the owl's voice of ill-omen is heard now, where once many hundreds of people laughed and sang and gossipped in the sun. Only the lizards crawl in the dust where the great caravans went to and fro. The city is left desolate."

"What was it? Drought— fever?"

"Nay, effendi! Alas, the beauty and wealth of El Sheyb roused the envy and hatred of evil spirits— those djinn that dwell among the winds on the mountain tops. One came"— Musa's voice was a mere whisper now— "a most powerful djinnee— to dwell in El Sheyb! It drove out all that lived within the walls— all save the priests. The marabouts still live in their fortress on the walls of the city."

Trent pushed back his sun helmet, and stared at Musa with a perfectly grave face. He knew better than to insult the man by laughing at his yarn, and, besides, he had a private and particular reason for learning all he could about El Sheyb, no matter how fantastic the tale.

"So the priests live there in safety?"

"Even so, but it is in my mind," confided Musa, "that these priests are as evil as the djinnee! They belong to a strange sect from the mountains beyond Damascus—the Yezidees! They had no honor among the people in former days, when the city was great and rich. These priests lived then, as they live now, burrowing in dark places like unclean animals. They were not as the Holy Men of other tribes. But this is for thine ear alone, effendi, for the priests of El Sheyb are much honored now that they dwell alone and unharmed amidst such danger. Yet I think it is not holiness, but evil that keeps them there."

"I'm with you!" agreed Trent, wondering how Musa could be so enlightened and reasonable, and at the same time entertain such overwhelming belief in shattans and djinn.

"You haven't told me yet just what this djinnee of El Sheyb did to drive out all the inhabitants."

"It tormented them in many ways." Musa was growing more reluctant to speak, now that darkness had crept up around them, blotting out the wide horizons, enveloping even the grassy dunes nearby.

Trent concealed his growing interest, asking indifferently, "Have you seen any of these victims of the djinnee?"

"I carried out the body of my friend, Daouad ben Izzar, who was as a lion for courage. It is not many months since he and two others—students of the great university at Medersa— laughed at the stories told, and said they would prove them false. Two were killed— their heads broken by the heavy stones that lay scattered around them. Daouad ben Izzar lived, but he has been like a child ever since, his mind destroyed."

"Any others?" Trent lit a cigarette with hands that shook very slightly with excitement.

"Yes, effendi! Hast thou not heard of the white man who went also to discover the secret of El Sheyb, and to prove the tales were foolish? The young effendi from thine own land, Dinya el-jedida [the New World], whose name was even the name of our own people. Adhem effendi."

Trent's heart gave a great leap in his breast. He remained silent with a tremendous effort.

"I believe I did read something about it in the papers," he said casually.

''The government was very angry. The city was searched from wall to wall. The priests were turned out of their holes like rats. But nothing came of it. How should anything come of fighting with a devil of the wilderness? As well fight the great gibli [south wind] when it blackens the face of the desert, burying man and beast in its wrath.

Complete darkness covered the desert now, a brief space between sunset and moonrise, black as the shaft of a mine.

"Well, from what you say, Musa," Trent was calmly conversational, "this is the best time to call on the djinnee and find him at home!"

"Effendi!" a gasp like an escaping steam jet sounded in the hot darkness.

"I'm going on to El Sheyb as soon as the moon rises. I'm not making light of your stories, Musa, but curiosity is one of my major vices. I must know what it is that has reduced a proud flourishing city to dust and ruins."

Musa's prayers and— judging by the sound— tears, had no effect on Trent at all, and when the silver moon rose at last, flooding the desert with dim green haze and misty shadows, Musa was still pleading.

Trent mounted his horse, camels being of no use in that rock-strewn district, and turned its head toward the haunted city. Musa got on his own animal with a tragic air and reined up beside his master.

"Master, I go to die with thee!"'

They rode on like two ghosts in the desert silence, and the strange dim moonlight was not wholly accountable for the greenish-gray color of Musa's skin, as they halted before the deeply shadowed archway of the eastern gateway in the walls of El Sheyb. Trent slipped down from his horse, and put the reins in Musa's trembling hands.

"You must stay here with the horses, Musa! Can't take them into this rabbit warren— they'd break their legs in these uneven streets. Wait an hour for me. If I am not here then, ride back to Hezroor and get the Commandant on the job."

Musa watched the tall thin figure swallowed up in the black archway, emerge in the moonlight beyond, and vanish round the corner of a tortuous narrow lane. The faithful, terrified servant groaned aloud:

'Now may Allah set a watch before his steps! By the life of this moon, I shall never see his face again!

TRENT went on blindly toward what he hoped was the market-place of El Sheyb. He knew far more about the city than he had confessed to Musa, or to any one else. He had come out here with one specific purpose: to find out what had happened to his friend, Joe Adams, who had disappeared so mysteriously a year ago within this deserted city. Joe Adams, whom government rewards and search parties had failed to produce. Joe Adams, the chum of Trent's earliest recollections, the staunch friend of later days, whose disappearance had changed Trent from a boy to a man with a purpose nothing could set aside.

Joe Adams, whom the natives knew as Adhem effendi, had vanished here in El Sheyb, and Trent was prepared to sell his soul to ferret out the reason for that sudden vanishing.

For weeks he had wandered about among neighboring towns and villages, gleaning any scraps of gossip that might help him. He had formed a distinct plan of the labyrinth of streets that formed EI Sheyb, and had actualy sketched out a rough diagram from bits of information. He knew the market-place was the center of the huge web of narrow ways. He knew that the priests lived in the ruined fortress on the western walls of the city. Therefore he had entered by the eastern gate, and with compass and his rough plan he stumbled on to his goal.

Several times he doubled back on his own tracks, returning to some carved door he recognized, some broken row of columns. The desert night wind began to sough uneasily between the high narrow walls as he stumbled along the uneven sand and half-concealed stones underfoot. Owls flapped almost across his face, quick darting creatures flicked round his feet, and the climbing moon painted the broken crumbling houses in startling black and white.

But the only thing that haunted Trent was the jolly freckled face of the boy he had known. Above the uncanny wail of the wind, and the cry of the owl, he heard the deep chuckling laugh of the friend he sought in this ruined city.

A sudden sharp turn, a dive under a broken arch, a few steps in the shadow of a wall, and he stood in the brilliant moonlight. Facing him was the great market Square— a vast sandy place, hemmed in on all sides by blank, flat-roofed buildings, typical Arab houses, with massive doors in the shadow of deeply hewn arches, and narrow slits of windows cut in the solid masonry just beneath the roof.

He walked slowly forward to the center of the square, circling round on his heel in the sand, gazing at the white walls, which returned his look with blank complacence, so sure they seemed of hiding behind their smooth whiteness whatever secret thing they held.

The roof-line within his compass showed no break in its continuity— neither head nor hand of an enemy was visible.

He ran out again, the stones flying savagely the moment he reappeared, and fired rapidly at several archways from which the missiles seemed to be aimed, but no sound answered the sharp bark of his weapon. But now the pebbles and stones came more swiftly and the stones were large enough to cripple him if they caught him in a vulnerable place.

Crack! A large jagged piece of rock warned him— a few inches lower and his knee-cap would have been dislocated. He limped hastily to the steps by which he had entered the square, and stumbled down them to the darkness beyond. Even here the shower of stones rattled down to his feet, and one caught the top of his helmet so directly that he knew the assailant was close to him.

There was nothing for it but retreat. Slowly, painfully Trent retraced his steps. As long as he kept on his way all was quiet— only the hoot of the owls and the sigh of the wind about him. But if he stopped for a moment, every roof and wall about him seemed to spit out stones and rocks. He moved blindly along the wretched, twisting ways of the city, bruised, bleeding, and furiously determined to return.

That El Sheyb sheltered a mob of murderous rascals was clear. But who were they? Why did they want to keep the city empty? What secret lay behind their persecution and stoning? And above all, what had happened to Joe Adams? Had he been stoned to death here? Did his bones lie buried in that dangerously haunted market-place?

"Master, master!'' cried Musa, as he caught sight of Trent's tall limping figure, his linen suit rent and dusty from head to foot, his eyes cold and furious above an ugly wound on his cheek.

"Master... the djinnee! Thou hast seen...thou—"

"No!" was the grim reply. "No, I have not seen— yet! But, believe me, I am going to see this djinnee, if it's the last thing I see on earth!''

2. Trent Becomes More Curious

PLYMTON viciously ground the stub of his cigarette into the receptacle before him. His narrow black eyes flicked a glance at the man opposite him, then darted round the ornate dining-room as if seeking amidst its palms and pillars and arched alcoves an answer to some problem in his mind.

"Like all tourists, you either minimize or exaggerate the difficulties of life in a country of this sort," he said at last. "if you lived and worked in this oasis-town of Hezroor, as I do, you'd get a new set of values altogether. Now, in dealing with these natives, one of the first essentials is to learn not to meddle with their superstitions. Ignorance on this point has killed more men than an outsider can possibly realize. They'll stand injustice, and even cruelty, up to a certain point, but laugh at their ghosts and devils and you're a doomed man!"

"I am not laughing," protested Trent. "I don't grudge El Sheyb its pet djinnee! I only want to know just why I was stoned out of the place last night. From all sides, too! The djinee must have his whole family staying with him at El Sheyb just now! A pity the Arabs themselves are so much less energetic than their devils. Really, I am curious to get to the bottom of this extraordinary performance. And why do you suppose the priests go on living there? Where do they get alms in that deserted place? Has the djinnee adopted them and agreed to feed them in return for the pleasure of their company?

He took out a cigarette, was in the act of lighting it when the match was put out by a sharp puff of wind, and in the same moment something hard and pointed took him under the ear. The blow was so unexpected and sudden that he almost fell. He whirled to meet the empty air!

Stones thudded in the sand at his feet... he was being pelted on every side by a fusillade of pebbles that stung him from head to foot. He dashed to the shadow of an archway, and was driven thence by a mew and concentrated attack. He ran across the square to the opposite wall, stones rattling dangerously about him. His helmet protected him, but as he incautiously lifted his face to peer at the flat roof-line, a flying stone cut him deeply on his cheek, and he jammed down his heavy helmet and ran to the shelter of a broad pillar.

Behind this he glanced round the moonlit square. All was utterly silent.

Graham Trent grinned at his obviously irritated companion across the table. His tall loose-jointed body contrasted strongly with Plymton's neat compact frame, as did the mocking humor of his blue eyes, thick fair hair, and wide benevolent brows differ completely from the other's small and rather reptilian face and head.

"You were exceedingly lucky to get out alive.'' Plymton's voice was as cold as his eyes. "Only a year ago, an American tourist, as reckless and inquisitive as yourself, spent a night in El Sheyb, and never returned. He's been missing from that day to this. His name was Adams— Joseph Adams. Perhaps you remember the affair?"

"I believe I do remember reading something about it in the papers at the time." Trent spoke carelessly, but his gray-blue eyes darkened suddenly.

"You knew Adams?' Plymton suggested, tapping a cigarette nervously on his case, and stealing a lightning glance from under lowered eyelids. "You are here to make inquiries about his disappearance? That would account for your interest in El Sheyb."

Trent heard the note of sharp anxiety in his companion's voice. Intuition ran through him like an electric shock. Pymton knew what had happened to Adams! Perhaps he was responsible for that disappearance! At the thought, Trent's lean hands twitched. He longed to get up and shake this little rat of a man... shake his secret out of him. But he only leaned back in his chair, masking that sudden deep conviction of his with a smile. This beast before him was coiled, alert, ready to spring. It was up to him to soothe it with eyes and voice, to lull it into a false security.

"Hardly!" Trent sounded a trifle bored. "You know my plans. I've been touring the Mozabite country and this southern region of Algeria for months, writing a book, you know, on primitive Saharan religions. The yarns about El Sheyb and its djinnee are known all over the country, of course. I've been coming across the fairy-tale in various forms for weeks now. And since I am here in Hezroor, not ten miles from the haunted city, naturally I want to explore it."

Trent rattled on, apparently full of good-will and the desire to satisfy the other's curiosity; but his smiling good-humor masked a sudden intentness that shone in his blue eyes as if a lamp had been turned on behind them.

"Well, now you have explored it— why not leave it at that?'' persisted his companion. "I assure you it's a risky, silly game to set yourself against native prejudice and custom. El Sheyb is avoided by common consent. Not a man, of all the thousands that pass yearly through this town of Hezroor on the caravan trails, not even the savage Touareggs, care to face El Sheyb and its menace. I know what I'm talking about."

"You look as if you did," Trent assured him warmly. "But all you say only increases my interest in this haunted town. That djimnee gave me more souvenirs in the way of cuts and bruises than I needed— it's my turn to give a few little gifts to him."

His exasperated companion appeared to have every sympathy with the djinnee's ill-will toward Trent, and rose abruptly, his chair grating harshly on the green and white tiled floor.

"Don't hurry, old man!" Trent's long body unfolded like a jointed ruler, as he, too, rose, and stood looking down pleasantly at Plymton with hands thrust deep into his pockets. "I was just about to ask you how the full moon affects the djinnee, and whether you considered Friday night a lucky one to return my visiting-cards at El Sheyb."

Plymton visibly came to attention.

"Friday... you are going to—" Then he pulled himself up, the glitter in his small eyes quickly veiled. "You're a fool!" he asserted in thin cold tones. "I warn you for the last time— if you return to El Sheyb you're practically committing suicide."

"My death won't lie on your conscience, at least.'' Trent looked down at the taut angry little man with a beam. "You've done your best to save me from my folly. But now, don't hurry off like this— I shall feel I've really annoyed you. How about getting a couple of these French officers to join us at cards?"

'"Sorry— quite impossible, Mr. Trent," was the stiff reply. "I'm a busy man— very busy! No time to amuse all the tourists who come here, even though I try to protect their interests as far as possible."

"Well, just listen to this model of industry! It's nine o'clock; surely you're not going to work the old treadmill any longer tonight! Mining must be a strenuous occupation in this country."

Plymton's cold bright eyes gleamed, the muscles of his face taut beneath the pale skin.

"At least I have enough work to keep me out of mischief," he responded tartly. "I'll say good-night, then, Mr. Trent. When— or if— you return from El Sheyb, no doubt we'll meet here again. Good luck!" he added, over his shoulder, his neat well-shod feet carrying him toward the entrance of the little French hotel.

Trent watched his exit, rocking slightly on his heels, with hands still in his pockets. A very alert, speculative look replaced his smile.

"D'you understand the meaning of good luck?" he asked in French of a native waiter who was advancing toward his table.

With a grin, the Arab plunged into voluble detail, illustrating his remarks with expressive pantomime.

''No, that's where you are all wrong, my poor deluded turtle-dove," Trent informed him sadly. "It means, according to my dinner guest: "May you be everlastingly damned.' "'

3. The Secret of El Sheyb

A FEW days later, Trent stood once more in the market-place of El Sheyb. It was very early morning, scarcely full daylight, for he had left Hezroor well before dawn, stealing away with the greatest possible secrecy. Even his faithful Musa had been kept in the dark about his plan to return here, and Trent fervently hoped that the cold vigilant eye of Mr. Frank Plymton had not witnessed this second assault on the mysteriously haunted city. He had seen no one in his ride across the desert, but visibility was difficult in the semi-darkness that preludes the dawn; he was entirely easy in his mind, because he was well aware of that strange wireless communication in the desert, and he gave his opponent credit for being both vigilant and suspicious of his movements. With luck though, he hoped he had eluded Plymton successfully this morning.

He had begun to realize that Joe Adams' disappearance was probably a mere incident connected with some scheme in which Plymton was deeply involved, and that the latter was not taking any chances with regard to himself. What was this strange drama in which the djinnee took so active a part? What made the desertion of El Sheyb so necessary? Ten years before Adams had come here on his ill-starred archeological trip, the city of El Sheyb was deserted— haunted! Had Adams taken too close an interest in the djinnee? Had he interfered, as Trent was now interfering, and been removed?

Trent frowned as he stared about him. No sign or sound of human life. Up on the western walls rose the dome and towers of the ancient fortress, where he knew the priests and their families were herded. Those same priests had been responsible, he felt sure, for his stoning a few nights ago.

At a loss where to begin his search for an unknown thing in an unknown city, he first tried the doors which fronted on the square. All were locked and barred against him. An examination of adjacent streets and buildings, however, proved that barred doors were an exception, rather than a rule, in El Sheyb.

In the majority of the narrow dark streets that branched off in all directions from the square, the untenanted houses showed gaping entrances where the wood had been removed. In some, a door hung crazily on broken hinges, swinging inward to a dismal weed-grown courtyard.

With a pocket-torch, and the obstinacy of a bloodhound on the trail, Trent began once more to peer and poke about the main buildings round the market-place. The brazen sun climbed higher and higher. Lizards darted across the sandy earth, while overhead a dark hovering shadow hung now and then in the cloudless blue vault—a hawk or an eagle —poised for a moment, then dropped earthward to its prey with headlong dizzy swoop.

Still Trent explored busily in the dark tortuous ways near the square. He came to a sudden stop, steadied the little beam of light from his torch on a particular stone slab set almost flush with the ground.

On the stone was carved the Hand of Fatmeh, the four long fingers and out-curved thumb, like a tulip leaf, standing out dark and polished with use against the block from which it had been cut. Trent put his hand over it, twisting with strong sensitive fingers. It gave easily under his touch, and the whole block opened inward like a stone door, revealing a stairway which descended precipitately into the bowels of the earth.

He leaned over, craning his long neck as far as possible, trying to probe the gloom within. The crambling uneven steps appeared to continue indefinitely. He threw down stone after stone, but heard nothing save the rap-rap-rap of the missile down a few steps... then silence.

"Hm-m-m-m! Apparently not a well."

Stowing his torch safely away, he put one long leg over the sill, slowly drawing the rest of his body after it, and began to make his way downward, facing the worn, almost perpendicular steps in sailor fashion.

Down... down... twenty, thirty, forty steps he counted before his feet felt level ground beneath them again— level relatively speaking, for the earth was full of pits and hollows, and the rocky roof overhead forced him to crawl on hands and knees.

As he penetrated farther into the darkness, the air grew stiflingly hot and fetid. He stopped... sniffed! What was that strange rank odor? Could this be the lair of some wild beast? Suppose the creature met him in this tunnel! It was too narrow to turn back; he'd have to go on now and take a chance. The air grew more foul, and every moment he expected to feel the fangs of some beast at his throat... it might be watching his every movement... backing down the tunnel before him.

His hands and knees were cut from the rough stones... the tunnel widened; he drew his revolver and waited. Surely here— now— this was the place for the thing in the darkness to attack him!

Nothing came, only he heard a faint sound. A sound of metal... a sudden sharp rattle and then silence again. Trent crouched for several minutes, his weapon ready, his eyes peering into the thick murk ahead.

At last he moved on again. The tunnel grew still wider, took a sharp turn; the roof overhead lifted abruptly, and he got stiffly to his feet and eased his cramped limbs cautiously. Inch by inch he crept forward again. Once more that metallic rattle reached his ears, and a hoarse dull moaning followed that chilled his blood.

One more turn— it was the end. Beyond he saw a dim yellow haze, and what appeared to be an enormous cave hollowed out from the rock foundations of the city. He crept forward, one more yard, then stood on the threshold of his dark passageway, and stared at the scene before him.

He leaned up heavily against the wall in the first shock of discovery. His mind refused to believe in the horrible inferno which his eyes were registering. But as the details grew more and more clear, his shocked senses began to adjust themselves. Slowly, reluctantly he turned his head to look round the vast vaulted chamber. Its roof was lost in shadow, but on ledges of the rocky walls primitive lamps were set, which shed flickering uncertain gleams over the appalling scene, the crude oil adding its nauseating stench to the intolerable atmosphere.

"Slaves!" breathed Trent, his face livid, his eyes bleak as a winter's sea.

On the bare earthen floor of the rock chamber, men, women and children lay huddled in every attitude of fatigue and despair, like creatures of some deepest crypt of Dante's purgatory. They were lying chained together in groups, each group fettered to great iron staples in the walls of their dungeon. The majority lay in leaden stupor, but the silence was broken now and then by the clank of a chain... a moan... a child's whimpering cry.

Sudden terrible anger seized Trent.

His brain began to race. The pattern of the crime on which he had stumbled began to grow clearer every moment.

"Plymton and those cursed priests! He pays them... they... . he... run this thing between them. Plymton... Plymton is the djinnee of El Sheyb! He scared off all the inhabitants... then he and the priests worked this djinnee business together!"

A new thought struck him.

"Adams! He must have found this out, too... discovered the secret of El Sheyb. They murdered him! I must get back to Hezroor... I must get back!"

He turned to retrace his steps, hurrying as much as possible; a terrible feeling of urgency suddenly possessed him. He must get back... if he didn't... if he was prevented, these poor wretches were doomed... Joe Adams would never be avenged!

Remembrance of the latter's disappearance pricked him uneasily as he pushed his way back along the narrow tunnel, but he felt slightly comforted to reflect that if another white man vanished in El Sheyb, it would greatly imperil Plymton's dangerous traffic.

He reached the bottom of the steps at last. Up, up endlessly, eyes, feet, and hands occupied in finding and keeping his balance. His head was just below the top step... his groping hands on its uneven edge... when the square opening above him was suddenly blocked. A pair of brown hands seized his wrists, a dark grinning face looked down into his.

More hands reached over, and past this face... his fingers were torn from their grip while his feet kicked vainly for a foothold. Slowly... inch by inch... he was dragged upward and across the threshold into the narrow street beyond.

Abruptly jerked to his feet, he faced a small band of natives, tattered specimens of marabouts, with pale vulpine faces, shifty eyes, and vicious mouths. Trent scarcely wasted a glance on them, his eyes blazed into the cold opaque ones of Plymton, as the latter stepped with a smile toward him.

Trent's fist shot out and caught him under the chin with a swift ferocity that sent him backward among his scoundrels. Two of them rolled on the dusty earth with him, and before they could tise, Trent drew his revolver and stood prepared to account for himself— his back against the opening in the wall.

Plymton got to his feet, dusty and venomous, and drew his own weapon. Before either man could take aim, Trent's feet were jerked from under him by an Arab who had followed him from the slave-pen— a guard whom Trent had not seen in that murky dungeon. The rabble of priests fell upon him as one man as he fell, trussed him up like a fowl, and looked to their master for further orders.

"Take him up there." Plymton jerked his head toward the squat crumbling fortress of the marabouts. "He wanted to meet the djinnee— now he's going to do it!"

4. In the House of the Holy Men

"OF COURSE, I realize it won't do for you to disappear as Adams did. I have other plans for you."

Plymton exhaled a cloud of smoke from an evil-smelling French cheroot into his prisoner's face. Trent, still bound, was propped up against the wall of a small stone cell in the vast rambling ruin of the priests, his fury unextinguished by hours of thirst and discomfort, but burning unseen and deadly beneath a mask of stony indifference.

"Go ahead, djinnee!" he replied insolently. "Unfold your subtle scheme for my undoing."

"Subtle is the right word. Yes, you shall go back to Hezroor in a few days, before the government machinery gets going on your behalf. I shall take you back myself, and become a hero for having found you here and rescued you."

Plymton blew out another cloud of smoke, smiled unpleasantly at his own thoughts, and resumed:

"You return safe and sound... for one trifling thing!"

He paused, watching Trent narrowly for some sign of apprehension. The latter merely yawned, remarking:

"Very thoughtful of you to take all this trouble to amuse me like this.'

Plymton inadvertently bit a piece off his cheroot, spat it out viciously, and leaned forward.

"You'll return to Hezroor a drivelling mouthing idiot! You'll go back without your memory— as powerless to injure me as a month-old baby!"

Trent's eyes remained dreamy and indifferent, and he gazed at his companion as if he were an insect crawling past his line of vision. The latter rose abruptly from his wooden bench, pitched his cheroot into a corner, thrust his twitching hands into his pockets, and snapped out:

"You don't believe it! Wait... I'll show you just how you're going to look, and how you'll act! I've used this drug on more than one who interfered with me, and I can use it again."

He vanished under a low archway into a labyrinth of cells and passages beyond, leaving his prisoner alone in his narrow room, through the walls of which a fiery sunset cast a warm red glow.

Trent closed his eyes wearily, his thoughts milling in endless confusion, the problem of his escape completely beyond his grasp at the moment. The sound of Plymton's returning footsteps reached his quick ears, accompanied by a shuffling, scraping sound that puzzled the listener.

"Sounds as if he were dragging something... what the deuce?"

The faint uncertain noise resolved itself into something more definite. It was another person walking with the heavy dragging steps of decrepit old age. Nearer... nearer it approached. Plymton's voice was audible, as if he were addressing a wild beast, and a high-pitched meaningless jabber of words answered him.

Trent glanced up under half-closed lids as Plymton re-entered his cell, but his eyes opened widely enough when he caught sight of the ragged pitiful figure that shuffled at the other's heels, a man whose reddish beard straggled over a torn and stained gandoura; a white man, whose fine strong features were marred by an expression of blank idiocy, with eyes dull and vacant under penthouse brows, and loose lips working constantly in grotesque grimaces.

But Trent recognized him instantly. The splendid head, rugged features, and red dusty hair were unmistakable. Even the voice— broken, foolish, and unmeaning— was horribly familiar in tone. Sick with horror, Trent stared speechlessly, while Plymton drew back to glance from one to the other in deep enjoyment.

"You recognize an old friend, I see!" Plymton took the imbecile by the arm and dragged him in front of Trent. "Now if you want to see yourself as others will see you in a few days, Adams here will be as useful as a mirror. I've experimented with this drug until I know exactly the amount and number of doses which will make you look like Adams's twin brother," he boasted, delighted to brag of his knowledge. "Barring the color of your hair, and a few details of that sort, this is what you will be before the end of the week... capering and grinning in the streets of Hezroor. The children— even the dogs— will run from you. You'll be known as an awful warning— the man who has seen the djinnee! It will make things safer than ever for me here in El Sheyb. I'm beginning to feel grateful to you, Trent."'

The latter fixed his gaze on a rent in Adams's robe, avoiding the tragic, hollow eyes and awfully twitching lips. He fought for control. The walls, the dusty floor, the figures of Plymton and Adams spun in a red mist about him.

He thought his heart would burst, it hammered so agonizingly against his cruelly tight bonds. His thoughts were chaotic... flashing like bright swords in the whirling blackness of his mind. Slowly his reason gained the ascendancy as he fought down his choking blind fury and focussed his whole energy on his problem once more.

The problem of outwitting Plymton. The problem of saving not only the wretches he had seen in the dungeons, not only this tragic remnant of his friend, but also those hundreds of victims who would fall later into Plymton's hands, if he were allowed to continue his career unchecked.

Could he... bound, helpless, on the verge of unspeakable disaster... could he play the winning card even now in this hideous game?

Through the long hours he continued to wrestle with this problem. He grew feverish as the night wore on, and his imagination took wilder flights. Impossibly daring, intricate plans darted into his mind with the brilliance of electrically illuminated advertisements, to be wiped out with the same disconcerting suddenness of those glittering signs.

After all, what could he do unless... unless—

Unless Plymton untied his before giving him the drug!

There was a chance in a thousand that this might happen. Yet, if this miraculous chance did occur, he would have only the briefest time... his hands and fingers would be numb and useless... no, it was madness to go over all this again. He'd never get a break like that.

But if he did! And once more the thing began to thrash round and round in his feverish overwrought mind. The dark silence of his prison was broken only by the sighing of the desert wind, the cry of a jackal, the melancholy hoot of some solitary owl on its hunt among the ruins of the deserted city.

IN THE gray dawn he unglued sticky eyelids to see Plymton standing before him in company with several gaunt marabouts. One of the latter carried a small earthen bowl. In Plymton's hands Trent noticed a tiny phial which the former was shaking gently, but ostentatiously, before his eyes.

He felt a queer sudden sickness at sight of the thing. A few drops of liquid— an innocent-looking enemy! But Trent would infinitely rather have faced the deadliest snake in the Sahara. Death— even agonizing death— was preferable to this... this vile thing which would send him out among his fellow men a drivelling wreck, from which all must turn in nausea and disgust.

An impulse seized him to swear that he would never reveal the secret of El Sheyb, if Plymton would fling away that little phial and set him free.

The words trembled on his lips... his dry tongue refused to frame them. Then his own mocking humor came to his rescue. What a fantastic notion! As if a rotter of Plymton's caliber would take his word of honor! Honor and Plymton!

Plymton the djinnee... the slave-dealer! He gave a gasping chuckle as the temptation passed.

"The Right Honorable Plymton! Sounds well, don't you think?" he asked. "Lord High Djinnee of El Sheyb! Or would you prefer— Frank, the Very Reverend Master of Marabouts! Now, that's a very good one; it's a pity to wreck a brain so inventive as mine!

"Oh, come!" he went on, desperately trying to stave off the moment when that little phial would be unstoppered. "Don't I have the ordinary privileges of the condemned man? Where's the hearty breakfast— the expensive cigar— the fancy touches so necessary for a scene like this? Are you afraid to let me sit up and drink your loving-cup decently?"

"Afraid!" Plymton laughed. "That's the best joke I've heard from you. If you  could see yourself at this moment! You may have your last wish, by all means. There's a lot more where this comes from, and if you don't drink it, you'll have the next dose administered in a way that will certainly spoil your last moments.

"Cut his hands and arms free!" he ordered one of the priests.

Trent leaned back in an apparent access of exhaustion, his eyes closed. His numbed, swollen arms trailed helplessly on either side of him, as the priest cut the rope.

"I can't move a finger," he complained, keeping his eyes tightly shut— he dared not trust them in that moment of sudden hope. Even yet... even yet he might fail! The first part of the miracle had happened. But the second

Plymton's harsh laugh grated on his ear again.

"You'll be having lunch with your friend. The Heavenly Twins! What a pretty pair... making faces at one another over your bowls of cous-cous!"

The native who had cut his bonds, rubbed Trent's hands and arms. In a short time he was able to move his stiff fingers, but his grip was very weak and fumbling when he took the fatal cup at last from Plymton's hands, and looked at the water into which the phial's contents had been emptied.

Slowly he turned his eyes to look up at his enemy. The latter's face was white and tense with excitement, his eyes glittering under their smooth, hooded lids. Trent raised the small bowl with trembling hands.

"To the djinnee of El Sheyb!" he said, and Plymton shrank from the sudden unmasked and utter contempt in the blue eyes that blazed into his. "May he speedily join his brethren below!"

He put the bowl to his lips, drained and set it down, and leaned back against the wall again with closed eyes.

"Pleasant dreams, Mr. Trent!" The other was mockingly polite. "A pity you will not remember them— or anything else! Well, now you have breakfasted, I can go and have my morning coffee. It will take an hour or so before you become really interesting. I'll be back directly, but I fear— I very much fear that you will not recognize me when we meet again."

Trent's heart thumped so violently that he feared the other would notice his agitation. No matter— he would only ascribe it to fear. Was the second miracle really about to happen... was there a chance... was there a chance for him?

He refused to open his eyes, or answer any of his enemy's taunts. In a few minutes, tired of baiting an unresponsive victim, Plymton left the cell, grinning over his shoulder as he went. Two of the priests squatted on their haunches to keep guard; the rest departed with their master. Trent lay huddled up against the wall, his face hidden in the crook of his arm.

5. The Debut of a Djinnee

"WA HYAT Ullah! He hath seen the djinnee of El Sheyb! Look... look... the unbeliever who hath seen the djinnee!"

"Gibani!" replied another inhabitant of Hezroor, putting up a hand to avert the evil chance. "Terrible are the devils of El Sheyb! Truly it is an accursed city!"

"By the life of my son!" agreed another.

A loud cry burst from a young native in the crowd, who dashed up to the two men just entering the gates of Hezroor, and put a protecting hand on the arm of the taller of the two.

"Master, master! Did I not warn thee? Did I not say to thee a hundred times how evil was El Sheyb? Now thou art lost, by Allah, thou art lost!"

The faithful Musa's tears ran down as he began to walk beside the afflicted man whose arm he held. It was an early morning hour in the oasis-town, and the streets and squares were full of men with their camels and donkeys, who had come in from outlying hamlets and farms with their fruit and grain and vegetables.

"He hath seen the djinnee! He hath seen the djinnee! Billah—he wiil see no more in this life! His eyes are sunken and dull as the river mud which the sun has left dry! His hand trembles as doth the palm-tree before the gibli!"

Slowly, very slowly the dreadful little procession forced its way through the fascinated and awe-struck populace. Whispers... exclamations... calls on Allah for protection followed the three men like a rising tide, increasing in volume as the crowd swelled and gathered in their wake.

Plymton led the way, his face a mask, his sun-helmet pulled down to hide the gleam in his eyes. Behind him came Trent, with Musa at his side. The latter tried to guide his master's erratic aimless steps along the cobbled ways, and indig- nantly strove to keep the mob from jostling too closely.

"Shameless and accursed ill-doers that ye are!" he cried. "It is but the sun- fever which hath stricken the effendi! By Allah, and by Allah, give way there, you miserable clods of earth!"

"No fever cuts a man's soul from his body thus," answered a swarthy shekh gravely. "This is one whose soul is in hell! Lo, his body wanders empty and witless to its grave!"

Musa, guiding Trent like a child, protecting him like an infuriated tiger with a helpless cub, followed in Plymton's wake. The latter made no attempt to second Musa's efforts, but strolled on quite casually, choosing always the busiest streets, the most crowded squares.

Trent's unfocussed vision passed over every face that confronted him. He mouthed and gibbered unceasingly, his fingers snapping restlessly, his head wobbling on his sagging shoulders as though some spring that fastened it had worked loose.

At last they reached the building where Sidi ben Ali, the Caid of Hezroor, conducted his daily business. With some difficulty, Trent's dragging feet were guided up a steep flight of steps to the shade and comparative coolness of the bare white-washed room which served as office to the Caid. The latter was hard at work, and with him were the commandant of the outpost, and the army surgeon of Hezroor. To these three men Plymton unfolded the saga of Trent's catastrophe.

"I had warned him emphatically, time and time again!" he concluded finally. "If the poor chap could speak for himself, he'd tell you I did my utmost to prevent his going. He simply laughed at me for my pains, intimated that I was something of a fool to be so credulous and superstitious, and went his own way!"

"These cursed tourists!" growled the commandant, tugging at his white mustaches irritably. "Why does the good God permit such animals to exist, I ask you? This may mean war among the tribes in our district. If the order comes from headquarters to turn the marabouts out of El Sheyb, then the Shabba tribe will resent it, of a certainty! Other tribes will be implicated... and I shall be blamed for everything! It is insupportable to have tourists in a place like Hezroor."

The Caid regarded Plymton from beneath his snowy turban with habitual serenity.

"And thou— thou didst know of the danger of El Sheyb! Yet thou wert not afraid to enter the accursed city?"

"I was in the beastliest funk," admitted Plymton. "But, after all, he was my countryman, and I felt a sort of responsibility, in spite of the way he jeered at my advice."

"It is well thou hadst courage to go and bring him forth from El Sheyb."

"Mon Diex!" interrupted the doctor. "Not so well, Sidi ben Ali! It would have been of greater benefit to Monsieur le touriste if the djinnee had been allowed to finish his work, and give him the coup-de-grace! As it is—"

A gesture and roll of his eyes completed his sentence as he turned toward a corner of the room, where Trent— or rather, the shell of what had once been Trent— sat with vacant look, and long limbs sprawled. His head rolled uneasily— as lost and pitiful a thing as an abandoned ship rocking at the mercy of the wind and tide.

"Any chance of his recovery?" demanded the commandant abruptly.

The doctor shrugged. "Impossible to say. I will keep him under supervision and do what I can, but I am not a brain or nerve specialist. As well prophesy how the wind will blow next month, as say how a patient of this sort will behave."

"I'll put him up," interpolated Plymton quickly. "I am very anxious about him, and feel a sort of responsibility, as I said before. He can stay with me. There's plenty of room, and my servants haven't half enough to do. He'll be well cared for, and my place is near enough to make it convenient for you to drop in any time you like, Doctor."

"Yes. Very amiable of you, Monsieur,"' replied the army surgeon. "What do you think, gentlemen? We might delay the report for at least a week, on the chance of his recovery. A pity to stir things up unnecessarily at headquarters."

"I see nothing against it. A good plan, in my opinion." The commandant was obviously relieved.

The Caid, however, looked doubtfully at Plymton, his plump brown hands folded placidly across his massive middle.

"I, myself, was about to propose that in my palace there is room for this poor afflicted one," he began slowly. ''Moreover, my nephew is but recently returned from the long years of his studies at Paris, Vienna and Algiers. He hath distinguished himself greatly, by the aid of Allah the Compassionate, and the sickness of the brain hath been the object of his greatest endeavor to comprehend. With all respect and deference to your own great wisdom, effendi," he bowed gravely to the army surgeon, "perhaps this poor one's case is one my nephew would understand and cure."

Plymton shot a swift perturbed glance at the benevolent face of the stout Caid. It would take at least a week longer to wreck Trent's brain beyond recovery. He had not dared to keep him any longer at El Sheyb. But now... if he slipped through his fingers at this stage—

"I'd feel a whole lot better if I could have the poor fellow under my roof," he protested with entire truthfulness. "I ought never to have let him go that second time, and I'd really like to do my best for him now."'

TRENT had begun to shuffle blindly about the room, rubbing his dirty fingers over the walls. He reached the door in his aimless wanderings, and stood there tapping his teeth with his knuckles, making strange guttural noises in his throat, grinning foolishly.

The Caid settled deeper into his seat, and regarded Plymton obstinately.

"I see you are anxious— it is natural! Yet, as ruler of Hezroor and the district beyond, which includes El Sheyb, I also have a responsibility, effendi."

Plymton controlled his temper and nerves with difficulty. Was this old fool going to wreck all his plans at the last moment?

"But—" he began.

"Thank you, Sidi ben Ali, I have a strong conviction that your drinks would be far more beneficial to me than his!"

Trent's tall figure stood erect and straight before the door. His clear blue eyes were fixed sternly on Plymton.

"Hold him!" he rapped out. "I'm not ill! I'm not the drooling idiot he hoped to make me! And I'm here to explain what he is!"

Plymton made a dash, but Trent's long arms seized and held him in a vise, and dumped him back in his seat as if he were a child.

'"He's mad... mad!" gasped Plymton. "He doesn't know what he is saying... he'll murder the lot of us if you don't stop him!"

Trent retired to the door again, and stood with his back against it.

"I have discovered his secret. And because I did so, he drugged me as he drugged my friend, Joseph Adams, to prevent my betraying him. Fortunately for me, and others, I am well up in drugs and narcotics— made a special study of them at one time. The thing he tried on me was one I have seen used both here and in Persia— a rare drug— but the antidote is not rare at all. I was forced to drink his filthy drug... but I had the antidote! I always carry a few things in my belt for poison and snake-bite, and this antidote was among them."

Plymton was tensing himself for another rush, when the commandant's large hand closed round his forearm.

"Have the goodness to continue, Monsieur!" the soldier requested.

"Can you guess his secret? He is the djinnee of El Sheyb! He and the priests have invented this legend and driven every one out of the city so that he can carry on his poisonous trade. He is a slave-dealer! There are hundreds of the poor wretches in the vaults under the market-place at this very moment!"

There was a long stunned silence. The two officers sat staring at Plymton as if he were too loathsome to be true. The Caid seemed turned to stone, his black eyes burning in an ashen face.

It was the terrible stillness that heralds a storm. Plymton was not deceived. He licked his dry lips— his feet and hands as cold as ice. The storm would destroy him... batter him out of existence, as a monsoon in its raging sweep uproots a trifling weed.

Ponderously Sidi ben Ali got to his feet and strode to the door. Trent himself shivered as he caught the implacable hate in the Caid's face, and he moved from the door as hastily as a boy before his master. Ben Ali raised one arm, flung the door wide, and pointed to the desert, quivering in a haze of blinding heat.

"Forth... forth, thou thing accurst! Forth to the wilderness to seek other devils like to thyself! May thy torments endure for ever!"

The commandant and the doctor rose from their seats as if to interfere. Then the latter shrugged and sat down.

"Better so. Dramatic, but certainly practical, mon commandant! A man is lost in the desert, that is all. Nothing but that to report. No mud stirred up, no official inquiries here in Hezroor. Very neat finish."

The commandant nodded slowly, and, with Trent and the Caid, he watched the mean, shrunken little figure disappear down the narrow street facing the office door.

By sunset the news of Plymton's identity with the djinnee of El Sheyb, and the miraculous recovery of Trent effendi, were noised about the city. As the white walls of Hezroor were dyed crimson in the reflected glory of the western sky, a great crowd stood to hurl their last curses at a small black speck moving toward the flaming horizon.

Far out over the rolling immeasurable sea of sand the black speck was toiling on... on... on.

The fiery clouds dimmed to palest amethyst... purple... dusky blue. Brief darkness fell.

When the moon rose, the little toiling speck had vanished into the vast and secret wilderness.

__________________

2: Alicia goes a-Burgling

Arthur Somers Roche

1883-1935

All-Story Weekly 2 May 1914

THE small runabout was handled well.

I had stopped at the Forty-Second Street crossing of Fifth Avenue to wait a chance to break through the line of crosstown traffic and continue my stroll down the avenue. So in the wait I'd had opportunity to notice the assured manner in which she drove her motor.

Deftly, shaving the sides of other vehicles, and— it seemed— running beneath the rearing forefeet of a cab-horse, the girl had wormed her way to the front of the row of carriages and autos, held up by the puissant finger of a traffic cop.

The Jovian figure relaxed, his finger crooked invitingly. I stood a moment longer on the curb to watch how dexterously she shot across the tracks, athwart the bows of a huge, battleship touring-car, to gain the right-hand curb on her way down-town.

"A girl," I smiled to myself, "who evidently gets what she wants."

Then the people behind me pushed forward, and I forgot her in the hasty scramble across the street.

The air was bracing; it was November, best of months in New York; the sun shone brightly. I breathed in the air and the animated scene.

I noticed with eager eyes the beautifully garbed women, the luxurious equipages, the wealth whose evidences were on every side. It is always thus with me; it always seems new and delectably strange after a sojourn away from the metropolis.

Swinging my stick, my shoulders thrown back, that my lungs might get the best of the fall atmosphere, I continued down the avenue. And then the small, gray runabout caught my eyes again.

The girl could not have been in much of a hurry, after all, for now she was progressing at a snail's pace up the avenue. Evidently she had turned her car but a few blocks below, and she hugged the opposite curb. Out of sheer idle curiosity I slackened my pace and watched her approach.

Young— I set her down as being short of twenty-four— with a wealth of brown hair, a piquant face whose charm not even the motor-veil could hide, and a figure whose litheness was proved by her easy seat behind the wheel, she held for me that indefinable attraction of sex which in my florid youth I would have called "love at first sight," but which I didn't then bother to attempt defining, so content was I with the sensation.

She was heading up the avenue very slowly, throttled down to the lowest notch of speed. I noticed that even hansom cabs were turning out and passing her. I wondered ; this was not compatible with the anxiety to get ahead that she had shown a few minutes ago. I stopped— again on a corner— and stared.

I saw that she leaned out from the wheel, as though she were searching the face of every foot-passenger on the sidewalk. I noticed that several men returned her glances with grins, but that immediately her gaze would go beyond them and they would go sheepishly past her, not forgetting to cast backward glances at the trim vision in the motor.

And then she beckoned to a man. He was well groomed, smooth-looking, high-complexioned. I saw him start, stare, and then— he smiled the smile of the masher. I felt my fists double as he advanced to her side, lifting his hat. Her motor stopped.

Of course, it was none of my business, and I should have continued on my way; but I did not. Though I'd only had a glimpse of the girl's profile at Forty-Second Street, and though now I could not make out her features as clearly as I should have liked, I knew that she was a lady; further, she possessed attraction for me, and I am not attracted by the sort of woman that condescends to street acquaintances. So I stood— and watched.

She spoke to him, and I could see his jaw drop. Then he grinned. He laid his hand on her arm. I saw her shake off his touch. He repeated it, and as her hand slipped toward the lever his interposing hand stopped her endeavor to start the car. She straightened up and shook off his grip. Again he prevented her from starting the car. I crossed the street.

I am not given much to latter-day chivalry; ladies in distress— from masculine advances— do not appeal to me. Usually they have brought their situation upon themselves. Indeed, the girl in the gray runabout had done that very thing, but— if one always stopped to reason life would be a dull affair.

"I beg pardon," I said to her, "is this— person— annoying you?"

"Beat it, pal," said the man. "Beat it. I saw her first."

I looked at her; her lips were set in a straight line. She seemed very young; and in trouble greater than this mere offensiveness which, indeed, she had seemed to invite. I raised my eyebrows. She nodded. I turned upon the man.

"In just ten seconds," I said, "I am going to knock you down."

His high-colored face paled a trifle; then he sneered.

"Don't hand any of that stuff to me," he said. "You get gay and—"

I smoothed my glove over my knuckles.

"Five seconds gone," I announced. I drew a step nearer him.

He was like all of his breed: brave as a lion when with only a woman to face, but a cur before a man. With a sneer and a look of anger he drew away from me.

"You— you— I hope—"

I took another step toward him; incontinently he turned and fled, leaving his sentence unfinished. I turned back to the girl in the car. She had not started her motor. I looked at her.

"Well?" said I.

A crimson flush burned her cheeks, staining their normal color the lips that had just been white.

"W-will you d-do me a service?" she asked.

"Is that what you stopped that— er— gentleman to ask?" I queried.

"He— he was a beast!" she flared. "He— looked like a gentleman and— and— I thought— oh, no man is a gentleman— to a woman he doesn't know!"

"Like all statements founded on small experience, that sounds true," said I. "But it isn't— necessarily. What is the nature of this service you wish?"

"Burglary," she answered. "Now— laugh! And go along!"

She reached for her lever again. This time it was I who laid a detaining hand on her arm.

"What do you want burglarized?" I asked.

She stared at me.

"At any rate," she said slowly, "you didn't say what that other creature said. He— he didn't wait for me to ask him anything. He— he said: 'Hello, dear! Going to invite me for a ride?' You—"

" Where is the scene of the burglary to be?" I interrupted. "Who is the victim? What's your reason— and the reward is to be—"

Her lips curled and I found an unsuspected dimple in her left cheek.

"You take it most matter-of-factly," she said.

"According to the insurance companies, there are at least a score of burglaries in this city every twenty-four hours," I said. "That reduces the matter to the prosaic, doesn't it?"

She looked curiously at me.

"You are a strange person."

"I might return the compliment," I replied.

"But I— I am— deadly serious," she said.

"And so am I," I retorted.

And with truth, for that attraction which she held for me was no slight thing. I had gone thirty-five years without having a woman attract me seriously, and now, before her wondrous eyes, deepest violet and fringed with curling, long lashes, I was willing to do anything, no matter how absurd. At least, to be frank, I was willing to listen to anything she might have to say.

"Then— for a perfect stranger— you'd commit— burglary?"

"For you," I told her, "I am willing to do whatever service may be in my small power."

A full half minute our glances met. Then she motioned to the seat beside her.

"Get in," she said.

She pressed the button of the electric starter and we were bowling up the avenue.

At Fifty-Ninth Street she turned west, and a little later we were on Central Park West, a thoroughfare a trifle less crowded than the avenue. In silence we rode until we reached an entrance to the park; then she turned in and slowed the car down to approximately the same gait that it had been moving at when she had beckoned to our mutual friend, the bounder.

In silence— outwardly. Inwardly I was tumultuous. I have seen many pretty women; for years I had thought myself immune to the fascination of the other sex, but now— the older we grow the more quick we are to revise everything— including ourselves. I was in love— with a pretty girl who wished me to go a-burgling for her !

"You seem," she spoke at length as we reached a deserted roadway— "you seem a gentleman. Also— you helped me a while back when that— person— misunderstood. And you profess willingness to help me further. To— to burgle for me!"

I bowed.

"If you will explain—"

She applied the brakes and the car stopped. She turned her piquant face to me. Again her lips were white and her eyes held a fear in them that was different from the fear inspired by the bounder who had misinterpreted her advances. There was shame in this fear.

"I— I want some letters," she said. "Letters that I wrote,"

I felt a little chill down my back. This savored of vulgar intrigue; some indiscretion of a married woman that lacked romance. Then, as I looked into her eyes once more I knew better. She was not that sort; people with her violet eyes can never be guilty of disloyalty.

"Go on, please," I said, as she paused.

She looked straight ahead at the dun trees that, divested of their foliage, loomed gauntly in front of us.

"I— I must get them," she said. "I— I have no brother— there is no one— it had to be a stranger who would not know me, and it had to be a gentleman who would not misunderstand. As that beast did!" And her cheeks were red again for a moment.

"Yes?" I encouraged her, as she paused.

"That's why," she continued, "I— spoke to that— person. I had an idea that if I could drive my car along the curb I'd see some one who would look the part— some one who would help a woman in distress."

I hid a smile at the "woman." Though she was twenty-four, she was still a charming girl. Young in speech, young in body, and— young in heart! Heaven bless her, she thought that chivalry still existed; that knights still roamed the pavement eager to succor ladies in trouble. She had that divinest of youth's gifts— faith in her fellow-man. And I— well, a colder man than myself would have warmed to her, would have hated to disabuse that faith; would have yearned to face the dragon for her, his lady.

"But I didn't see any one who— looked as though they'd help— on the way down the avenue, and when I reached Thirty-Fourth Street I turned—"

"And found me," I interpolated. She looked from the dreary trees to me, and a smile made the month June.

"And found you," she said. Her voice became suddenly brisk and businesslike. "You are a gentleman," she said. "I do not know your name, but—" She lifted her hand in protest as my mouth opened to form the words which should disclose my identity. " I don't wish to know," she said. " I — must tell you mine, but—"

"The acquaintance need go no further, you mean," said I. I tried to smile, but it was a feeble effort. "I understand, of course."

"I knew you would," she flattered. "And— and you spoke of reward— if money— but it wouldn't!"

"Thank you," I said. "Never mind the reward. To have done something for you is reward enough," I added tritely yet daringly.

She flushed faintly. She turned out o avoid another car. It passed, and she drove ahead in silence for a moment. Then she turned again to me.

"My name is Alicia Davenport," she said. She almost ran her words together, so nervous, now that she was on the verge of disclosure of her wishes, that the words seemed to pour from her mouth. "My father is—"

"General Davenport?" I asked eagerly.

"Yes; why? How did you know? "

"Why," said I lamely, " I— the name is familiar — Davenport; and I happened to hear the — the other day that the general had a daughter, so — "

"Of course. Then if you know who my father is—"

"Every one knows that," I told her.

"But even so, you can understand how terrible it is that his daughter should have written letters to— to a cad!"

"Recently?"

Her eyes blazed.

"Years and years and years ago," she cried. "When I was only seventeen! I'm twenty-f— I'm older now."

Well, I hadn't guessed very far wrong; she was either twenty-four or five, and I inclined to the former. It pleased me that I had guessed so closely. Also it pleased me to note that the dimple which mirth evoked could also be summoned by anger. It came with emotion of any sort. I had always known that if ever I did fall in love it would be with a woman whose charms were not exclusively of the time of her good humor.

"Of course," I said, "ever so much older. And now—"

"I want them back." She looked at me. "I can trust you, can't I?"

"I think so," I replied.

The simplicity of my answer seemed to convince her; more, I believe, than any protestations would have done.

" I read a book— seven years ago," she said. So, then, she was twenty- four, not twenty-five. "It was a story of Balkan princesses and young Americans, and— I thought that the author who could delineate such characters must be a man of gentle instincts and charm himself. I— I idealized him until— I thought myself in love with him. I wrote him a letter; he did not answer, and I wrote him another.

"They were— they weren't mushy things such as girls have written to matinee actors," she said, blushing furiously. "But they were— well, they were the sort of letters a girl of seventeen, who knew nothing of life— or of men— would write to a man of genius whose work had carried her away. They were— silly, but— I'm not horribly ashamed of them now. If he'd been the gentleman I thought he was I'd be proud to think I'd written them to him, but—"

"How do you know he isn't a gentleman," I asked, " if he never answered—"

"As I've grown older," she said, "his very failure to have answered them has made me believe he is a gentleman, but now— a man asked me to marry him yesterday!"

"Indeed? May I hope that—"

For a moment mischief banished fear.

"You may hope nothing," she said with a hint of a smile. "Why should you?"

"Why, indeed?" I asked.

I shrugged my shoulders and folded my hands over the handle of my stick. I felt her eyes curiously upon me as we rolled slowly along.

"I refused him," she said. "He was a— a cad. A beastly cad and his name is—"

"Are you sure that you want me to know that?" I asked.

"Why— n-no— I shouldn't tell that," she said slowly. "It isn't really necessary, anyway. What is necessary is that you should know that when this— this cad was refused by me, he— sneered at me. He said that I held myself too high for him, he supposed, but that I deceived myself.

"He said that a girl who'd write the sort of letters I'd written to Thomas Brownell wasn't such a cut above himself. He said that he'd seen my letters to Brownell; he and Brownell had had many a laugh over them, he said, and that— that's why Brownell isn't the gentleman I thought him when I wrote to him, or have thought him since.

"He— wouldn't answer those innocent letters; he wasn't that sort of a cad; to try to take advantage of a young girl's hero-worship, but— he'd show the letters to his friends and mock me, and—"

"When had your friend— the one you refused— seen these letters? Are you sure he has seen them?"

"How else would he have known of them? And he quoted from them! Oh, I can remember every word that I poured out, in my innocence of seventeen, to the famous romantic novelist, Thomas Brownell." Her tone was bitter.

"And when did your— the person you speak of— see those letters?"

"Why— he's a friend of Brownell's. And that proves that Mr. Brownell is a cad himself, to have such a caddish friend," she blazed.

"Every one makes mistakes," I reminded her gently. "Brownell may not know what sort this friend of his is."

"But they laughed together over the letters," she cried.

"So Brownell's friend says," I answered.

"You seem to defend Brownell. Are you acquainted with him?" she cried.

"Never met him in my life," I answered. "But— when did this person see those letters?"

"You've asked that several times," she cried. "What difference does it make? I can't see. But he said that he'd seen them recently. What difference does it make?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Oh, detectives ask lots of questions; look for clues, you know. Why shouldn't a burglar do likewise? Mere curiosity and something to keep the brain busy. And now— you want me to get those letters? Why?"

"Because father has just returned from the Berkshires; he met Mr. Brownell there; became friends with him, and— Brownell is going to dine with us to-night!"

"But still," I protested, "I don't see—"

"A man couldn't," she almost moaned. "And I can't explain. Only— Brownell has kept those letters! He has them now— after seven years. Laughs over them! And I can't refuse to meet father's friend, despise him though I may. I can't tell father why I don't want to meet his new friend. And I'll have to meet Mr. Brownell and— if he didn't have those letters in his possession it would be different!"

"I don't see why," I said mildly. "Then, too, you could be indisposed to-night—"

"I won't run— from any one," she blazed. "And as for seeing why— a man couldn't, I've told you. A woman would understand. She'd know that, if I had my letters back— if Mr. Brownell dared mention them, I could ask him what he meant. I could deny having written them."

"But you wouldn't," I ventured to suggest.

"No— not that; I'll not lie. But, if he has them no longer, I won't feel— at the mercy of a strange man, a cad who's wormed his way into my father's good graces and accepts an invitation to dine with the man whose daughter he's sneered at! If I have those letters back I can face him; I can— oh, you don't understand."

"I think I do," I said. "And— I'll get the letters for you, Miss Davenport."

She applied the brake and the little runabout stopped with a jerk. " You — you will ? "

"To-day," I said firmly.

"How?"

"I'm not up on burglary," I smiled, "but— I'll get them."

"And"— for the fraction of a second doubt gleamed in her violet eyes—" you'll give them to me?"

"Why should I not?"

She sighed.

"Men are so— Thomas Brownell writes like a gentleman— you'd think no one but a gentleman could possibly create such characters, but— I trust you!"

She started the little car again with a press of the electric button. We rode a hundred yards. Then she turned to me.

"You— you'll be taking risks," she said slowly. "Perhaps— you'd better not."

"I've said I would," I reminded her. "Let's try to think up a plan of action."

"I'd thought of one," she said. "It's safe— I might have done it myself, only— a girl can't—"

"What was your plan?"

"Father told me that Mr. Brownell lives in an old-fashioned apartment house on Washington Square. On the ground floor. He has only one servant— an old man. If he could be decoyed out of the way— and you could gain an entrance— if you had plenty of keys—"

"I could send a message to the servant — do you know his name, by any chance?"

"He was with Mr. Brownell in the Berkshires. John— John Curtin. Father was so taken with Mr. Brownell that he remembers everything about him— and passes it on to me. Yes! You could tell the servant to be at the Pennsylvania Station with Mr. Brownell's things— a sudden trip—" Her face darkened. "But Brownell might be at home. That would undoubtedly spoil it."

I thought a moment.

"Let's leave the park. Drive to a telephone station; there you can call up this Curtin fellow, find out if Brownell is in; if he isn't, find when he's expected home. If not for an hour or two— we'll send a messenger to his apartment with a note—"

"The handwriting," she cried.

"We'll send a telegram from up-town," I said. "Then it'll be wired down-town and rewritten."

"Good!" she cried.

The little gray car had plenty of speed; it showed some of it on our way from the park to the nearest drug-store, where Miss Davenport telephoned. She came out of the booth flushed with excitement.

"The servant says that Mr. Brownell is not expected home until six," she cried. "What luck!"

"Yes," I agreed. "And now— for One Hundred and Tenth Street! That's far enough up-town to make certain that our message will not be delivered as I write it, but will be relayed down-town and rewritten."

Twenty minutes later I had sent a telegram to John Curtin, signed by the name of Thomas Brownell, telling the man-servant to be at the Pennsylvania Station at five, as Mr. Brownell was going on a sudden trip to Atlantic City.

"Now?" she said, as I reentered the little car.

"Curtin ought to have a bag packed in half an hour," said I, looking at my watch. "And it is now four o'clock. It will take us half an hour to get down-town."

"Us?" she cried.

"Don't you want the letters as soon as possible?" I asked.

"I do, but—"

"You can wait round a corner," I said. "I'll get them—"

"But how can you be sure you'll get into his apartment?"

"There's a locksmith on Eighth Street, near Washington Square," I answered. "I'll get fifty keys from him."

"But the hall-boys," she objected. I glowed at her fear for me. It was only natural, still—

"I'll simply say that I am a friend of Mr. Brownell's, and that I'm looking for the keys he gave me. If I can't find it— well, then we must expect to lose."

Three-quarters of an hour later I was on the sidewalk on Waverley Place, a few rods from the apartment whither I was bound. The girl was alternately flushed and pale.

"Root hard for me," I said.

"Oh— but I can't let you! You might be caught— what does it matter? I won't let you take the risk— you might not find the letters— jail—"

"Too late for that," I said. " I never stop until my purpose is accomplished."

And then I gave her a look beneath which she went deepest crimson; her eyelids fluttered; her glance fell.

"Wait," I said.

Exultantly, my heart pounding, I strode away.

There was no one in the hall. And the lock was of the most simple variety. I opened it with one of the keys on my own ring, needing no recourse to the twoscore keys I had obtained from the locksmith under the specious plea that I'd lost my keys to my own house.

I stepped inside; John, the servant, had departed; was even now cooling his heels in the Pennsylvania Station. I walked through a sort of drawing-room and found myself in the author's study. A desk was open; in a cubby-hole was a little packet tied with ribbon. I took it out. Two letters addressed to Thomas Brownell, and in a masculine hand, was scrawled on the top envelope: "The sweetest letters a man ever received. God bless her gentle heart!"

I opened the envelopes and glanced through the letters. They were all that the superscription indicated. And they were signed in a delicious school-girl scrawl that showed an honest, frank, courageous character; the sort of character that had made the child write to the author her appreciation of his fictitious characters. I sighed.

"Here they are," I said to her a few minutes later.

She clutched them eagerly. She glanced at the addresses and opened the envelopes. Then she looked at me.

"How did you know— these were mine?"

"I read them," I told her.

"You— you read them? "

"How else could I tell the right letters?" I asked.

Vividly, gloriously she blushed.

"I— I was only seventeen," she said. "And I— oh, how can I thank you?"

"You can't," I said. "Did you notice that Brownell has written on them?"

"Y-yes," she said. "He— he can't be such— such a cad as—"

"He'll miss those letters," I said. "If he— if he weren't a cad, I suppose you'd let him keep them, eh?"

She looked at the masculine writing on the envelope.

"He— has earned the right to— but he showed them to— another man— and laughed!"

"I'd forgotten that," I said. "I'm sorry for Brownell. But perhaps when you meet him to-night— let's forget him. I suppose, if I should ask you to tea—"

"Then you would have spoiled it all," she said, " Spoiled the memory of a gentleman who performed a service for a woman and then — "

"Claimed a reward, eh? I see— not chivalry. Then I won't. Good afternoon, Miss Davenport."

There was a catch in her voice.

"G-good-by," she said.

The little gray runabout shot down Waverley Place. I watched until she turned a corner; then I walked over to the Washington Arch and took a bus up the avenue as far as my club. There I ordered a high-ball. As I drank it, at my favorite table in the grill, Tony Gerhart approached me.

"Welcome back, wanderer," he said. "Haven't seen you in a dog's age!"

"Tony," said I, "just when did you see me last ? "

"Why, you haven't forgotten, old man! You had a most miserable cold; you were in your rooms, laid up. I came down, and you fell asleep on the couch in your study and I made myself at home— let's see— September, wasn't it? "

"It was," said I.

I signaled a waiter.

"Pen and ink— and paper," I ordered.

The waiter brought them.

"Billet-doux?" asked Gerhart.

I looked up at him.

"Tony," I said, "sign this."

He read what I had hastily written. "Why— why, look here, old man, you—"

"Sign it," I said, "or I'll speak to the governors of this club and—"

He signed it. I carefully folded the paper. Then I spoke to him:

"Tony, this is a gentleman's club. You understand? If a bounder gets in, the gentlemen have a right to cut him. If the bounder doesn't accept the cut, the gentlemen have a right to knock him down, club or no club."

I left him there, gasping for breath. At the door I looked at my watch. It was half past six. I left the club and strode up the avenue. At a house in the Fifties I presented my card. I was ushered into a drawing-room. A few moments I heard the rustle of skirts.

"My father is not at home yet," said a voice in the doorway; "but—"

The voice ceased; the owner advanced hesitatingly into the room and stared at me.

"Is this— the perfect gentleman that—"

She stared at the bit of pasteboard which I had handed the servant at the door, twisting it in her slender fingers.

I handed her the piece of paper which Gerhart had signed. She read it aloud :

Dear Miss Davenport :

I lied when I told you that Brownell had shown me your letters. He had taken them from a trunk the day I saw them, was sick, asleep, and did not know I had seen them.

Anthony Gerhart.

She looked at me; she was infinitely more alluring now than in the auto costume she wore in the afternoon. I felt my pulses racing. She took a step toward me.

"You— you—"

"I kept them seven years," I said, "hoping that in the future, when the girl had become a woman, I might dare—"

"I— I don't know," she said slowly, "which I like best. The man who stole the thing he had treasured— from himself— or the author who had treasured—"

"Try to like us both," I said. "Really each of us is a most decent sort, even though—"

"What, here already? Good!" cried a deep voice from the doorway. "Glad you didn't dress, Brownell; we can mull over those books as I wrote you we would; some of the rarest editions that— Oh, Alicia, girl! You know Brownell? I thought you didn't."

"I didn't think I did, either, father," she answered. "But I have known him— since I read his first book."

"Eh, what? You're chaffing me, Alicia." He looked from one to the other of us. "Well, you're acquainted now. Excuse me a minute, will you, Brownell?"

The girl looked at me.

"I— I think it was perfectly awful, your letting me go ahead— what must you think of me?"

"Do you want me to tell you?" I ventured.

"N-no," she said; "not until I've decided to whom those letters really belong."

Then the general came and took her in to dinner.

But she glanced at me over her shoulder, and— I really felt awfully sorry for Gerhart, poor devil!

_______________

3: The Little Affair of the Eiffel Tower

Arthur Morris Crosby
fl 1930s

The Magic Carpet Magazine, Jan 1934

The only known story by this obscure author

HENRI RENARD leaned his trim figure against the base of the Arc de Triomphe and reflected that it was of a certainty a glorious spring day; that, indeed, it was a perfect day for a murder.

Now, with some people, murder is a sordid sort of business, to be done only at night, or on gloomy, dismal days. Not so, however, with Monsieur Henri Renard. Had it not truly been said of him, and that by none other than Monsieur le Prefet himself, that he was an artist, a connoisseur, an expert? Not for him to descend to such gross means as knives, or pistols, or hired assassins. Besides, what was there to gain by removing from one’s path an undesirable, if one were not to be permitted to enjoy such hard-won surcease? Peste! There were little point in baking a cake if one could not eat it.

The sentiment pleased Henri. He removed a cigarette from his lips and allowed himself a thoughtful smile, watching the cloud of smoke spiral up and up against the blue roof of the sky until a vagrant wind caught it and twisted it into nothingness. "Pouf!” said Henri to himself. "Just like that, or”— he snapped his fingers— "perhaps like this. At any rate, very sudden and— mon Dieu!—very complete.”

He replaced the cigarette between his lips, letting it droop so that the glowing end produced a comfortable feeling of warmth at the point of the chin, which, in Henri's case, was very sharp and protruding. The day was in April, and though sunny, yet nourished a chill that had been bequeathed by a late winter. Any extraneous heat, however slight, was welcome.

He turned so that the rising sun (for the hour was that when fashionable Paris still lingers over its breakfast coffee and in consequence Monsieur Renard’s business day was yet to begin) might warm his back, and thrust his long, sensitive fingers deep into the pockets of his blue breeches. Thus he remained, the picture of lazy grace, eyes half closed, his cigarette kept alive by a scarcely perceptible movement of his cheeks, for five minutes. At the end of that time, his cigarette had burned nearly to his nether lip. Henri stirred as a man might who has been dozing and cast an appraising glance down his narrow nose. Apparently satisfied that there was nothing to salvage, he shrugged his shoulders, opened his mouth, and the stump of cigarette fell to the pavement. Henri contemplated it a moment, then crushed it with his heel. "So,” he muttered, "everything comes to an end, even the smallest of pleasures. It is a melancholy world.”

He pried himself loose from the comfortable support of the massive stone blocks and began to take a lively interest in the stream of life now beginning to pass under the arch. His quick glance fell upon a short, pompous figure of a man swinging along the sidewalk toward him, thumping the pavement with a cane, his overcoat and jacket open to the breeze. Across the bay-window of a stomach stretched a heavy gold chain. Henri smiled. "It is truly an invitation,” he said; and sauntered toward the stranger.

Abreast of him, Henri suddenly twist¬ ed, with a sharp cry of pain, and lurched into the arms of the other, instinctively raised to receive him.

"Ah— pardon, m’sieur!” gasped Henri, wincing, and still holding fast to the shoulders of the short gentleman. "A thousand pardons! It is my ankle— this beast of a sidewalk-” He pointed to where the cement had cracked, leaving a raised edge.

The gentleman was solicitous.

With much puffing, he steadied Henri, who groaned and grunted in the most alarming manner, holding the gentleman quite fast, as in a lover’s embrace.

"It is indeed reprehensible— the sidewalk,” agreed the pompous man, recovering some of his pomposity and trying to free himself from Henri's embrace. "But your ankle— you should do something.” With an effort he pushed Henri up straight and kept him away with a pudgy arm.

Henri’s smile was a benediction. "It is only occasionally, m’sieur, that it so atrociously fails me. But then, such a mortification! I have seriously incommoded you— again, a thousand pardons.” He touched his cap and hobbled off. Passing behind a parked cab, he hurried across the street, his ankle miraculously healed, and down a side-street. At the corner, he paused to glance affectionately at the gold watch and chain which he drew from his pocket.

"The gentleman," he mused, "has most excellent taste. Nor should I, perhaps, being so much in his debt, censure him for his abominable breeding in vulgarly displaying it. The War, alas! has changed so much." Shaking his head, he slipped the watch back into his pocket and strode rapidly along.

EMERGING on the Boulevard de Courcelles, he followed the crowd to the Place de Clichy, stopped to purchase a copy of Le Temps from a wounded veteran, and then passed into that labyrinth of streets and alleys that lies, dismal and forbidding, at the foot of Montmartre.

Arrived at length before the door of a delicatessen, he pushed it open and entered the smoky interior. An old crone, sitting at a counter, half concealed behind swaying strings of sausages, welcomed him with a grunt.

"Sacre!” said Henri, holding his nose. "What an abominable odor of everything indecent! Where is your saint of a husband?”

Before the old woman could reply, dingy curtains at the back of the shop parted and a leonine figure emerged.

Henri greeted it with his unsurpassed smile.

"I have brought you, papa,” he said jovially, "a little trinket, for which I will accept the truly insignificant sum of five thousand francs.” He laid the watch and chain on the counter.

The old woman’s eyes lighted with an avaricious gleam. The old man said nothing, but took up the watch in talon-like hands and minutely inspected it. Snapping the lids shut, he growled, "It is not without value— I will give you one thousand francs.”

Henri’s face darkened. "Old fool,” he said in a low voice, "the watch and chain are worth not a sou less than ten thousand francs. You know better than to trifle with me. The nose of the police is acute. It needs but to be given the scent.”

The old man muttered ferociously into his thicket of beard. "It is nothing less than robbery,” he lamented.

Henri shrugged. "You will not be disappointed,” he observed. "I am not one of your worst customers, eh, maman?” He tweaked the old woman on the cheek. She grinned up at him with toothless gums. Meanwhile, slyly, the old fellow had reached for the jewelry.

Henri’s quick eye forestalled him. He swept the watch into his pocket.

The old man’s clumsy effort to get possession amused him. He threw back his head and laughed loudly.

"Ah,” he admonished, shaking his finger, "the lion is too slow for the fox, mon ancien. Had I not business of great importance on hand, I should find means of punishing that greediness. Come — five thousand francs! I have not the time to waste, bandying words with you.”

Mumbling strange imprecations, the old man disappeared into the dim recesses of his shop, to reappear presently with a wallet. From this he thumbed out fifty one-hundred franc notes, Henri counting them aloud with him. Simultaneously they exchanged notes for watch and chain. Henri counted the notes again and stuffed them casually into a pocket of his trousers. At the door, he turned. "It interests me to wonder what you do with all your money, mon papa," he said pleasantly.

"It is no business of yours!” roared the old man. "Begone!” he made a fierce gesture toward a long, vicious-looking meat-knife. Henri laughed. With a graceful bow to the old hag, he beat a quick exit

Outside he followed the dingy street, past grimy, leering houses, up the slope of Montmartre. There, in the very shadow of the beautiful church which surmounts, as an angel of light the Valley of Darkness, this grisly and romantic eminence, he pushed his way between swinging doors into a gaudy cafe. The air was fragrant with an aroma compounded of coffee, cigarettes, beer, and cognac. Even at this still comparatively early hour, the place was nearly filled. Henri cast a rapid glance about him. "Ah, les touristes,” he muttered under his breath, and puffed out his cheeks contemptuously.

He went to a far corner and sat down at a single table. He lit a cigarette and surveyed the scene. Mingled with the sight-seers was an occasional member of the artists’ set, for whom Henri had almost as great disdain. He took a piece of paper from a pocket of his jacket and with a stub of a pencil wrote on it. Fold¬ ing the paper, he wrote again. Then he strolled over to a table near by, where sat a pallid youth in a vivid green smock.

Henri tapped him on the shoulder. "Will you deliver this, mon enfant, at the address I have marked? It is only round the corner."

He put a gold piece, than which nothing is rarer in France since the War, in the youth's palm. The boy stammered in his astonishment. “It is my way of giving thanks to Our Good Lady," murmured Henri piously. The gold had been a part of the chimney-hoarding of that queer old Comtesse Gaillard, whose man-of-all-work Henri had once been and who had so suddenly deceased this life during an attack of ptomaine poisoning from eating canned peas. (So had said the doctors. And correctly. But they did not know, and Henri never saw fit to tell them, that he had instructed the old lady to boil the peas in the opened tin.) That chimney-hoarding Henri himself hoarded and resorted to only on festive occasions. So now he folded the young man’s limp fingers over the coin and added, "Hurry!"

Still dazed, the young man departed.

Henri sighed and returned to his table. "And I suppose,” he mused, "the poor fellow really expects to become another Corot.”

A waiter, smirking, shuffled to the table. "Two glasses of benedictine,” said Henri, without locking up. When they came, he sat slightly bent forward, watching the door, his slender, pickpocket’s fingers twirling one glass by its stem, round and round....

As she paused in the doorway, it was plain to be seen for whom Henri waited. Tall she was, and willowy, with small, exact features and jet-black hair that matched her eyes. Watching her, Henri smiled and, if so fastidious a man could be guilty of so animalesque an act, almost it might be said that he licked his chops.

When the girl located him through the fog of tobacco smoke, she started and the powdered white of her cheeks seemed to grow a little more white. Steadying herself with an obvious effort, she walked slowly toward him.

Henri was already on his feet, bowing her with studied grace to a chair which he had moved over from an adjacent table. The girl slipped into it, rather than sat down, and regarded him with vague, troubled eyes, as he took the chair opposite.

"Celeste,” murmured Henri, "you are more beautiful than when I went away.” His gaze fell ardently on the perfect curve of her neck and throat. "One would most certainly believe that you were of the Ballet at the Opera, instead of furnishing entertainment to the ribald habitues of Pierre’s. It is that which disturbs me.”

"I didn’t know that you had returned,” she said in a low voice.

"No?”

Henri smiled, pushing one of the cordial glasses toward her. She took it mechanically, her dark eyes still intent on his lean features. Henri must have seen that she was in desperate fear; for he leaned forward and patted her hand. "There is no need for you to be frightened, Celeste, my angel,” he murmured. "Should you not rather rejoice that your Henri is back?”

"They told me,” she went on in a dull voice, "that you were in prison at Lyons— sentenced for ten years.”

"It was, alas, too true. But surely, my dove, you could not expect your Henri to remain long in such provincial surroundings. Ma foi! It was not to be endured. Not with Paris calling— and you.” He squeezed her hand and, for an instant, she averted her head. Then, with a quick movement, she faced him squarely. "Why have you sent for me?” she demanded. There was a flash of bravado in her manner.

"Because,” he answered her evenly, over the rim of his glass, "I have heard stories, my dear, that have set me wondering; stories that have persuaded me that the memory of Henri Renard is less potent than his presence.”

"You could not have expected me to become a nun,” she said defiantly.

"A nun? But no, my sweet.” Henri's tone was as smooth as the liqueur which passed so smoothly down his throat. "But no. Of a certainty one could not charge you with leanings toward the devout life. Yet, a measure of— what shall I say, my priceless one? Fidelity? No, that is perhaps too strong a word. Rather let us say loyalty. Yes, of loyalty to a memory. Because it can never be said of me, my beloved, that I treated you in any way ill— is it not so?” The sneer that twisted his narrow lips belied the lingering tenderness in his voice.

The girl shuddered. "No,” she breathed, "I had nothing to complain of.”

"And yet, so soon after my civil decease, you permit the company of that overgrown baboon of a Pierre’s son!”

"How did you know?” the girl flung at him.

Henri’s eyes became little slits. A bit of color tinged his sallow cheeks. "Ah,” he whispered. "Then it is so.... I was not quite certain.”

The girl perceived her blunder. She bit her lips, flinging her head back reck¬ lessly.

"Well, what of it?” she cried. "You had gone— for all I knew you were dead. He was kind— I was lonely. I am not made of stone, God knows.” Her lip was quivering. Suddenly she flung her head down on her arms, on the table-top, and unuttered sobs shook her.

Renard watched her silently. A few persons at tables near by regarded the couple curiously a moment and then became interested again in whatever had interested them before. Scenes like this were not uncommon in Montmartre.

Henri took out a cigarette from a beautifully jewelled case and lit it, coolly releasing a huge cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. When a woman weeps, there is nothing to do but wait.

PRESENTLY, the spasmodic movement of the girl’s shoulders ceased. She raised her head and looked at him with eyes red, but without a trace of a tear. "You are a beast,” she said, pouting, and thrusting back her hair from her forehead.

"That may be,” agreed Henri, pleasantly conscious of the subtle change in her attitude.

"Well, what are you going to do?” the girl demanded.

He spread out his palms in a gesture of complaisance. "Invite your Francois to lunch."

She stared at him, incredulous.

Me laughed at her expression of blank disbelief. The rows of even white teeth, which were his one vanity, gleamed even in that poor light.

"But why not?" he said. "Surely, do I not owe him a debt? I can see that he has taken good care of my Celeste—you were not so plump when I went away.” He leaned over and pinched her arm.

"You can not mean him any good," she said, ignoring the act.

"Why should I wish him evil? Have I not said that I am in his debt?”

"You will not harm him?”

"Peste!” said Henri, chuckling. "That is worthy of a place in Le Rive. Do you know how much I weigh? Not over forty kilograms. And that baboon of yours— ma foi! he is a gorilla. He can not weigh less than a hundred. What could I do to him?”

"I do not know— I only know that you are a devil.”

Henri’s enormous good humor vented itself in a horse-laugh. "A devil, eh? First it’s a beast, and now it’s a devil.” He called for two more glasses of benedictine, sprawling happily in his chair, hands in his pockets, his eyes bright and mocking. Beast and devil he undoubtedly was, although opinions sometimes differ in these matters. But that he was a handsome rascal, there was no denying; and Celeste smiled.

Henri smiled back and Bashed the cigarette case at her.

"Would you like it, rose of my heart?” he queried. "I got it for you. It belonged to a nouvelle riche from Idaho. I met her at Cannes— in the Casino. Little pig— how she squealed when I grabbed it from her!” He shoved the bauble across the table.

Celeste eyed it. A new gleam came into her eyes, as she turned it over and over.

"It is a pretty trifle,” added Henri, airily. "It will go well with the wrist- watch I have selected for you at Cartier’s."

"Cartier’s!” The girl looked at him hungrily, her cheeks flushed.

"But yes, my angel. Your baboon has, after all, only a jungle taste.” He pointed to a cheap watch held to her slender wrist by a tawdry bit of ribbon. "Could I endure that my Celeste’s charms should be so outraged? It is not to be thought of! The watch I mention,” he blithely lied, "I saw today in the window. I immediately priced it and left a deposit of a thousand francs as an option. I desired time to look about; but I confess that I have not found a better, nor one so nearly matching my Celeste’s beauty.”

The girl’s face was radiant. With feline contentment, she curved her lithe body toward him. It could never be said of Henri Renard that he did not know his women. He stroked her white arm; then, with a swift movement, leaned forward and kissed her on the lips.

She pulled away. A shadow crossed her face. "You do not blame me?” she asked anxiously.

"My angel— I could not blame you did you consort with the Devil himself. Beauty like yours is above the censure of earth-born mortals.”

She smiled at his extravagance, as she had always— ever since the day when he had flung, one by one, all his apprentice’s paintings into the charcoal burner and had moved his belongings, such as they were, to her cozy two-room apartment overlooking the twin towers of Notre Dame. Art for him, from that time on, had meant simply skill in extracting purses from the pockets of their owners and keeping out of the clutches of the police. That he had failed in the one affair at Lyons was due not to any remissness on his part, but to an ironic fate which had put a banana peel under his foot at the precise moment when he was about to dissolve into the crowd. The opulent burgher who had unwittingly delivered up his watch had at the same instant discovered his loss— the rest had followed as a simple matter of course.

"But Francois—” she persisted.

"After all, he was good to me in his way.”

Henri waved aside the suggestion contained in her tone. The gesture was one of a superb magnanimity, of Christian forbearance and tolerance.

Celeste smiled and coiled herself, more completely cat-like.

Henri, watching her with a quicker beating of his heart, realized that, like a cat, she was entirely faithless. A saucer of milk— to continue the metaphor— and she was entirely happy.

He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. There were times, of which this was one, when he considered how pleasant it would be to have a girl who was absolutely dependable. But he thrust this weakness from him. Pate! Were not such women invariably dull and uninteresting? And where would he find such beauty as Celeste’s?

He beckoned to the waiter and gave him money to cover the bill and a generous pourboire. Then he patted Celeste’s hand and helped her out of her seat. "It is time,” he murmured, pulling her arm through his, "that I go to meet that baboon of a Francois— he will soon be coming from work. And you, my angel—  you will wait for me after your first dance at Pierre’s? I have a presentiment of a sort that Pierre will not want you to dance tonight." He squeezed her arm and she flashed him a look that made him dizzy.

On the sidewalk, outside the cafe, he left her, turning at the corner to blow her a kiss and receive one in return. A raw-boned English woman, just dismounted from a sight-seeing bus, exclaimed, "How charming— what atmosphere!” and gazed at him through a lorgnette. Henri made her a grimace under the vizor of his cap and reflected that, at another time, he might have inspected the contents of her bulging handbag....

ON the way down the slopes of Montmartre, he stopped at a pawn-shop and asked the broker to show him ladies’ wrist-watches. "And none of your tricks,” he added, scowling.

"But no,” protested the proprietor with dignity. He was a wizened, misshapen creature and his attempt at dignity was so comical that it put Henri immediately in good humor.

After some haggling, he selected a dainty Swiss creation with a chased platinum case that might have belonged to some comtesse impoverished by the War, priced as a special concession at fifteen hundred francs. Henri counted out the notes and the broker fitted a ribbon to the watch and handed it over.

"And now, mon brave,” said Henri, "I desire a box of Monsieur Cartier’s to hold fittingly this treasure.”

The pawnbroker smiled indulgently. "A fresh lot came in this morning,” he said. Grunting with the effort of reaching up on a shelf, he produced a plush- lined case bearing the counterfeit device of the famous jeweller in the Rue de la Paix. The watch lay resplendent in its chaste nest. Henri was satisfied. Humming a gay tune of the gutters, he swung on down toward the river.

Arrived at length at the Pont D’lena, he leaned on the balustrade and gazed at the spidery beams and spans of the Eiffel Tower.

A stout citizen edged close to him. "It is to me,” the stranger confided, "ever a mystery how those fellows can keep their balance.” He pointed to several black objects walking along the steel beams. "Every day since they have started to make repairs on the Tower, I have come here to watch. Ma foi! How they crawl about! It gives one the vertigo merely to watch them.” The plump stranger shivered.

Henri regarded the little citizen amusedly. The tail of his coat bulged with significance, and Henri, one eye cocked at the top of the Tower, swayed toward the fat rump. Then he caught himself up sharply— he could not afford now to have an accident. "You have the great right,” he agreed pleasantly, sighing with extreme reluctance at having to pass up so golden an opportunity. "But— chacun a son gout.” He waved his hand and crossed out of sight behind a string of market wagons homeward- bound.

HE SWUNG along the embankment until he reached the great sprawling base of the Eiffel Tower. Here he paused and gazed up into the maze of steel. Workmen were descending; the hour was nearly twelve. As they reached the ground, a ridiculously tiny whistle blew from nowhere in particular and the men, laughing and gesticulating, hurried toward a work-shanty that lay in the mottled shadows of the amazing structure. One of them topped his fellows as the Tower itself tops Paris. To him Henri stepped with quick silence, and tapped him on the shoulder. The giant, a youth of some twenty-five summers and a head of thick, straw-colored hair, turned and his jaw fell. "I— I thought,” he stammered and broke off, his face a brick red, though whether from embarrassment or anger, Henri could not then precisely determine.

"You thought,” Henri finished for him, flashing all his teeth in the sunlight, "that I was safe at Lyons for at least ten years.... But you should know, my friend, that I never stay where I am not genuinely welcome. It is inexpressibly bad manners.”

The young giant hitched about awkwardly. Henri Renard’s French— the polite French of the boulevardiers— disturbed him. "What do you want of me?” he growled, rolling down the sleeves of his shirt over arms that were bigger than Henri’s thighs. The splendid muscles played back and forth like the sinews of a percheron.

The gesture was not lost on Henri, but he pretended not to notice it.

"Francois,” he said affably, "I have come to take you to lunch and to thank you.”

The young giant threw back his head and his roaring laughter echoed among the girders.

"That’s good!” he cried. (Henri winced at the gross accent of the slums.) "That’s good! By Christ! I'll accept any man’s invitation to lunch and ask no questions. But what have you to thank me for?” He glowered down at Henri, diminutive in comparison.

"Why”— Henri spread his palms— "for taking such good care of Celeste—  what else?”

"Look here!” cried Francois, gripping Henri by the arm so that it hurt— Renard carried the black bruise for days— "Be careful what you say! You deserted her— I was her friend.... Have a care!”

The flush was most certainly of anger now, thought Henri, and added to himself, "One may do so much with an inflammable nature.” Aloud, he said, "Pouf! my Francois— do I not know? It is a debt of gratitude I owe you— I acknowledge it freely. I would repay it.”

The giant eyed him dubiously. "Celeste won’t go back to you,” he said defiantly. "She told me she was through with you, dead or alive.”

Henri shrugged. "Dead— yes, of a certainty. But alive”— he grimaced— "well, one can not blame her... and you have such an engaging personality.”

"Eh?” grunted Francois, struggling to stretch a jacket over his taurine shoulders.

Henri laughed merrily.

"Look you, M’sieur Renard,” rumbled Francois menacingly, "I will go with you to lunch, because I want to talk, away from the ears and eyes of these comrades”— he nodded toward his fellow-workmen who were clustered in a group curiously watching the oddly assorted couple— "but I don't like your laugh.”

"The intensity of your dislikes is equalled only by your frankness in expressing them,” replied Henri cordially. "Unfortunately, it is my nature to be gay— and the gay man necessarily laughs. I can not change my nature.”

He took Francois by the arm and they walked along the river-edge until they came to one of those tiny cafes that adorn the sidewalks of Paris. Two tables stood on the sidewalk under a huge green umbrella much faded by unrelieved exposure to sun and rain. They sat down at one of the tables and the proprietor, a swarthy Gascon, attended upon them. Henri ordered chicken livers with truffles, and a bottle of green chartreuse.

FOR several minutes they ate in silence.

Henri, watching his companion through the fringes of his eyelashes, could see that his brain was ponderously working on his problem. At length the giant laid down his knife— his fork he had not touched— and scowled.

"I have decided,” he said heavily, fumbling for the right words, "that I can’t let you see Celeste. You are through— it is final.”

The sudden wave of wrath that swept him at the words, Henri dissembled under the most naive of smiles. He raised his hands and let them drop in a gesture of compliance. "I must indeed,” he said, "have forfeited all my claims. Besides, how could Henri Renard hope to compete with Francois Martaud, the champion strong man of Mo’martre? I am resigned.” He smiled enigmatically into his glass.

"I don’t trust you,” went on Francois. "You must leave Paris.”

"Even that can be arranged,” said Henri urbanely.

The giant seemed baffled by this ready acquiescence. "You must leave Paris at once,” he pursued doggedly.

"Tut,” chided Henri, with some impatience. "Do not distress yourself. Have I not seen how the wind blows? When a lady’s ardor cools, it is less acceptable than yesterday’s soup. I come not to bury Caesar— but, faugh! why do I cast pearls? It disturbs me that I must leave Celeste in your tender care... but not in the sense you think.”

Francois looked at him with a frown. "What do you mean?"

"Only this,” said Henri coolly: "It is a perilous trade you ply— if I go away and, ah, anything happens to you, mon brave, what becomes then of the gentle Celeste?”

"Bah!” said Francois. He tossed off his glass and reached for the bottle. "Nothing can happen to me,” he boasted. "There isn’t a cat in all Paris more sure-footed.”

"Even cats fall— sometimes. And here is a paragraph concerning a gentleman of your profession, doubtless also of experience, who fell from one of the Loire bridges." Henri tapped his newspaper. "What a splash he must have made!”

"Diable! Are you trying to frighten me?”

Henri refilled the cordial glasses and drew a long sip before replying.

"Frighten you?” he repeated. "No. But I can not escape anxiety— with Celeste’s interests so much at stake.... Tell me,” he said suddenly, "don’t you ever consider your danger? Haven’t you ever reflected, as you walk your airy beams, what one single misstep can mean?”

"No!” cried Francois.

"Have you never experienced fear?”

"Fear!” burst out Francois, with a strident laugh. "I don’t know the word!”

A smile flickered across Henri’s face. "But this fear,” he pursued evenly, "it is not the ordinary fear that you and I have sometimes known. It is something far different. It is like the terror which sometimes comes in the blackness of night— when you suddenly awake seized with a nameless dread.”

"I say, you can’t frighten me!” cried Francois, with a searing oath.

"No, no, my friend,” said Henri somberly, "it is not my intention. But I can’t help thinking— it is a frightful thing to fall from a great height. And I have read that, once the structural-steel worker knows fear, real fear, he is doomed... doomed, I say.”

The word was like the sudden thrust of a knife. It came, sharp, tense, malignant, from Henri’s half-closed lips. It seemed to cut into the mind and soul of the young giant opposite him. For Francois sat there staring, staring with eyes red and watery, eyes in which gleamed for the first time a look of horror.

Henri watched him an instant. Then he leaned forward, and when he spoke, his words were sharp, as though plucked from a violin string.

"You fool!” he said, his voice low and tense. "Can you not see the danger that lurks at every step? Ah, I can see you walking your high beams! Of a sudden, you become conscious of your height. You are afraid to look down. But you can not help yourself! Something grips you, like a cold hand at your throat. You begin to tremble violently. A great nausea seizes you. If only you could hold on to something for an instant— until this spell passes! But there is nothing— nothing— only that slender walk at your feet. All, now truly do you know fear— fear, I say! The sweat pours out all over you! You become suddenly dizzy! The Tower reels! You sway— you stagger— you clutch frantically at the air!... And— ah—”

Henri let his glass, which he had been gradually pushing to the edge of the table, fall to the pavement. The silvery tinkle, as it shattered into a thousand pieces, struck the silence of the little cafe like the iron clanging of the gates of Death.

Something must have snapped in the brain of the giant. He was on his feet, his face blanched, his huge form shaking.

"You— you hell-hound!” he cried. A torrent of unspeakable words poured from his twitching lips. He flung his glass at Henri’s head and staggered away in the direction of the Tower. Henri shrugged and with his delicate fingers flicked away the few drops which he had been unable to dodge.

The proprietor appeared.

"Your friend,” he said, his voluble hands expressing his surprize. "I saw him leave— he is perhaps ill?”

"No,” said Henri, his face all smiles again, "my friend is not ill. He is very much frightened. I told him a story— he is such a child— and it frightened him. He has too vivid an imagination. Also, I fear, he is a little bit drunk. I must apologue for his clumsiness in knocking off the glasses.”

"Ah, the chartreuse," said the Gascon proudly, "it is strong. The glasses— no matter.” With his foot he scraped the shattered remnants under the table.

"It is delicious,” breathed Henri, his eyes fixed dreamily on the clustered girders of the Tower, where already black objects were crawling like ants. "It is nectar— you will please to bring me a litre. I shall remain here for a while.”

"A litre!” The proprietor stared spellbound in admiration and disbelief. Then, rolling his eyes and shaking his head, he disappeared within the darkness of his shop, to reappear presently with a bottle, from which he carefully wiped away the dust of ages, and a fresh glass. "My son,” he said, placing bottle and glass tenderly on the table in front of Henri, "if you drink all of this—”

"When I have drunk all of this,” corrected Henri, "I shall feel like Lohengrin— but perhaps you do not keep up on the Opera.”

"No, no— I have no time for such vanities.”

"It is a pity,” said Henri, narrowly watching the translucent liquid as it flowed smoothly into the glass. "The Opera is an education.” He twisted the cork into the bottle and set it upon the table. "My friend,” he smiled at the proprietor, "I should like to be left alone— to my meditations.”

"But, of course!” The proprietor withdrew, bowing and scratching his head. From time to time he peered out through the narrow door at this odd customer. Henri continued to sit at the little table, sipping his chartreuse and gazing, in that dreamy way, at the Eiffel Tower....

THE afternoon wore on; the shadows lengthened. Still he sat there. Suddenly he stiffened to attention! His dark eyes flashed. His lips parted....

Down the breeze had come a harsh cry— a cry of terror. There was a commotion at the foot of the Tower. Men went running by.

The little Gascon himself dashed up, hatless and breathless, a market-basket, swaying ludicrously on his arm, threatening to strew the sidewalk with onions and artichokes.

"I was on my way back from the provisioner’s,” he gasped; and it occurred to Henri to wonder why he had not seen him go. "It is your friend— the big young man who was here.... He fell from the second landing— my God, such a sight!” The little proprietor was trembling all over.

Henri drained the last drop of chartreuse.

"It is the will of God,” he said piously. "We must bear these shocks with fortitude.” He wiped his lips with a dainty linen handkerchief. He flung a fistful of notes on the table. "Take it all, my good man,” he said with a flourish. "Lohengrin”— and looking at him, one would not have suspected the blasphemy— "Lohengrin goes now to greet Elsa!”

________________

4: Mirage

Ernest M. Poate

1884-1935

Detective Story Magazine 20 Aug 1921

HURRYING east on One Hundred and Tenth Street, Patrol man Peter McKenna stopped suddenly. It was three o'clock of a hot August afternoon, and Peter was in civilian clothes; a brand-new Palm Beach suit of which he was justly proud. He was off duty; at three-fifteen he was to meet Miss Nellie O'Brien at that corner of the park which touches Columbus Circle. At best, he would be late; and Miss O'Brien, whose good opinion he sincerely coveted, counted punctuality the first of all virtues.

Yet he stopped short a block from the Lenox Avenue subway kiosk and stood quite still, staring open-mouthed across the low wall into Central Park.

For there, some six feet above the ground, was a picture painted upon the empty air; a life-sized picture, vivid with all the colors of life. A rough stone wall, and before it green turf on which stood a wooden bench. On the bench sat an old gentleman, immaculate in pongee silk, smoking a cigar.

The whole picture shimmered and moved in the rising heat waves of that sultry day; through it Peter could see the green park grass, the distant trees, a taxicab whirling along the drive; yet the white-mustached old gentleman on his bench was spectrally clear and distinct for all his transparency.

Further, he moved. As Peter watched, amazed, the old man took the cigar from his mouth, emitted a clear-seen whiff of smoke, and adjusted his Panama hat against the sun.

A moving picture without a screen; thrown on the empty air, and in broad daylight!

"Th' saints save us! McKenna. "An' what won't these movie fellers be doin' next?" And he looked about for the projecting machine.

No machine was in sight; no shirt-sleeved operator turned his crank; no projector thrust its wide mouth from the blank windows opposite; no spreading beam of light led back from this amazing vision to show its origin.

Peter McKenna stared with ail his eyes, and a tiny, superstitious prinkling twitched at the short hairs along the back of his neck. He wet his lips and swallowed, scowled at the placid, transparent old gentleman smoking so calmly there in mid-air.

"Th' saints save us all! An' it ain't a movin' pitcher, then? Me gran'mother'd say I was fey!" muttered Peter

A stocky, middle-aged man, goggling against the sun glare, came  walking briskly toward him along the deserted pavement. As he came close, Peter McKenna clutched his arm. "Say, mister— look!" he urged, pointing. 'D— do you see it, too?"

The other removed his amber goggles, looked, wiped them, and looked again. "Ah, yes! Quite interesting. A mirage," he announced.

Peter blinked in bewilderment. Mirage! That was something they had in Death Valley and the Sahara Desert and the likes of them places, when a feller'd lost his canteen and got awful dry and began to see palm trees and lakes and wells and all. But what did mirages have to do with this ghostly old gentleman smoking there in the middle of nothing at all, fifty yards from One Hundred and Tenth Street in New York City?

"Miradge?" repeated Peter McKenna. "They don't have miradges, only in Africa an' China an' them parts."

"Oh, yes! Not so often, of course, or so big; but they do have mirages almost everywhere at times. One was reported out in Canton, Ohio, just recently; I read an article about it in a scientific monthly. They say the closer the real scene is, the lower the reflection seems to be. Now this"— and the informative stranger peered through his amber goggles at the uncanny, trans- lucent old gentleman smoking on his bench in mid-air— "this man's probably sitting a mile or more away. You see, he looks to be about six feet above the ground. Interesting, isn't it?"

The stocky man nodded and walked on toward the subway kiosk, leaving Patrolman Peter McKenna a prey to doubt.

"A miradge, is it?" he muttered. "An this just a imagelike of somebody miles off. Sure, I misdoubt it much. Annyways, tis a queer thing t' see. I wisht Nellie was here to look, too."

And, reminded of Miss O'Brien, who by now would be awaiting him without too much patience, Peter hurried on toward the subway, but with chin on shoulder.

Just outside the kiosk he stopped once more.

"Judas!" said he. "An' there comes another one; an' a bad lot, too, by th' looks of him."

The picture still hung, shimmering, above the park lawn; the old gentleman smoked calmly on, quite regardless of the fact that Peter could see a passing florist's wagon through his expansive waistcoat. But now another actor had stepped upon this eerie stage.

A scrawny, foreign-looking man was climbing the low wall, a plaid golf cap pulled low over his retreating brow so that Peter saw little but the tip of a hooked nose protruding among tangled whiskers. He slipped down behind the unsuspecting smoker and advanced toward him stealthily, limping upon a right foot clad in a heavy, high-heeled shoe.

Peter McKenna leaned thrilling with excitement. "That feller's up to something," he declared; then, forgetting that the diaphanous actors in this strange drama could not hear. "Look out! Look out, mister!" he shouted. "He's get a gun!"

He had. Before Peter's bulging eye this second shadowy figure had stopped behind a peaceful, unsuspecting, kindly looking old gentleman to shake his dirty fist, to execute a clumsy, limping dance of glee, clawing at matted whiskers in grotesque triumph. Then he had suddenly snatched out a cheap pistol, its nickeled barrel gleaming in the bright sun— and Peter McKenna shouted.

It did no good; the tragedy went on before his helpless eyes. The whiskered stranger clapped his pistol to the old gentleman's pongee-silk back; Peter saw its flash and imagined its report. The victim jerked convulsively— then slumped forward into a limp heap; the murderer dropped his pistol, looked furtively about, and then, apparently satisfied, limped back to the stone wall, scaled it, and disappeared.

"Th' saints save an' keep us all!" cried Peter McKenna devoutly, and crossed himself. "An' now what will I do at all?"

What, indeed? Here was a matter quite outside the scope of his book of instructions; and Peter was still on probation. How was he to report this thing?

"Suppose I was t' call up th' house," he ruminated, "an' tell how I seen a vision of a old man bein' shot? I c'n hear th' sarge, if I did! 'I can't stop ye playin' detective,' says he," for Peter McKenna had been caught one day reading a vast volume of detective fiction; " 'but 'tis enough disgrace t' th' force ye are wid y'r story- book- detective notions. Lay off'n this here havin' visions an' all that trance-medium stuff, 'r I'll have ye up on charges f'r a fortune teller, so I will!' Arrah!" finished Peter McKenna. "I will lay myself open to no such talk as that! Sure, I will say nothin' at all, but go on an' meet Nellie an' catch th' Coney Island boat. 'Tis like she will not speak to me at all, bein' so late— I will run!"

And run he did, and dived into a subway train, all flushed and panting.

"Anyways," he reflected, having pushed his way to a seat, " 'tis like enough nothin' really happened, f'r all th' talk of that feller in goggles. Miradges, says he! Belike 'twas a vision, sure enough, an' a warnin' an' no 'reflection' at all. I will ask me gran'mother; she's a wise woman."

So Peter McKenna dismissed further thought of the mirage, not without a twinge of Celtic superstition, and fell to devising an excuse which should square him with the exigent Miss O'Brien.

When he emerged from the subway at Columbus Circle that young lady was not waiting by the bronze monument as she had promised.

"Wirra!"' said Peter, looking at his watch. "She did not wait. Sure, an' I'm ten minutes behind." He looked hopefully down the stone steps and into the park.

Perhaps Nellie waited there somewhere in the shade.

A little way off, near the stone wall which runs along Fifty-ninth Street, a curious group surrounded a park bench. Peter saw police uniforms and, yes! there were two or three women. Nellie might be there.

He hurried over, just as a police patrol wagon clanged up and a stout, hard-faced person in a derby hat emerged therefrom.

"Hello, Burke!" greeted Peter. "What's gone wrong?"

The other grunted, chewing upon an unlit black cigar. "Shootin' in here," he answered brusquely. "Old Coolman, banker, killed sittin' on a bench."

Together they hurried toward the group ahead; Peter felt a queer inward twinge. Some way this spot seemed strangely familiar.

Then they pushed through half a dozen curious loiterers, and Peter McKenna gasped, staring stupidly down at a green park bench whereon, slumped forward in a limp, pathetic heap, halt lay a kindly faced old gentleman, white-mustached, clad in pongee silk.

A Panama hat lay on the bench beside him; a dead cigar was still clutched in one fat, dimpled hand. It was the comfortable old gentleman of Peter Mckenna''s "miradge''— and there was a powder-blackened hole in the back of his silk coat. He was dead.

"Th' saints preserve us!" whispered Peter, and promptly forgot the murdered man. For a small, tearful voice called his name. "Peter! Oh, Peter, dear!"

He whirled. Beside him stood Miss Nellie O'Brien, her pretty face all tear- streaked and twisted with mingled fright and woe; and a stalwart, brass-buttoned policeman held her arm, not ungently. Indeed, his grip was almost caressing, and the brown looked down upon her pretty black head were admiring; none the less, it was obvious that the officer acted in his official capacity— that, with whatever reluctance, he had just arrested the girl.

"An' what's all this?" demanded Peter authoritatively. "Leave go t,' girl! Come, Nellie, acushla!"

He drew the frightened girl to him protectingly and glared at his brother officer.

"An' who are you, that makes so bold to ask?" returned the uniformed man hotly. "Leave off, now! Do ye know th' penalty of resistin' an officer?"

"He's just as much of a policeman as you are!" proclaimed Nellie O'Brien, her fright, dissipated by the touch of her fiancé, giving place to anger. "An' maybe now you'll listen to reason, with him to make you have sense!"

"There now, Nellie!' said Peter soothingly. '"Let's have th' rights of this." And to the patrolman: "I'm McKenna, patrolman in th' —th precinct. Here's Sergeant Burke knows me. An' th' lady, she's my friend."

"Never mind y'r jawin', now!" Sergeant Burke cut in. "We got another thing t' see to. You, Hennessy, an' you, too, McKenna— clear these folks off so's a feller c'n see. Get th' others fom th' wagon, an' keep things clear. I will look about a bit for a while."

The officers drove back the growing crowd and returned to where Burke stood scowling down at the dead man.

"Well, Hennessy ?"

"I was walkin' me beat, an' I heard a shot; but, thinks I, 'tis no more'n a tire blowed out. But I was comin' down Central Park West, an' I looked over in here, an' saw this man— Mr. Coolman he is, lives right above here; I know him well— all slumped down on th' bench with this girl leanin' over him like. I blowed my whistle an' come runnin', an' here is he dead, with a pistol under th' bench; so I held onto her until somebody'd come, and sent Blumstein t' pull th' box."

"Yeah. An' you, Nell?" Burke's Manner was proprietary; he, too, had wooed Nellie O'Brien, and still cherished hopes, though she was engaged to Peter McKenna.

"I was standing by the monument, waiting for Peter," answered Nellie. 'He was going to take me to Coney, but
he was late, so I walked over into the shade a minute. I heard a shot; and when I came round the bushes there, here was this poor old man all dropped- in-together-like, and nobody else in sight, I went to him to see if I could do something to help; but he was dead. And then this p-policeman— M-Mr. H-Hennessy, is he?— came and a-a-arrested me!"

She was sobbing a little, so that Hennessy looked at her in flustered, admiring apology. "Sure, I didn't know it was y'rself, Miss O'Brien," he explained, for introductions had been made by now.

"Huh!" said Burke. "All that's very fine; but who shot Mr. Coolman? Tell me that, now? You, McKenna; 'tis a fine deductin' detecatiff ye arre, so I'm told, with y'r study of detectives an' all. Perhaps ye will be so kind, sorr, an' take a-hold here with a magnifying glass, an' tell us poor boneheads who done it, huh?"

Peter flushed angrily He'd always played fair with Burke. Nellie had chosen him because she liked him better, not because he had ever disparaged his rival. It wasn't fair for Burke to act like this, trying to make him out a fool before the girl. Burke was showing off, that was all; he'd sneer at Peter, and then start out to show Nellie how a real detective worked. All right! Peter shut his lips grimly, though they had been open to tell the detective of that mirage. Now he'd keep quiet; let Burke do the best he could without help, if he was going to act like this.

And then a bolder notion struck Peter McKenna! struck him fair and hard, so that he almost cried out.

"Very good, sir," answered Peter coolly. "Since you ask f'r my help, I'll be glad to look 'round an' give you a description of th' murderer."

He reached into a pocket, hiding a wicked grin, and brought out a magni- fying glass!

Nellie O'Brien's aunt, with whom she lived, had very poor eyesight, so that she could scarcely read even coarse print; yet the old lady persistently refused to wear spectacles. And so Peter had bought her this big reading glass; and that night when he took Nellie back to her flat in the Bronx, he planned to present it to her aunt. He was fond of the old lady, and he knew that Nellie would be pleased.

And now he produced the magnifying glass for the confounding of Detective Sergeant Burke.

The sergeant stared a moment, then burst into loud, raucous laughter. "W'y, th' poor boob took me serious!" he exclaimed, yet Peter fancied an uneasy note in his gibing mirth.

" 'Tis no trouble to help you out, sergeant," he protested magnificently. "Now let me just look around f'r footprints—"

He dropped to his knees and crept about behind the bench, glass to his eyes, nose almost touching the sod; he picked up an imaginary bit of wool and scrutinized it; peered at the gray-stone wall, rose on tiptoe to look over it; returned to pick up the pistol gingerly by its muzzle and pore upon its butt for finger prints,

"Yes," said he at last. " 'Tis plain as th' nose of y'r face, Mr. Burke."

He paused to look about. Nellie hung words, her gray Irish eyes with unquestioning trust and pride. Burke achieved a sneer, but his manner was uneasy, half credulous. The others hung between amusement and curiosity.

"The old gent was sittin' here all alone, smokin' his cigar," Peter went on calmly.

"I could have told ye so much, meself," Burke sneered.

"Oh, hush!" reproved Nellie.

Peter McKenna went on, disregarding both, "Th' murderer come up Fifty-ninth— or down, I ain't sure which— lookin' for Coolman, t' kill him. He peeked over the wall right here"— pointing— "an' climbed over into th' park real quick. Coolman's back was that way; he didn't see nothin'. Th' other feller sneaked up behind th' bench an' kinda danced up an' down, bein' so tickled to catch th' old man; then he pulled out a little thirty-two pistol outa his coat pocket an' shot him in th' back. Then he drops th' gun and runs back an' climbs the wall again an' beats it. Wasn't nobody in sight."

"Huh!" said Burke sourly. "Quite a pipe dream, ain't it? An' I s'pose you c'n tell just exactly what he looked like, an' all?"

"W'y, sure! Kind of a skinny feller, 'bout five foot four 'r five, I sh'd say, an' lame in his right leg; wore a club-foot shoe 'r somepin like that. Had on black clothes, an' long, straggly black whiskers all over his face; wore a cap pulled down low— green an' red plaid, I sh'd think it was."

"Huh!" repeated Burke. "Quit your kiddin'. How'd you figger all that out?"

"Footprints," answered Peter portentously. "See?" He pointed at totally nonexistent marks in the dry sod. "Right foot left a different mark, an' all. Here's where he must 'a' danced up an' down;" and, indeed, a faint indentation or two really showed there. "An' he pulled at his whiskers, too; they's long, tangled black hairs on th' grass, an' one on th' butt o' this gun must 'a' been caught to his fingers."

A long hair did cling to the cheap pistol; and Burke, confronted by this concrete proof of his rival's deductive powers, nodded incredulously. "An' th' cap?

"Found a bit o' wool, dyed red an' greenlike."

"Height?"

"Figgered it from th' length of his steps. An' some black wool on th' wall there shows where he climbed over."

"Huh! Well, Pete, I gotta hand it to you. You made up a good yarn, anyways— on'y when we catch th' feller it'll prob'ly be a tall, fat one with yellah hair."

Then Patrolman Blumstein stepped forward.

"This lame feller, sarge," he put in. "A Russian it is, maybe? A club-foot he's got, and whiskers, is it? That feller walks down Fifty-ninth Street maybe twenty minutes ago, awful lame."

Burke stared; Nellie emitted a little, delighted ejaculation and clutched her hero's arm.

Then Blumstein pointed westward to- ward the monument. "Look!" he shouted. "He comes again!"

He was off, pounding up the steps toward Columbus Circle, and all the others after him, pell-mell.

And in a moment they returned, dragging a slight, shrinking, whiskery person in a plaid golf cap who blinked near-sightedly and whined shrill protest.

"Blood suckers! Parasites! Capitalistic cops!" And a flood of guttural foreign epithets which Blumstein alone understood— and disapproved of, for he cuffed the little man soundly.

Peter McKenna took one look. Yes, it was the lame man of the mirage!

"That's him," he asserted confidently.

"Finger prints'll show quick enough," said Burke grimly.

But the bewhiskered one did not wait for that proof. He shook aside detaining hands to gesticulate violently with head, arms, feet— even his whiskers waved in the vehemence of his passion.

"Sure!" he vociferated. "Sure, I kill him. Big stiff! Big octopusing blood- sucker gonef!" And again he took refuge in a foreign tongue to which Blumstein supplied a free running translation,

He was a revolutionist, it appeared, and he had shot Mr. Coolman for the cause. He was a martyr.

"Gotta hand it to you, Pete," repeated Burke generously. "You're there! Never thought much o' this deducting stuff before; but you got it dead t' rights. I'll give you credit, too, boy; you oughta get into plain clothes outa this!"

He returned to the business of disposing of murderer and victim, and Peter McKenna turned away with Nellie on his arm, to begin their delayed trip to Coney.

The girl's eyes shone with adoration. "Oh, Peter," she whispered, "I always knew you'd show 'em."

And Peter thrust out his chest and strutted. But inwardly he thought: "They say miradges is awful scarce in New York. What will I do next time, failin' one?"

_________________

5: The Compass of Fortune

Eugene Shade Bisbee

1864-1933

The Black Cat, April 1896

A FEW days after his return to New York from twenty years' prospecting in South America, Alfred Leighton found the following letter at his hotel:

Buena Vista,

Tarryville-On-The-Hudson,

April 26, 189—

Dear Alfred

A moment ago, to my astonishment and delight, I ran across your name among yesterday's hotel arrivals. I won't waste words in telling you what pleasure this news gives me, but write at once to ask you to come up here with bag and baggage, so that we may talk over old times and compare notes as to how the world has  used us since we parted thirty years ago.

Telegraph when you are coming, and I will meet you at the train.

Yours, as of yore

Melville Barrett.

For a moment after finishing the letter Leighton stood dumfounded, his mind swiftly gathering up the threads of long-for gotten experiences and friendships.

It was now almost thirty years since he and Melville Barrett had chummed together at college, but the letter and the signature were enough to recall the brilliant, luckless fellow who had been Leighton's room-mate during the latter's senior year. As nearly as he could remember, Barrett, in spite of his mental gifts, had never got on in the world, and, at last accounts had gone 'Vest where he had dropped out of sight apparently for good and all. And now, behold, he had turned up again in the character of a landed proprietor! Had Barrett at last struck it rich?

Five hours later when, after a drive in a well-appointed landau thmugh a winding avenue, the carriage stopped at a big colonial mansion, and Leighton was ushered into an imposing hallway, carpeted with oriental rugs and decorated with tropical plants and curios from many lands, his mind recurred to the same question. And during the dinner that followed, served by well-trained servants, in a tapestry-hung dining-room, and the hour spent examining the rare plants in the adjoining conservatory, Leighton found himself varying the question by the mental inquiry, "How had Barrett struck it rich?"

For an answer to this question he had not long to wait. As the two men sat together before the open fire in the library, over their Havanas and after-dinner coffee, reviving the experiences of years ago, Barrett suddenly exclaimed, turning to his companion:

"I suppose you are surprised to find me, at last, a property holder, instead of the luckless, poverty-stricken chap you used to know. Very likely, you've been wondering whether I have fallen heir to a fortune."

Then, hardly noticing his friend's evasive answer, he continued:

"I have come into a fortune, but not through the death of friend or relative. In fact, the manner in which it was gained was so extraordinary that neither I nor the friend who shared the adventure have cared to speak about it. And people simply know that, like so many others, we struck it rich in the land of gold. But you, who were the companion of my college days, and so know that I never took any stock in the supernatural, will, I am sure, believe what I have to tell you, especially as I hold the proof. If its duplicate can be produced by human hands, then I am ready to accept any commonplace explanation that the maker may offer.

"The whole thing is as great a mystery to me to-day as when it happened, eighteen years ago. My friend Mitchell and I had been hunting in the mountains of Southern Califomia for a couple of weeks, and were returning by easy stages to the stock ranch where we both were employed. One evening, about the third day of our journey, we made camp in one of the most picturesqu e spots in all that beautiful country. A deep green valley stretched before us, high, snow-crowned mountains on either side, while far away down the silver stream that flowed through the valley could be seen the undulating country of the grape and orange— a full hundred miles away.

Mitchell had finished his duties as cook, and we had despatched a delicious supper of broiled venison, potatoes, and coffee, just as the sun was sinking beyond our vision. The camp fire gave forth a cheery glow as we sat and smoked our pipes, recounting the day's sport; while every now and then the stillness was broken by the deep howl of a gray mountain wolf, a blood-chilling sound even to an old hunter, and thus altogether different from the bark and yelp of the coyote of the plains. Twenty years ago the Sierra Nevadas were alive with game, and many a time have I sat by the ashes of our fire on a morning early, and thrown stones at an inquisitive black-tail deer, undismayed by his first sight of man. On this evening, however, after we had finished our smoke and looked after our horses and pack-mules, we rolled in our blankets, and, with saddles for pillows and our heavy sombreros covering our faces, were soon asleep.

"My next conscious thoughts were of warmth on my face, and I sat up suddenly to find the stin just above the treetops. Giving Mitchell a rousing slap on the back, I set about getting a fire, at which task he joined me a moment later. Soon we had started a tiny blaze, but the dew-damp wood would not catch according to my fancy and I stooped to blow it. It caught, and I raised my head. As I did so I saw the strangest figure that ever met my eyes.

"At first Mitchell did not see it, for, though near, it stood just behind him. But as my look of amazement caught Mitchell's eye, with a 'What the devil is the matter with—' he turned his head; and the words died on his lips. What had so astonished me was nothing more nor less than the form of a man, but a man whose like I had never seen nor imagined. In the first place he seemed to be at the very least seven feet high, and, even shrouded as he was by the folds of his odd costume, magnificently proportioned. He was garbed in a flowing gown of white, wound around by a broad crimson sash, into which were stuck two daggers and a long curved sword with a handle of gold set with jewels; while a huge turban of oriental fashion, snow-white like his gown, crowned his head. Beneath the turban gleamed two eyes, small, but piercingly brilliant, while the lower part of the dark oval face was half hidden by his most remarkable feature, a moustache, jet black, and as long as the horns of a big steer— a comparison which its graceful curves still further suggested. What finally riveted our attention, however, was neither the man's garb nor his features, hut an object that he held in the curve of his right arm.

''And that was—?"

"Nothing more nor less than a human skull, of a size that seemed to indicate a man of even larger stature than the one before us. All these details flashed upon my mind like an image on the sensitive plate of a camera, but before I could have counted twenty with deliberation, he placed the skull upon the ground, and then, straightening himself up, pointed with one outstretched hand over my head, as though indicating something in the distance. Naturally, we both turned in the· direction of that gesture, but seeing nothing unusual in the landscape, faced about again towards the figure. Then we looked at each other in blank astonishment. The man had vanished as completely as a soap bubble bursting in air!"

"Hidden?" said Leighton, laconically.

"Impossible; our camp stood in a perfectly open glade, at least two hundred yards from the nearest tree, so he could not possibly have reached a hiding place in the ten seconds our heads had been turned.

"As we stood there dumfounded, our eyes scrutinizing each other, the plain, the sky overhead, and finally the ground, Mitchell gave a cry of astonishment. 'Why, there's the skull!' he exclaimed. 'The man was real after all.'

"Sure enough, there was the skull, lying on the grund scarcely two yards from where we stood. For a moment neither of us stirred. Then with a common impulse we rushed forward and together raised the grewsome souvenir from the ground. At first it seemed much like any human skull except that it was unusually large, and polished so that its top glistened like a billiard ball. As we turned it around, however, a cry of astonishment broke from both. The eye sockets were not empty, but contained a pair of the oddest sort of eyes. They were perfect in shape and expression, and though carved from what seemed to be deep blue glass, looked almost too lifelike for pleasureable contemplation. But what added to the uncanny effect of the lidless blue orbs was the fact that they moved, being evidently set on some sort of bearing. So weirdly fascinating was the stmnge object that the sun was high before we could compose ourselves sufficiently to sit down to our morning meal; and even then our conversation was entirely of the skull and of the strange visitor who had come and gone so mysteriously. In comparing notes we found that our remembrance of that visitor's dress and appearance agreed to the minutest details. Consequently if there had been any delusion it was one in which both had shared. But if the experience had been a delusion, how account for the skull? From time to time we glanced toward the spot where we had placed the uncanny object, half expecting that, too, would vanish. But no. It remained just where we had left it, its top glisteni ng in the sun, its lidless blue eyes gleaming with an almost human expression. As I looked, for perhaps the twentieth time, at the grewsome thing I observed that the eyes were turned toward the left, and seemed gazing fixedly at the hillside above our camp. Seized by a strange idea I arose and turned the skull in the direction of the hill towards which the eyes looked. They stared straight ahead. Then I turned it in the other direction, and, to my astonishment, they looked towards the right. To make sure, I slowly turned it from one side to the other, and all the while the eyes kept their gaze riveted on the same spot. I had called Mitchell to observe the experiment, and he laughingly suggested that the skull was looking for the man who brought it there and then deserted it. But I was more serious. I had an idea concerning this strange phenomenon and was resolved to test the matter to the end. Holding the skull in one hand, I walked forward, every now and then turning the skull, whose eyes always turned in the same direction, as the needle of a compass points toward the north. I had in this manner gradually approached the hill, wheu it seemed as if the eyes had actually taken on a. more intense gaze, and that that gaze was directed to a particular portion of the rocks which seemed to form a small recess. I moved forward more rapidly, the eyes continuing to stare at this place until I had reached the recess itself. The next moment I found myself within a natural enclosure, surrounded on three sides by precipitous rock, so steep as to be almost barren of vegetation, save here and there a clinging vine. Again I l ooked at the skull. Beyond a doubt its deep blue eyes were directed towards a particular portion of the rocky wall marked by a small depression, shaped like a diamond. Setting the grewsome thing upon a flat rock, I purposely turned the side of the jaw toward the point where the eye had been directed, and breathlessly awaited the result. Slowly, steadily, those lidless eyes turned until they rested again on the diamond-shaped depression."

"And Mitchell?" said his hearer, "did this convince him?"

"Not at first, for he remained near our fire, watching my movements still with an incredulous smile. The smile faded, however, when a moment later I called him to my side and saying, 'Watch the eyes and tell me what you think,' began turning the skull slowly around on the flat rock. The eyes held their focus on the diamond-shaped incision, and I stood up and confronted my friend.

" 'Well,' said he, and this time his accent indicated great agitation, 'I believe you are right, and there's some mystery here; let's get to the bottom of it. I'll go to the camp for an axe.'

Ten minutes later he returned with the only available tool we possessed, and I began hacking feverishly at the rocky wall, keeping the mark upon which the eyes were riveted as our guide. Before long we had a big slice of the rocky soil cut away, and. Mitchell had just taken his turn at the work, when his axe suddenly buried itself in what seemed to be a soft shell of rock, the momentum throwing him flat on his face. The next moment a section of the earth, quite six feet each way, gave way, revealing to our astonished eyes a deep excavation. In the bright light of the morning sun which shone full upon it, lighting up its interior to the rear wall, it seemed about fifty feet inward."

"A sort of cave?" said Leighton.

"Yes, but one made by human hands, as we discovered as soon as we crossed the threshold. The walls were cut and carved in many curious devices, while around the three sides ran a shelf cut in the rock, on which reposed many bones piled in regular heaps. A glance revealed the fact that they were human bones; we were in some prehistoric sarcophagus. Presently, as our eyes became accustomed to the subdued light, we began to look about us more closely. I was examining a pile of bones at the end farthest from the opening, comparing them with the skull in our possession, when, finding them apparently of the usual size, I tossed a thigh bone carelessly back on the shelf. It struck the pile with more force than I had intended, and they all came tumbling to the floor; but as they fell they revealed what appeared then, and subsequently proved to be, a crystal casket. It was about eighteen inches long by six high, and a foot wide; and, as I took hold of it, it moved with my hand. Carrying it to the opening I set it down in the light. Then, for the first time, I saw that it was filled with a blue substance, whose nature I could not clearly make out, owing to the dust and dirt covering the case. Upon examining the lid I found that it was not hinged but simply set on over the top. A quick jerk brought it away, and there before our staring eyes lay a huge heap of blue stones, all cut, and polished to a dazzling brilliancy.

" 'Sapphires!' cried Mitchell, and his eyes bulged from his head.

" 'Are you certain?' I asked, almost breathless from amazement.

" 'Absolutely,' he said. 'Look at them,' and he took a handful of the beautiful stones. 'You never saw glass like that.'

"I thought as he did, but, being no judge of such things, was not too ready to let my hopes soar, only to be dashed to earth again. There must have been at least two pecks of them, ranging in size from a small pea to stones as big as the end of my thumb, and all perfectly cut. Suddenly, as we stood gazing incredulously at the gleaming stones, my thoughts flew to the skull, and I ran to fetch it. As I brought it into the light I saw that its gaze was now riveted on the casket, the lidless blue orbs seeming actually to gloat over the piles of blue stones. A new thought flashed through my mind. Could it be—? Yes— undoubtedly— the eyes that we had thought only bits of blue glass were themselves sapphires, but larger and finer than any in the casket.

"Well, Mitchell and I were practical, first of all. As soon as we had recovered from our amazement we made a thorough search of the cave. Finding nothing more, however, we took ourselves and our precious burdens to the camp, and that very night we started for San Francisco."

"And the stones proved really sapphires?" said Leighton.

"Sapphires! I should say so. The leading jewelers to whom we showed a few specimens upon our arrival in San Francisco, two days later, pronounced them gems of the first water, and gladly paid us twenty thousand dollars for sixty of the smaller stones. Upon parting company we divided the sapphires equally between us, and since then I have visited every capital of Europe, in each of which the stones have been pronounced flawless."

"And that's how you struck it rich?"

"Yes, but so far I have converted less than half of them into money. The remainder I have placed in the casket in a New York safe deposit vault, but the skull—" as he spoke he gestured toward an ebony cabinet just above his head. There, behind a glass door, stood a huge skull, whose lidless blue eyes, looking out toward the distant city, seemed to pierce every obstacle between itself and the casket of sapphires over which it still kept watch and ward.

__________________

6: A Hundred Thousand Dollar Trance

Eugene Shade Bisbee

The Black Cat, May 1896

HALF dozen greeting voices rang out from the group who were toasting themselves before the blazing fireside of the Bohemian Club, as Lloyd entered and approached them with his easy stride.

"Heard the news, haven't you, Lloyd?" asked one of the toasting group.

"I can't say— which news, Barton?" returned the other, at the same time accepting a hot toddy from the hand of an attendant.

"Of course I mean the news about our distinguished guest for the evening, Dr. Goode."

"I heard he was to be here, if that's what you mean; anything else ?"

"Only that we are to have something entirely new on hypnotism, psychology, and occultism— what you will— in fact, our eyes are to be profoundly opened, if the word of our distinguished friend and president is to be taken; for Norris says the learned doctor will spring a few things on us that will vut us to thinking."

"Coals to Newcastle, my dear boy— an old story— all the fellows have it, and are on the qui vive to catch the first news. I just came from the 'Holland,' and Claridge and Wentworth had me collar and elbow for an hour about it; 'twas all I could do to get away at all. Time the old fellow was here, isn't it?"

Lloyd glanced at the clock over the fireplace, handed his emptied glass to the servant, and then, first looking inquiringly about the room, dropped into a rocker, drew a cigarette from his pocket, struck a match, and settling himself comfortably, was at once one of the waiting assembly, all alert for the next comer.

His last inquiry was answered hy the appearance of the man in question— Dr. Goode— who came in with Norris, the genial president of the club, and with a nod to the group passed on ooward the library.

The Bohemian Club was an organization of talented men in varied walks of life, who had, for mutual advantage and pleasure, leagued themselves together into one of these gregarious associations which find so much favor in big cities. Hidden away in the very heart of the metropolis, the club was as much apart from its noise and traffic as if it had been ensconced beneath the green foliage of some South Sea isle; within its portals were to be found treasures no other could boast; pictures hung upon its walls which bore signatures world famous in the new and reigning school; and, best of all, these very men were to be found beside the cheery fireside. Original manuscripts of celebrated books, and scores of operas, popular songs, masterpieces of sculpture, volumes of prose and poetry, all bearing their authors' signatures, filled the rooms, until the cozy place was a veritable museum of autographical treasure. No great man became its guest who did not leave with the club some such impress of his visit, and none touched our shores who failed to share its hospitality.

Its membership was limited to a score, but upon the occasion of its monthly dinners, each member was entitled to a card of invitation for one friend; and the character of the entertainment offered was of such a nature that these cards were most eagerly sought.

On this particular night there was not a single vacant chair when the president opened the festivities with the formal "Gentlemen, I greet you," in a small "sherry-and-bitters," which was drunk by all standing. Then for an hour or more the thirty odd of us devoted ourselves to one of the club's famous dinners, spiced by a merry story, half overheard here and there, told by some one to his neighbor, and the occasional response to an impromptu toast suggested a propos by another.

Finally, when the last course had been served and the brandy and coffee gave place to sparkling champagne, our president arose, and, smilingly bowing to us all first, and then toward the guest upon his right, said,

"Gentlemen, allow me to present to you one whose name alone, long since become a by-word in the scientific world, is sufficient introduction, the world-famous psychologist, who has honored us by his presence to-night, Dr Richardson Goode, of London."

A burst of applause greeted his words, as Dr. Goode arose and faced the company. The appearance of the man would have claimed attention anywhere; tall and powerfully made, he dominated the assembly not merely by his figure, but by a face whose most striking feature was a pair of piercing gray eyes that gleamed from beneath bushy black brows. To add to this impression of strength, the smooth-shaven face was deeply lined, the jaw was square and determined, in fact, his whole presence was both massive and imposing.

As his eyes wandered with an amiable gleam from face to face until they fell on my own, I seemed to feel that they were looking right into me rather than merely at me, and I recall wondering at the time if others felt their influence in the same way. But there was small time for such speculation then, for, in a full, deep voice, that eminently became the man, he began a talk on the new developments of hypnotism, that, as he warmed to his subject, became so intensely interesting as to rivet the entire atrention of his audience and hold them spellbound. Of course we had all seen and read of experiments in this subtle science, but none of us had ever heard of such marvelous results as Dr. Goode claimed not only to have witnessed, but to actually be able to accomplish himself.

Receiving our silent acknowledgment of the fact that many things could be achieved through hypnotic suggestion, he went so far as to state that it was entirely possible to cause any disease to actually manifest itself upon a subject to whom it had been suggested, while under the spell of the operator, that he had the disease. He claimed that the entire physical organism of man was so influenced by the brain that results suggested would speedily follow the trial.

A man to whom liquor was a most nauseating dose, drank it greedily and with most evident enjoyment when told by the doctor that he was very fond of it. This we could not gainsay, but if his assertions had up to this point met with no open opposition, so much cannot be said for the startling one which we were called upon to accept in childlike faith a moment later, and there were many incredulous smiles and a few open laughs and cries of "No, no, doctor, that's too much," and, "Come, come, now, go it gently, doctor," to which he only smiled patronizingly, at once taking another tack.

At this point his eyes wandered about the company, until presently he was looking intently at, and, to all appearances, addressing himself solely to, me.

As I listened, I found his words grow confusing; I wondered if the champagne or the heat of the room had made me drowsy. Then gradually, as I looked into those gleaming, deep-set eyes, his voice grew faint and far away, the objects in the room faded until I could see nothing clearly except that massive, smooth-shaven face with the lamplight shining full upon it. Finally that, too, receded, until, as I tried uselessly to arouse myself from what I felt to be a most unbecoming position, I saw only two burning coals of fire gleaming at me from apparent space; then I knew no more.

Whether my unconscious state had lasted ten minutes or as many years I never could have told, but later, from the others, I learned that I had been asleep about five minutes. It was with no surprise, however, that I found myself again looking at the master of this art, and when I heard him say, "Now, Mr. Brooke, let me have that cheque, please," I found I held a paper in my hand, which I passed up to him without an instant's hesitation. He read aloud a cheque payable to himself and bearing my signature; it was for a large sum and drawn on the bank in which I was a partner.

My amazement must have shown itself in my face, for he smilingly passed it back to me and asked me if it was my signature. I was bound to acknowledge it.

"But where did I get the pen and ink, doctor?" I cried, thinking I had him. "Oh, you went into the library and wrote it," he answered, a statement in which he was upheld by the entire assembly.

Norris here interrupted with a question which brought us all back to that assertion of the doctor's which had met with such skeptical reception. This was nothing more nor less than the claim that his was the power to so thoroughly infuse the mind of a subject with a certain idea as to make that idea become a fixed fact, and the desired result follow; which assertion was crowned by the statement that the brain having sole control of the physical being, if he should suggest to some young man, the subject of a hypnotic trance, that he was an old man, decrepit and feeble, his subject would become so thoroughly imbued with the idea that physical transformation would follow, and a young man would grow old before our very eyes.

"I don't mind laying any reasonable wager against such a power, doctor," said our president.

"Very well," answered the doctor, "I am quite ready to accept your proposition, providing a subject can be secured who is willing to assume the risk, for I tell you frankly I do not believe that I can restore to him his youth. We may fell the sturdy oak, but who can restore it ? We may destroy the most magnificent works of Nature, but who has the power to create even the most insignificant ?"

A soft, musical voice broke gently in upon him, saying, "Gentlemen, I'll make you both a proposition; I am ready to have Dr. Goode try his powers on me, with one proviso, that the winner give me his winnings."

The voice belonged to Lloyd, and the attention of the entire company was attracted by his offer. One of the brightest stars among the younger journalists, his many exploits in that enterpiising profession were well known to his friends and indeed to the public, but it seemed beyond belief that he would run the risk of losing his youth and strength at one blow for the sake of journalistic fame or even for a fortune, large or small. Yet the desire of the company for the experiment was at such a heat that ciies of "Bravo! Good for Lloyd!" rang out, for a full minute drowning Norris's attempted reply.

When finally he could make himself heard, he said, "Well, doctor, for my part, I will accept Mr. Lloyd's offer, and if I lose the wager, will present him with whatever sum you may mention."

"This is perfectly agreeable to me, Mr. President; and since the gentleman assumes such a risk of living fifty years in half as many minutes, I would suggest that we make the sum a large one for the sake of the beneficiary; would $100,000 be satisfactory?"

Ordinarily the sum named might have excited comment, but the doctor's wealth was reported fabulous, while Norris was known to be a triple millionaire, the size of the wager seemed nothing extraordinary, and it was accepted in a moment.

"And now, gentlemen," proceeded Dr. Goode, "I must ask absolute quiet and perfect attention; you must all aid me by remaining as nearly passive as possible. As for you, Mr. Lloyd, you must give yourself quite entirely to me and not endeavor to thwart me; though," this with a confident smile, "you cannot do that if you will."

Then followed a discourse upon the power of the brain over the body, a discourse so interesting, so impressive, in short, so magnetic, that Lloyd was almost forgotten, when our attention was restored to the subject of the experiment by the doctor saying, "Now, my friend, you are not feeling very well, but it will not last long; you will soon gain more strength, but, at your age, you cannot hope to recover as rapidly as in your youth; let me see, how old did you say you were? Oh, yes; seventy on your last birthday, so it was. Well, well, that's a very good old age, though your beard is not very white yet."

I sat directly opposite Lloyd, and when the doctor made this remark about the beard, I noted that the young journalist had a beard, which rather confused me, for I had always thought he wore only a moustache. Meantime, Dr. Goode kept talking to him in a monotonous tone. Lloyd's eyes were closed, and he lay back in his chair as if in sleep. I cannot recall distinctly what the doctor said, but as I looked I fancied a change crossed the features of the subject; he surely did not look so young as he used. I was watching him closely, forgetful of everything save the fact that some strange fascination kept my eyes on his face. Yes, beyond a doubt, there had been some change taking place in not only his face, but his whole body, something I felt but failed to grasp. As I struggled to define the change, much as one endeavors to recall an indistinct dream, I was suddenly aware of the doctor's voice saying,

"You are quite bald, aren't you, Mr. Lloyd ?" and saw that person put his hand up to his head. It was actually bald, with a heavy fringe of snow-white hair ending just above his ears! I saw it distinctly, but, as I recalled afterward, it gave me no shock, but rather came as a natural sequence of the whole evening's occurrences. Then the deep voice again monotoned,

"Will you kindly step over to the mirror, Mr. Lloyd?" And still unmoved, I saw that it was an old man who left the chair and tottered around the table to the mirror over the fireplace ! He smiled as he moved, but looked at none of us. When he reached that point and looked at his reflection in the glass, he turned around, and, with a cackling chuckle to the company, said, "Well, Mr. Norris, the experiment has been rather a success, don't you think?" and Norris, without a word, rose from his chair, stepped into the library for a moment, returned, and handed him a cheque. If I thought anything of his silence, it was that he was too agitated for words.

Lloyd put the cheque in his pocket, chuckled after the manner of an old man, and in a cackling voice said, "Now I hope you will excuse me, gentlemen; I'm not feeling very strong, ha! ha! Ha! I'll have to get you to identify me in the morning, Mr. Norris."

He ambled across the room, the door closed behind him; he was gone.

With his departure the nature of the monstrous experiment we had just witnessed seemed, for the first time, to burst upon us. In a moment all our excited interest was transformed into a sickening horror, and with a common impulse we rushed panic-stricken out of the door and into the night.

We never saw Lloyd again, but we heard from him.

Just a month after, our president arose at our dinner, and, drawing a letter from his pocket, said, "Gentlemen, I have a letter here from our late friend, Lloyd; it came to-day, and fully explains itself; it is as follows:"

Caracas,

Venezuela

Jan. 20, 18—.

Fellow-Members of the Bohemian Club

In writing to inform you of the death of Dr. Richardson Goode, of London, on his way to this place to join me. I am able to add a line which will explain to you the remarkable experiment of which you were witnesses less than a month ago. During my last visit to London, I met the late doctor at a lecture, and, becoming deeply interested in his wonderful powers, cultivated his acquaintance with a view to perfecting myself in the art. To some extent, I succeeded, and have, on several occasions— notably, the last time we dined together at the Bohemian Club— been of considerable assistance to him in influencing his subjects when he was experimenting upon several simultaneously. The doctor learned his profession by long years of  deep study in India, and I think you will agree with me when I say that he learned it well. Knowing his power as I did, an idea flashed across me. I needed money; journalism was too tedious a road to wealth; I wrote to Dr. Goode and made him a proposition. Being not over-scrupulous, he accepted it on half shares, and at once sailed for New York. The result of his trip and consequent introduction to the Bohemian Club you all know. My dear boys, it was a put-up job; he did not hypnotize me at all; I did not grow old; he hypnotized you— every one of you, with my humble aid— and made you believe you saw it all,— my aging, the tottering across the room, the bald head and cackling laugh; yes, you saw it all during hypnotic sleep! I was forced to leave you rather abruptly, owing to the waning power of the doctor over so many. Of course I needed no identification at the bank, since I had changed none, and I readily cashed the cheque and sailed for this place. But I shall leave here at once; I have made my fortune now, and intend to run no risk of prison bars, for I have bought a fine plantation in a near-by country where extradition does not obtain, and shall settle down and become an ideal cocoa planter. I dare say I shall marry one of the many beautiful señoritas of the country, and if any of you boys ever find your way down here and should run across me, you will find no heartier welcomer or more hospitable host than

Your late companion,

Greville Lloyd.

_____________________

7: Mr. Barling's Income

W. Pett Ridge

1859-1930

The English Illustrated Magazine April 1899

IT had been an imperfect year for Mr. Barling, but it would be a hard year indeed that frowned continuously, and last night, for the first time, luck had smiled upon him. The smile had come in the singular form of a railway accident. Not a serious accident, but with little to do but to catch flies in his City office, it was better than nothing. Mr. Barling had wired to the company's office, and now, well wrapped up and his face touched with artistic white, sat in his flat in Ashley Gardens and awaited the arrival of the company's representative.

"Can you see a gentleman, Sir?"

"Who is it, James?" asked Mr. Barling.

The excellent James whispered— "I rather fancy he's from the railway. Sir, in answer to that message that I—"

"Show him in, James, but tell him that I am very, very ill."

Mr. Barling closed his eyes. A jovial, breezy man, in a short coat and a silk hat, advanced into the room with an air of repressed exuberance.

"My name," said the jovial man in a forced whisper, "is Drayton. I've called to make some inquiries—"

"I know—I know," said Mr. Barling feebly. "This is a terrible thing, this accident."

"Most deplorable, Sir."

"Physically," said Mr. Barling, speaking with a great effort, "I'm— I'm a wreck. Mentally, I'm an extinct volcano."

"Dear, dear, dear!" said the breezy man, clicking his tongue. " Is it so bad as that?"

"It's worse," sighed Mr. Barling.

"And what compensation, Sir, did you think of asking, I wonder?"

"Take a cigar," said Mr. Barling desolately. "I shall never smoke again; you'd better take both of them."

"These smokes," said the visitor cheerfully, as he lighted up, "weren't bought at no five a shilling, I'll bet my boots."

"You were talking about compensation," said Mr. Barling brokenly. "I daresay now"— here he had a fit of imitation coughing— "I daresay the company will want to settle it by a lump sum at once."

"Shouldn't wonder."

"And to enable them— oh, my poor head!— to enable them to arrive at a figure, I suppose—" Mr. Barling stopped, and looked round the room vacantly. "Where am I? " he asked. "Where was I?"

"You were supposing, Sir."

"Ah yes. I suppose it will be necessary to give some idea of my income during the past three or four years."

"That's just what I want to get at," said the visitor, taking out his pocket-book and blinking as the smoke came into his eyes.

"Roughly speaking," said Mr. Barling in a weak voice, " I've been making three thousand a year— perhaps more."

"Perhaps less?"

"No less," said the invalid, with sudden vehemence, "not a penny less."

"Very well," said the man cheerfully, making an entry in his pocket-book; "not a penny less, then."

"Besides that, there have been various odd affairs that have brought in money. Suppose you say four thousand."

"Four thousand," repeated the visitor, as he made the correction.

"I've also had money left me at various times," went on Mr. Barling, with fine exaggeration, "running into, say, about five or six hundred a year. Suppose we say five thousand in all."

"By all manner of means, Sir."

"I daresay," remarked Mr. Barling, "that, if anything, I've rather understated it. But I'd rather do that than appear to be trying to get the best of anybody."

"Rather."

"If the company likes to offer me a big lump sum down— I shall be wrong, perhaps, in accepting it; but still— Well," continued Mr. Barling, with a burst of generosity, "one ought to be straightforward, even when one is dealing with a railway. What shall we say to five hundred pounds down and say no more about it?"

"I should reckon," agreed the visitor, "that that would be letting them down cheap."

"Five hundred guineas," remarked Mr. Barling thoughtfully, "paid down at once. Not later than the end of this week. Next week I want to be off to— I mean to say next week I may be a good deal worse, and then I might want a bigger sum if the matter remained unsettled."

"If I were you, Sir, I should get all I could out of them. See how they treated me the other day, when I happened to be in a second-class carriage with a third-class ticket! Why, charged me excess!"

"What?" cried Mr. Barling, "you don't mean to say that they made you pay!" He laughed cheerfully, and forgetting his pained whisper, spoke in his usual loud voice. "Well, well," he said, "if they'd do that they'd do anything. Fancy coming down on you."

" I was very much annoyed about it, Sir. It was only a matter of threepence- halfpenny, but it's the principle of the thing that I look at."

"Fancy charging you," repeated Mr. Barling amusedly. "One of their own— Well, it just shows that one needn't be too delicate in charging them. Have the other cigar."

"I'll put it in my pocket," said the visitor, rising, "and smoke after lunch. Meanwhile, perhaps, you won't mind filling up this form and sending it on to me."

"With great pleasure," replied Mr. Barling. "You'll tell them how bad I am, won't you? And do you mind letting yourself out? I can't move hand or foot, as you see."

"Good morning, Sir!" said the visitor, backing to the door, "and thank you for the information."

"My good fellow!" said Mr. Barling handsomely, "don't mention it."

The man was but half-way down the steps when he stepped aside to allow two people, who had just arrived, to pass by him. At the same time he heard the voice of Mr. Barling from the landing above. Looking back, he saw that gentleman descending upon him furiously.

"You scoundrel!" screamed Mr. Barling. "Wait where you are!"

"Meaning me, Sir?"

"Yes, you." Mr. Barling had flown down the stairs in his scarlet dressing- gown with remarkable activity. "What the deuce do you mean by leaving this form on my table? As sure as my name's Barling—"

The two new arrivals stopped and looked on at the dispute.

"What's all this fuss about, Sir? I call on you in my capacity as Income Tax collector. You very kindly give me ample information—"

"Do you mean to tell me that you didn't say you were from the railway company?"

"Railway company?" echoed the Income Tax man indignantly. "Why, what on earth are you talking about? It was you that—"

The two new arrivals begged pardon. They were from the railway company, they said, and one of them, a doctor, expressed his great satisfaction at finding that Mr. Barling was none the worse for the regrettable accident of the night before.

"Bah!" said Mr. Barling.

____________________

8: The Red and Black Death

H. Havelock Ettrick
fl 1899-1902

The English Illustrated Magazine, June 1899

I WAS dead— of that I was certain!

The hand that held the revolver had not trembled nor faltered. I remembered a flash of blinding light, a numbing blow, and then— silence! It seemed to me that after an interval my consciousness returned, and I rose to mv feet.

On the ground, stretched under the gnarled olive-tree, with the cold moonlight filtering through the overlacing branches and shining on the pale set face, lay my body. The right hand still grasped the revolver, the dark curly hair was matted with blood, the eyes were staring at the sky with fixed, unseeing gaze; the coat had fallen open, showing the shirt-front, splashed with a ruddy stain, the diamond stud sparkled as brightly in the moonlight as under the glare of the electric light an hour since. Yes, there was no doubt about it. I had passed the dread portal. I had myself wrenched open the gates at which humanity stands shivering with dread expectation. To the world I was dead, a suicide, and therefore beyond the power of prayer; an outcast, deemed unworthy of Christian burial. I stood and gazed at the body lying so still, so horribly still, at my feet. An hour ago it had been the centre of an excited crowd in the gambling-rooms. For the last week I had been playing wildly, and the last thousands of which I was possessed had been slipping through my fingers like sand. To-night I had played my last hundred pounds; I played boldly, as one who will wrest in force from the goddess of chance. I fell confident that the luck must change, and fortune come to me eventually. Therefore I played as one possessed, seeing nothing but the cards before me, hearing nothing but the croupier's voice.

The last notes and handful of gold had been staked on the red—always the red ; the red was burned into my very brain— the cards were being read out amid breathless silence—the monotonous voice began, "Rien ne va plus, Messieurs— Sept— neuf— rouge— perd— et le couleur," and the hungry rake swept away my last napoleon! I turned quickly and read for myself; yes, there the damning cards lay, and true enough the red had lost, and for the eighth time in succession. The bystanders had whispered to me to play on the black, not to go against the run, and such-like sage advice; but to me the red, and only the red, was attractive, and play it I would, though it spelt ruin!

I pushed back my chair and rose, the crowd parting on either side to let me pass; whispers of "He has lost thousands!" "Ruined!" reached me, but I heeded not. I left the rooms, to all appearance calmly enough, crossed the Place, and sitting at one of the little tables at the Cafe de Paris, ordered, drank, and paid for a glass of cognac, then passing through the lovely gardens, climbed the hill that rises abruptly behind Monte Carlo, and made my way resolutely into the olive-woods that clothe the mountain-side. I knew what was in my mind, I had planned it the previous day, and even settled on the spot that should witness my flight from ruin and shame. I had clung with the tenacity of the born gambler to the idea that I should retrieve my losses at the tables, and had never thoroughly realised that the necessity of climbing the hill in company with my revolver would ever really come, but— I had selected the spot. I drew the revolver from its case. I gave a long, last look at the fair scene before me; the great Casino with its myriad lights, the reach of garden with its waving palms, and masses of tropical foliage; beyond, the glittering moonlit Mediterranean. The sound of music reached me, the Hungarian Band was playing the dreamy "Loin de Bal" outside the Cafe de Paris, where groups of idlers sat enjoying the warm, soft air of the Southern night. Ah me! the last time I had heard that delicious piece of pure melody! The vision of a fair, girlish face, a pair of soft arms round my neck, the remembrance of a whispered avowal of maidenly love— ah no! let me forget, and do what I came up here to do. Yet another vision forces itself before my weary eyes— a silvery-haired old woman, surely the dearest mother that ever blessed a headstrong son— the eyes look reproachfully on me, and the hand would dash the revolver from my grasp; but no, it cannot be! Let me get it over, and that quickly. My hand is raised— one flash— one terrible second of realisation that I had made an awful, irreparable mistake, one moment of numbness and helplessness, and— I stand beside my former self.

Casting a frightened glance round me, for I feared lest the sound of the pistol had already attracted notice from the ever vigilant police, I turned away, leaving my body as one would leave a wearisome companion, in haste and without backward look. The police would soon find it, and carry it to the Prefecture at Monaco, where it would be photographed.

Only the previous day I had had the morbid curiosity to wander down to the Prefecture, and had asked leave to view the photographs of the suicides which are always kept for the purpose of identification. I said that I sought a missing friend; the faces had haunted me ever since; the look that all of them wore had sobered me for a moment: it was the expression of horror, of having found out their terrible mistake too late. Would my face, too, bear that haunted look when my body was found?

My shadowy unclad soul passed down the hill, through the gardens, and I found myself facing the Casino.

It had been nearly closing time when I had last left it, and I saw that now the doors were being shut for the night; the stream of players and onlookers had melted away.

I passed the huge glass doors, and stood in the atrium; the hall was empty save for a few officials; the air was heavy with tobacco smoke and the scent of flowers. I was invisible, that I knew, but I instinctively avoided the few people that were still to be seen. I was seized with a wild desire to re-enter the gambling-rooms, to go over every act of that tragedy which had cost me my life.

I found the doors open, the usual black-coated guardians having left their posts; the rooms were nearly dark, the electric chandeliers extinguished, only a few moderator lamps illumined the huge place, and these were now being put out one by one. The tables were shrouded in dingy green coverings, the croupiers' rakes lying side by side on the top. The rooms had a weird aspect; on the floor were littered pieces of paper, fragments of torn gloves, faded flowers crushed by the passing feet. The atmosphere was hot and fetid, the exhausted air left by a surging crowd of twelve hours.

I slunk into a corner, watching the lampmen as they extinguished the last remaining lights; an official with his lantern walked through the long suite of rooms to see that everything was in order, and then with a clang the big doors closed, and I was alone.

I made my way through the well-known Moorish room, and the next, and found myself in the large salle devoted to the game of Trente et Quarante, the form of gambling that is played with gold and notes only.

Here the same litter and dust was apparent, the result of a long day's work, for the month was January and the season was at its height. Approaching the large eastern windows. I gazed on what is considered by many the loveliest view in Europe. The Casino gardens, with their masses of carefully tended flowers, the feathery palms, the cascade that sprinkled a myriad crystal drops as it splashed in the bright moonlight, lay just beneath me. Beyond, the dark mountains rose almost precipitately from the sea, their brows crowned with glistening snow, their base lost in luxuriant gardens belonging to the villas that fringed the shore.

The long, low peninsula of the Cap Martin stretched its pine-clad length into the sea that was almost as blue as in the daytime under the clear light of the moon.

I turned from the window and faced the table at which I had been playing but an hour since. At my feet lay the torn cards on which I had pricked the sequence of colours as they were read out by the croupier, and which I had thrown down with a curse as I rose from my seat. I remembered that there had been a rush for my vacated chair, the superstition among gamblers being that the seat of a ruined player brings luck to its next occupier. I had laughed as I saw the struggle, and had wondered whether the mantle of my shame and disgrace, which the loss of my fortune meant for me and mine, would descend on the poor fool who secured the coveted place!

The intense silence of the room oppressed me; I could hear the steady tramp of the night-guard as it patrolled the terrace outside, the distant shriek of the night express smote the still air, the waves lapped gently on the beach far below, but the rooms were as silent as a vault. The moonlight streamed through the wire-guarded windows, forming fantastic images on the polished parquet floor, and causing the frescoed figures on the walls to appear more than usually lifelike.

As I looked, I became suddenly aware that I was not alone; to the right and left of me the chairs were occupied by players, the croupiers were in their places, the cards lay ready for cutting, the long rouleaux of gold, the packets of banknotes, were in their accustomed positions. I seemed to recognise the placers, and I noticed with an uneasy start that before each man there lay on the green cloth a numbered ticket, which somehow recalled an unpleasant memory, but what it was precisely I could not determine. Behind each player there seemed to be a group of shadowy watchers, silent as death, but observant. The chair that I had occupied was alone vacant, but the absent gambler was evidently expected, for a ticket bearing the number "23" was pinned on to the cloth facing it. For awhile I gazed, feeling no surprise at the midnight game being played by the flickering light of the moon, but of a sudden, a thrill of unutterable horror passed over me, for I recognised one after the other in the faces of the players the originals of the photographs that I had seen the previous day at the Prefecture, the photographs of the Monte Carlo suicides. The number lying on the cloth facing each player was the same as was painted on the board over his grave in the Monaco cemetery, no cross being allowed to cast its shadow upon the unhallowed spot. What was that number that faced my chair? Was it mine? Should I occupy the vacant space beside the grave marked No. 22?

As I stood irresolute, longing to fly from the haunted table, the players suddenly turned and faced me, silently beckoning me, with outstretched hands, to take my place. I was powerless to resist, and with a shudder I took the vacant chair, and looked around at my brothers in death. The very croupiers were dead men, for I recognised one, of whom I had heard that he had gone mad from the eternal monotony of his work and the daily sight of human misery and despair; he, too, had taken his own life.

The lamps that hung by massive chains from the roof threw a weird light on the table, casting a glare as of corpse candies burning green on the contorted and passion-dawn faces of the players.

The horrible game began afresh, the cards were dealt out, the slakes were made, the money paid out, each one was intent on his own game, heedless of the fact that as soon as that phantom gold was paid him it vanished; play as we would, the piles of notes and gold ever disappeared, the lean clawlike hands grasped at the coins which ever eluded them, and sought to hold them Behind each man's chair stood the watchers, and I knew that they were those—the wives, mothers, and sisters— whose ruin had been wrought by the gamblers' passion, and left alone to struggle for their daily bread in a cruel world.

I dreaded to turn my head, for I knew that my white-haired mother would be there, and that she would not be alone: the slight, girlish figure clad in purest white, the vision of whom I had dreaded before the fatal shot, would be by her side, gazing reproachfully at her coward lover !

The game was a silent one : the gold made no chink, the greedy rakes no sound as they drew in the bank's winnings. The weird players from time to time flung their arms up and cursed with hideous grimaces, but speechless lips, the gold that slipped between their fingers; the play became faster, the croupiers no longer remaining impassive, as in life ; but, dashing their rakes among the piled-up masses of gold, and scattering it on to the floor, laughed with fiendish derision at the players' despair; the gamblers flung themselves with mad fury upon the coins, and strove that way to possess themselves of the vile stuff that had been their ruin. I struggled to rise from my seat, but was spellbound. Surely this was Hell— the gamblers' Hell! Again and again we were doomed to enact the same horrible scene, night after night we would haunt the spot to which our souls were chained; year after year our faces would glow with livid light under the green phantom lamps, and we would struggle, fight, and rave in our thirst for gold. A dread despair settled upon me, my lips were parched, but I shook in a sweat of terror! Throwing myself across the table, I buried my face in my hands and prayed.

"Ah, God, spare me this horror!" I cried. "Give me back my life, and I will atone!" I raised my head, and saw that the gamblers were looking at me, their claw-like hands pointing at me, their gibbering lips mocking me, their despairing eyes gleaming with the light of their self-made Hell.

I sprang up, seized the gold that lay before me, and flung it at them, shrieking with lips that uttered no sound, "Take the gold, take the cursed thing! I will none of it! No more do I sell my soul!"

With a wild yet noiseless rush the diabolical crew were at me, and I fought for what I now knew to be more precious than my body. I felt the clammy hands on my throat, and tore at them wildly. I fell down— down— and still to lower depths!

I knew if I once surrendered that the dread Master of this saturnalia would claim me for his own, and I shrieked aloud in my torment of soul. The pressure on my throat was getting stronger; I saw flames of fire dancing before my eyes as I descended lower and lower with increasing impetus, as though borne on demons' wings. I gave one last despairing cry for help, though I knew not from whom to expect it, and lost all consciousness.

"HE will do now, the fever is passing. Sleep and careful nursing will be the only medicines necessary; it has been a near thing, but—"

I opened my eyes. I was lying in a cool, sweet-scented room, to which the songs of birds and the wash of the waves penetrated.

A cool hand was laid on my head, a low, quiet voice said—

"That last resolution of yours was the wisest remark you have made for the past few days, young man, and you will do well to remember it! You have been nearly beyond the power of remembrance, another quarter of an inch, and you—"

The doctor's kind face completed his sentence.

I did not reply. I was too weak for that.

I felt my two hands grasped, and turning my head as well as I could for the bandages that encircled it, I met my mother's dear eyes, and felt her kiss of love and forgiveness on my lips. And, as in another vision, she was not alone. In another moment the soft arms that had embraced me, ah! it seemed so long ago to me now, were round me again, and the silence was broken only by the sound of a woman's sobs of joy.

______________

9: Young Magic

Helen Simpson

Helen de Guerry Simpson, 1897-1940

From the collection The Baseless Fabric (1925)

WHEN VIOLA was very little she used to play by herself exactly as a cat does. She would fix her eyes upon an invisible adversary, stalk him, and fly from him when her manoeuvres could not take him unawares. It was a very good game to play in a garden, especially in autumn when the taller flowers came out, delphiniums, and a strong kind of white daisy; but curiously enough in the garden it was never a success. Viola used always to hope that one day it would be. She used to run out of the house pretending not to care, not looking behind, and would hide, allowing some part of her dress to show in a most alluring way. It was no use, though sometimes she caught a grown-up, with whom it was no fun to play, for such persons showed a long way off, and trod heavily, and were awkward at dodging. The grown-ups considered her a good child, always amusing herself and not noisy. They thought it was perhaps a little odd, the way in which she talked and nodded to flowers or patches of shadow, and they used to question her.

'Is that a fairy you're playing with? Oh, how nice! What is her name?'

Viola would stare at them, realising that some answer was required if she were not to be rebuked for sulkiness; and when the enquirer asked again, wheedling, for the fairy's name she would contemptuously answer,

'Binns.'

And go on with whatever she was doing. This always caused laughter, and as a rule put the grown-ups to silence. Persistent ones, however, would keep at it.

'And what is Binns like?'

'Thin.'

'Oh! And what does she do?'

At first Viola used to ignore this question, but when she found that it meant being told not to be silly she invented an occupation for Binns. She hated more completely than anything in her experience to be told she was silly. So she would answer,

'Washing.'

And sometimes when people were looking she would pretend to be washing, so that they would believe her when the inevitable question and answer came along. But it was all the purest invention. She did not like the way other people came trampling into her mind, just as they often walked unheeding and made dull marks on a nice-shaped patch of dewy grass she had been treasuring since morning. And they would have said she was silly if she told them truthfully that there was no Binns, only a feeling, and this feeling was not a she, and that he did no washing and was not thin; he was rather soft and big. She did not know what he looked like. He played with her only in the house. Perhaps for that reason Viola lost touch with him in summer. She liked to be a prince in summer, and her throne was a tree that had split in two low down, and was easily to be climbed. In the rounded fork she would sit with a sword tucked into her leather belt, and sometimes other trappings, a piece of gold braid round her head or a few bits of ribbon pinned on for medals. She was not often a prince in the house, and never wore decorations there, because if she did somebody was sure to comment. She was sure to be asked where she had got the braid from, and if she were playing soldiers. She knew when they asked in that voice and smiled in that way that they thought she was being silly, even when they said quite kindly,

'Having a lovely game, darling? Don't get in Annie's way, dear.'

So she was only royal in the garden; in that special part of the garden where nobody ever bothered to come, and where she was not watched. She would make tremendous speeches there, standing up in the fork with her left hand on the cross hilt of the sword to make it stick out; her subjects all adored her, because she was so very noble. Once or twice she allowed herself to die in battle, and lay with her arms stretched out on the daisies, that felt damp but were only cool, listening to the sad things her people said as they passed. They all thought that there could never have been a prince so brave or so good. They said,

'What we'll do now I don't know, I'm sure.'

And Viola listened, every moment inventing new and more splendid things for them to say about her. When she had to go in to her dinner— and she knew, when the shadow of the big branch got as far as the fence, that it was about time to go in— the contrast was too great. It was too big a distance to be bridged in a moment. There had to be a period of readjustment, of coming back, and during this period she was silent and aloof, paying no attention to the small talk of the table; this habit, when she neglected to answer questions immediately addressed to her, sometimes led to trouble, accusations of sulkiness; or nurse would say, from sheer caprice, when she had finished and wanted to go out again,

'Now you don't want to go off by yourself in the garden. Stay about here where I can see you. Don't go running off.'

It made Viola angry to be told she didn't want to go off by herself when she did. Often she wondered if it would count as a lie against nurse when she died, for it was as untrue as possible on the face of it. In her more savage moods she hoped that it would count, and that Jesus would say to nurse when she wanted to get into Heaven,

'What about all those lies you told Viola?' For it was one of nurse's favourite expressions. It cropped up in relation to almost every impulse of Viola's life.

'You don't want to look like those little dirty children. You don't want to be always running wild in the garden. You don't want that old tin soldier in bed with you.'

If nurse had had her way, or what she liked to pretend was her way, Viola would have been very nearly always in the house; but in fact nurse, though she scolded and bullied a little for form's sake, was glad enough not to have Viola underfoot and always permitted the garden in the end, so that during the long days, of which only the sunny hours remained afterwards in her memory, Viola was happy by herself.

But towards the end of October things would begin to happen which she could recognise, and which meant that there was to be no more summer. One day as she sat in her throne a yellow leaf would fall on to her knee, half-a-dozen others following; she would look round her and see that all the trees were losing their green. Then the branches would begin to lash about and sweep the air, making a wind that sent the poor leaves running on the grass, lost and homeless. When they were quiet again the thick shade that had lain like an island under her tree would be pierced with holes when there was sun to show them; looking up, the sky showed clearly in a hundred places. At last no leaves would be left at all, but only the branches, ugly against the sky, like lace without any proper pattern, or cat's-cradle when it came very tight and muddled towards the end. The prince game ended with the green year, and the warm free days gave place to an infinite time without colours, or any outdoor play except the official walk before tea. The house was big, but there was nothing much to do in it except watch cook now and then. Viola could not read, for her mother always thought it so unwise to force children. In the winter which held her ninth birthday she began seriously to play with Binns.

These games were something quite different; not in themselves, for there were still fairy tales to be acted in which she was the prince; but this indoors winter prince was a more romantic figure, dressed like one of the photographs in the drawing-room, with a shining breastplate and a long-tailed helmet. People did not weep over him; he had no people, and no need of them with all his magic things, the table that was covered with food each time he rapped on it, and the sword that could kill twenty enemies at a blow. He was less real than the other prince, but he went better with an audience she could not see or touch, and which did not interfere. She knew Binns was there by the sounds he made, and by the feeling he brought with him, which nurse always said was a draught. At first he could only make very little noises, like the cracks that furniture makes in the night. Viola knew that it was not the furniture because the sounds came from the air, quite near her; as they increased in strength she began to understand what he said; and at the end of a month of rain, when she had had to stay in the house nearly all the time, she knew all his meanings. His noises did not make sense if you thought of them as words; he could not give a plain answer to a question, yes or no, so many cracks for each. One sort of crack meant that he was pleased, another sort meant that he wanted her to go on playing, and after a time he learnt to make four or five cracks close together, like a laugh.

The first time he did this she was frightened. Nurse was quite near, just at the door, and the cracks were so deliberate, not like anything that furniture could do. Nurse heard, for she turned her head suddenly, and said that it was time they had somebody to see to those loose boards. Then she went out, and Viola told Binns not to do it again, but he was proud of his achievement and would not keep quiet. Fortunately nurse had gone. Viola tried all sorts of ways of making that sound, so that she could pretend, if anyone else heard, that it was her own. She tried bending a nice round stick that she had found and peeled, but it had gone dry and soon it broke. She tried with a cotton-reel against the leg of a chair, but that made a dull, woolly sound. The problem was not solved until the afternoon of her birthday party, when she found in a cracker a black piece of tin shaped like a beetle, which, if its wings were pressed down towards its stomach, gave out a sound exactly like Binns' laugh. The grown-up who had pulled the cracker with her said,

'Oh! It's only a nasty old locust. Never mind, I'll find you one with something pretty in it.'

While she was away Viola dropped the locust right inside her clothes, where it felt cold for a moment before her skin warmed it. She was afraid that Binns might come to the party and crack at the grown-ups. However, he stayed away, and she went to sleep with it under her pillow, relieved from the fear that they might be discovered and somehow not allowed to play any more.

The locust answered its purpose well for a day or two, until the morning when nurse kept her in the sewing-room trying on dresses and underclothes. There was no need for her to stay. Most of the time nurse was occupied with the sewing-machine, a reluctant thing that always clucked angrily before it began to make its regular thudding buzz. Viola was interested in the almost human unwillingness of the machine; it had one or two tricks, such as refusing to swallow the stuff, and holding it fast in one place while it stabbed the needle down a dozen times, savagely, that pleased her for a few repetitions. But soon nurse got what she called the knack and the machine obeyed her, and roamed over Viola's clothes-to-be just as nurse wanted it to go. Still Viola was not allowed to put on her dress and go away. She stood by the fire, trying to see how the flames grew, hoping that soon they would turn the coal into bright pinky hills; but the fire was new, the lumps of coal were hardly red even underneath, the thin yellow flames did not look as if they would burn if she were to put her finger into them. She thought that it would be fun if flames could be picked like flowers. They would be alive, snaky, all twisting about in the hand that held them; much nicer than flowers, that stayed still, and never cared for being in a house, but died soon. Fire didn't mind houses, it was used to them; it wouldn't need water in its vases; it would always be twisting and straining and doubling back; nice bunches of flames; and her mother would say, as she often did about flowers,

'Wonderful how a vase or two will brighten a room.'

Viola watched the hot flame-flowers growing, and would have liked to put her hand into their funny black garden, but nurse saw and said,

'Come away from that fire at once. You'll be getting chilblains.'

Viola would have liked to say that nurse was wrong, and that only servants got chilblains; but she knew that such answers annoyed nurse, who called them arguing. 'Don't you argue with me,' was one of nurse's speeches that Viola feared. There was temper behind it. So she moved away from the fire and went slowly over to the window, to breathe on it, and make patterns in the breath that got caught on the panes. Nurse said at once that she was in the light and told her to move out of it. She obeyed, feeling sulky and impotent, and wishing with all her strength that something would happen to nurse, that she would get very ill, or go away to some other child as she had often threatened to do. She wished the scissors would stand up on their round ends where the holes were for fingers, and snap at nurse's hands as they flattened the stuff under the quick needle. Viola looked very hard at the scissors, wanting them to get up and walk on those round feet towards nurse's hands. She put herself on her honour not to blink, which would break the strength of the wish, and she stared at the scissors, lying with their blades a little open on a pile of stuff. She stared so long that her eyes began to draw towards each other and to feel watery; to drive away the feeling she moved them up and down, following the white line that shone on one of the blades; the other was dull, shadowed by the stuff on which it lay. She thought that she would make her eyes like magnets; she could almost think that they were becoming that shape, like a thin round horseshoe. She had to keep herself from winking by bits at a time. 'Not until I've counted twenty very slowly; another twenty; ten.' Just as she finished the last second of the ten she forgot why she was counting. She could see the scissors beginning to move, twitching themselves up in little jerks, and she thought with triumph, 'I can do magic.' She could see the dent the weight of them was making in the stuff, the little movements in the stuff as they twitched themselves upright on it. Nurse did not see, busily making the machine slave for her, but she was warned of something by the child's silence. She stopped the wheel with her right hand and turned round to see what Viola was doing. When she found her standing quite still, very white, with eyes, as nurse said afterwards, that put her in mind of a maniac, she turned back again to find out what the trouble was, and saw the scissors standing upright, but unsteadily, like a man walking a rope, and moving with timorous jerky steps towards the hand that still held the wheel. Nurse gave a scream that made Viola start and cover her face, a scream so loud that she could not have heard the double crack that sounded close beside her. The scissors dropped, and lay innocently on the stuff again; but now the line of the light showed along a different blade.

Nurse looked then as Viola had never thought any grown-up could ever look. She was ugly with terror, more frightening than the happening that had surprised her. She made a scrambling movement towards the door, but halted, and came back to catch Viola by the arm and push her first out of the room. The key was on the outside, and nurse turned it before she let Viola go; then she seemed to forget her, and ran down the back stairs to the shelter of the kitchen.

Viola waited while the stairs hid nurse bit by bit, until even her head was gone, and went back into the room which, now that nurse with her ugly fear was out of it, was calm. The fire still climbed, the scissors had not moved. Viola went to the window, feeling happy. She blew on the glass and started to draw in the grey vapour that began to shrink at the edges almost as soon as it was there. She drew a face, and her own name, and nurse's name, and then another face in a big piece of breath that was the size of a whole pane. This last face was not very like anyone. It was more like an animal, a slug or a fish. It was different from anything Viola had ever seen, and she was proud of it. She watched it for a long time with her face close to it so that she could breath it back again as soon as it began to fade. Then she could hear voices in the passage, Annie's scornful voice, and nurse protesting. She heard Annie say,

'I thought it must be a fire or something. You want to be ashamed, yelling like that.'

'I take my God to witness—' said nurse.

But Annie interrupted,

'You ought to take something for your nerves; not what you do take, neither.'

'I never—' said nurse.

'Oh, get on with you,' Annie interrupted again. 'Well, let's see into the room. Whatever it is can't have got out.'

Viola could hear the dry refusing sound a key makes when it is turned back as far as it can go. Annie shook the door.

'Oh, don't,' said nurse, 'No. What's the good?'

'Whatever have you done to this lock?' Annie asked, paying no attention.

Viola turned away from the window, unable to attend to her drawing while they disputed. At the sound her feet made nurse screamed again, and the horrible noise angered Viola. She ran to the door and opened it, but before she could say a word nurse caught her by the arm and roughly shook her, so that everything she had meant to say went out of her head.

'What do you mean by going back in there, you naughty girl?' said nurse.

Viola did not answer because she was still being shaken. She had felt proud, contemptuous of nurse and able to shame her; now she was silly again only because nurse, though a coward, was strong. She began to cry. The shaking continued, and nurse's voice went scolding on in the full vengeful flood of her relief from fear. Then she saw Annie put her fingers and thumb on nurse's arm and give it a good wringing pinch. The noise and the shaking stopped. Viola could hear her own sobs, which were bigger and more uncontrollable than any she could remember. Annie said,

'Let that child alone. She's got more sense than what you have. Let her go, now, or someone'll know about it.'

Annie waited for a moment, looking very hard at nurse, and went on in a different voice, to Viola,

'It's all right, lovey. Don't cry. Where's your dress?'

She advanced into the sewing-room, picked up the dress and called, 'Come while I put it on for you.'

'You bring that dress here,' said nurse, holding Viola.

Annie laughed and brought it. Nurse snatched it from her and hurried it over Viola's head, not caring how it caught one of her ears and almost pulled it away.

'You be off,' said nurse. 'And you're not to say anything to Mummy; mind what I tell you, now. Go along to the nursery, and don't you move till I come.'

Viola went along to the nursery, where she sat doubled up on the floor near the fire. After a moment she went to sleep, quite unexpectedly, and when she woke it was dinner-time. The morning seemed almost not to have happened. Nurse said nothing. She did not repeat her warning. In any case Viola would not have told, lest her mother might find some way of putting a stop to the magic, but the knowledge lay in her, golden as a treasure, with all her senses on guard about it.

After this the games became great fun, when they could be played; they needed secrecy because of the cracking, whip-lash noises which grew louder the more they played together. She tried to put him through all the fairy tricks, one after another, but he was as obstinate and as unteachable as a cat. There was no magically spread table for Viola, no walnut shells with dresses inside, not even a leaf of the cabbage that could turn people into donkeys. In the mornings, at the forlorn hour when nurse brought her two uninteresting biscuits and a cup of milk covered with wrinkled white skin, she used to wish that he had never come. Before, it had been fun to pretend; the things she imagined she was eating used to taste as distinct as the food at dinner, so that she had once asked her mother if thinking you were eating would do instead of really eating. Now, somehow, the fun had gone out of pretending. She could not build those steep fairy castles in her head, nor ride through those forests. She had made her inside world as a place to slip into when the green ordinary world was dull; now it could never be dull, because she never knew when it might suddenly flare up into magic, and flames might begin to lift and curl instead of flowers in the vases. And a great sword swinging in a castle gateway was less marvellous than a pair of ordinary scissors walking across the sewing-room table on their round heels.

It was disappointing to realise how little Binns could actually do. He could move things and he could make noises, and that was all. And the only improvement Viola could notice after a month's training was that he could lift heavier weights and the noises were louder. He spoilt things for her. He had taken the keen edge off the old games, and would not help with the new ones. She could not think of anything that she really wanted to do, and used to stand by the nursery window watching the sky go past, wondering how the trees could make, with their bare winter arms, enough wind to drive the heavy clouds at such a rate. At the end of such stormy vacant days there was nothing to go to bed for.

Six weeks after her birthday her godfather came, a little man in spectacles so large that she thought he must be a diver. She was taken down to the drawing-room after tea to see him, and her mother said,

'Here's Uncle Godfrey, darling, who gave you that nice fork and spoon. You've never seen him before, have you? At least, you don't remember.'

'Don't be so sure of that,' the little man answered, shaking hands politely with Viola.

'Oh, my dear,' said her mother, 'at the font!'

'Well, why not?' asked the little man. 'You have no right to assume that people forget certain events merely because they happen at a time when the mind has no pigeon-holes ready for them.'

'But you haven't seen Uncle Godfrey before, have you, Viola?' said her mother.

Viola stared at him.

'Of course the child can't in one moment bring to the surface of her mind a thing which happened before the crust of consciousness formed. But I dare say she has the appropriate dreams.'

'She doesn't have dreams, do you? Not at night, anyhow.'

'No,' said Viola, very shortly. She knew the question about Binns was coming.

'Very wise,' said Uncle Godfrey, 'they're a great waste of good sleeping-time.'

'I'm afraid they waste a lot of play-time too,' Viola's mother said; and rather wistfully added,

'It's difficult down here. They're all octogenarians; no children at all on this side of the county. It's difficult with only one.'

'Parents always suppose that children must be lonely by themselves. It's the sentimental instinct of creatures that live in a herd, but it's quite false. How is a child to develop an imagination if you crowd it up with half-a-dozen others and give it elaborate toys, and illustrate its books to the last scale on the dragon's tail?'

'I'm not listening to you,' said Viola's mother, pulling Viola's sash straight.

'I know you're not. But sense is sense even if nobody hears it, as a table left solitary on the top of Everest at the end of the world continues to be a table after all consciousness has perished; though there are people who dispute that.'

'People with a great deal of time on their hands.'

'Possibly, though that's not relevant. A wise man knows that time on the hands is worth eternity on the clock. But the point at issue is this. You suppose that your daughter must be lonely and dull if she is left alone with her imagination, because, similarly left, you would yourself be lonely and dull. And why? Because you, in common with most fully developed persons, physically, are in the habit of restraining your imagination.'

'I'm sure I don't.'

'You're not listening. I say you do. You permit it to depict for you only such happenings as are strictly possible.'

'I often imagine quite impossible things; you behaving like an ordinary person, for instance.'

'I repeat, the most you allow your imagination, which is your power of creation, to do for you is to provide ropes of real pearls or an admirer like a young Greek god. Both lie conceivably within your power of attainment; utterly dull, utterly remote from the fantastic. Sky-scrapers limit your empyrean. Now the child –'

'You're too absurd. Do you talk this nonsense to your undergraduates?'

'I can't understand how women who are not good listeners ever get married. No, of course I don't. What is the use of talking nonsense to undergraduates or fairies to children? They both know more about it than I do.'

'Oh, you have some limitations?'

'Certainly. My only claim to distinction is that I recognise them.'

'Viola knows all about fairies,' said her mother, bringing her into the conversation.

'I've no doubt she does,' said Uncle Godfrey.

'She has a fairy who comes and plays with her, and helps with the doll's washing.'

'Not she,' said Uncle Godfrey, 'that's not the sort of thing a fairy worth its salt would do.'

'But Viola sees her, don't you? She really plays in the most uncanny way sometimes, just as if somebody was with her. Tell Uncle Godfrey what Binns does.'

Viola did not answer. She felt that Uncle Godfrey would see through the usual answer. Her mother went on.

'Binns comes and helps her to be a queen when they're not busy with the washing. She's very thin, isn't she, Viola? And they have a lovely kingdom down in the far corner of the garden where we burn the rubbish.'

Viola wanted to explain that her mother had got it all wrong, every single word of it; but that would have meant giving up her secret. She stood very square on her feet and kept quiet.

'It can't be much of a fairy,' said Uncle Godfrey. 'What's the use of setting an elemental power to do menial jobs like washing, or running a kingdom? I reject Viola's domestic fairy as I reject your Greek gods. You fail, both of you. You bind fire with chains; for two pins you'd set Pegasus to pull the municipal dustcart.'

'What is the matter with you? You scold me first because I'd rather she had other children than these funny plays of her own; and then you scold her and say her fairies are no good. Of course they're good. Why shouldn't her Binns be a nice friendly person?'

'Because in that case she might as well have been given an undersized body and sent out into the world, with a reference from Lady Stick-in-the-Mud, to replace your kitchen-maid.'

'He's very unkind, isn't he, Viola? Well, we're quite happy about Binns. We know she's real.'

Viola's mind was in a tangle. She could see that it was Uncle Godfrey who really understood, and that her mother, who defended her on the surface, inwardly, deep down, thought the invention of Binns rather silly. She wanted to do something to show them both the meaning of the unseen companion, and it was her mother's attitude which made her want to come out into the open, abandoning her secret place; the tone, not exactly condescending, but affectionately tolerant and bland. While the decision hung in the balance her mother added something which snapped, like a spider's thread, Viola's resolution to hold back. She said to Uncle Godfrey,

'We won't let you play with us. You can't pretend.'

Viola had no words with which to answer this. It was too wrong, more wrong even than her mother's account of the fairy games that were Viola's own property, and of which her mother, unasked, ignorant, assumed control and patronage. Viola smiled, and a hot misty feeling mounted from her stomach to where her throat began. There was a loud crack just by her right hand, a crack more arresting than any she had yet heard.

'What's that?' asked her mother, startled.

'My locust,' Viola answered, keeping her hand shut tight.

'What a hateful noise! Don't do it again.'

'I'll try not,' Viola answered, with unusual meekness.

But she knew very well that she had no control over Binns in these proud fits; almost immediately he cracked again.

'Viola!' said her mother, 'I asked you not to do that.'

'I know,' Viola answered; a third crack sounded in the middle of her words. Her mother got up from her chair.

'Give me that thing at once,' her mother commanded.

Viola withdrew the hand and held it behind her back. She could not afford to have it examined, for it was empty. Uncle Godfrey stood looking on with interest, as though they were acting a play for him. Her mother repeated,

'Give it to me, Viola.'

Viola took a step backwards, not answering. Her mother made a sudden movement, intending to become possessed by force of the clenched hand which her strength would be able to open. To Viola, frightened already, it seemed the most important thing of all that nobody should open that hand. She had somehow to distract her mother, and make her abandon her intention. She stretched out her left arm with a jerk, pointing at a jar of heavy painted poppy-heads that served for flowers in winter; the jar was a foot distant from the longest of her pointing fingers, and much higher. The odd, stiff gesture surprised her mother, who stopped, looking at the outstretched hand, expecting to see in it the scrap of black tin; instead, she saw one of the poppy-heads begin to lean towards it. It leant out at an impossible angle, and when it was free of the jar it seemed to fall very slowly towards Viola, as though it were sliding down a solid invisible slope, and it hung in the air just short of her fingers for a definite moment before they closed on it.

Viola could not remember what happened after that. She had an illness almost at once that lasted for weeks and obliged her to forget; then, as soon as she got well her mother took her away to a village in the south-west of France. They stayed there for two years in a whitish villa roofed with curved red tiles; at the end of those years Viola could speak French with a savage facility which she had acquired in self-defence. She was never, for more than ten minutes at a time, left by herself; not even to sleep. At first she was inclined to shut herself up in her silent castles, but they were no longer the same. They would not build themselves easily in France, within a bee's flight of a real castle, to which she could climb. And the village people were different, more vivid, and they were always singing; the songs were queer, like pictures drawn in sound. Viola could not learn them; there were no words on which to hang the slow, balancing phrases; but she loved to listen, and during the second year, because in French it was something of an adventure, she learned to read. Overtaken by that immense new interest as by an enveloping sea the castles disappeared, and the princedoms, and the memory faded of solitary games played in an empty room.

When she could read pretty well, and after a serious French doctor had examined her, she was sent to school at an establishment on the south coast of England where her mother had been assured that a healthy tone prevailed. At first she was not homesick, but after a year or two a longing grew up in her, not for the villa backed by mountains and the dark cheerful people with their unhappy songs; some unreasonable fraction of her wanted, and saw clearly in dreams, the house where she had played alone. She crowded the stupid longing out of her waking thoughts, and did not speak of it to anyone. When she was seventeen they went back to the house.

She had looked forward so long and so eagerly to being there that the actual arrival felt a little flat, as though the house, which for years had been busy with strangers and their affairs, had forgotten her. She came as an acquaintance into the brown hall, looking about her, unrecognised. She remembered everything, the positions of the furniture, the way the light came in from the autumn afternoon outside. Forlorn and restless, with the vacant feeling of a person newly arrived in a new place, cheated of habits and at a loss for occupation, she wandered about, while her mother dealt with the servants and the unpacking. She went into the nursery, where she was no longer to sleep; the patterned birds on its walls had scarcely faded at all. Going down the passage from the nursery she came to the sewing-room, and thought with a pang of wonder, 'Could I have been that child?' She could see the child as though she had been someone else, one of the children who used to come to tea; sulky and secret, and very sure of the worlds she had created. The child had been safe, her strong imaginings had protected her; the invisible thing had been no more and no less real than they. Now it was as though one of those imagined creatures had escaped, taking body and power apart from her; huge, towering above the dwarfish company her grown mind could picture for her. It would be dangerous now. And she had a feeling of courage and elation, like a moment before battle.

She had been given a different bedroom. Grown Viola could not make for herself a golden hall in an attic, nor conjure a pattern of parrots and cherries into a tropical forest at night. She had been robbed by the years of these splendours, and instead was given the room which before had been kept for the most important guest. It was on the first floor, very light, and there were flowers on a small table in the window. The nursery had never been given flowers, except the frail things that Viola used to pick from the hedges and put in a doll's teacup with the water forgotten. There were writing things, as for a guest, and cupboards for clothes. But when she had unpacked and put her own belongings about it still felt empty; and she thought, 'Hiding.'

At dinner her mother said that it was delightful to be home again, not to be nomads any more. She said the house gave one such a friendly feeling, as though it were making one welcome. She said she had almost forgotten what it looked like, and supposed that Viola had, too. She was civil about the departed tenants, except that they had let the garden get into a dreadful state. Viola agreed with it all.

Next day she announced that she would like to have the sewing-room as her own room, to sit in.

'But there are plenty of places for you to sit,' said her mother, astonished, 'and your own room is quite nice. There's a comfy chair. What are we to do if a woman comes in to sew?'

'She can have the old nursery.'

'But that little room is so inconvenient, right at the top of the house. Dark—'

'Oh, please. Really I'd like it.'

'Well, of course— But I can't give you any more furniture. I really can't have anything taken out of the other rooms.'

'I didn't ask for anything. I don't want anything.'

'But you can't leave it like that, without any proper things. I don't see why you want it; you've got all the rest of the house –'

In the end Viola was allowed to keep the sewing-room just as it had been. A fire was lighted there each morning, and this was the only sign that the room expected anyone. It had always been a room that lived by fits and starts. Its guests were the shadows cast by some passing emergency, sewing women, monthly nurses¹⁸¹, housemaids in quarantine. It was unaccustomed to people, and during the first weeks of Viola's tenancy it continued to have an air of awkwardness, like a person who is willing to be friendly but has not the habit of civility. Then it began to respond to her continued presence; and although its furniture remained austere, although there were no flowers on its table, it began to look, as her mother said, quite habitable; quite human.

Viola used to sit there for hours, doing nothing, trying to make her mind empty, a long bare attic such as children love to play in. She was sure that if she could succeed in doing this he would be tempted out of hiding, but she could not banish altogether the furnishings that the years had collected and stored there. And there were people, too. There had been a great many of them in the nine years of absence, and they kept coming in, without warning, to the bare room of her mind; people she thought she had forgotten, or had hardly known, shop-assistants, schoolgirls, gardeners. While they were there he did not come. At night she would sit in the dark, staring at some glowing promontory of coal; the red ashes moved as though they breathed light, and the running white glow sketched for her hills and cities she had known; real places always, not the steep, thin towers of her childhood with bridges curved like scimitars leading to their gates. He was obstinate, but she was more patient than Viola the child had been. She tried other ways. Once or twice she spoke aloud, on windy evenings when nobody could have heard.

'You're afraid. You won't come because you know I'm stronger than you. Can you hear me? You're afraid.'

'Do come. I can't remember you, it was so long ago. We used to have such good games. I want to find you again. Oh, do come on. I know you're there— aren't you?— listening. You needn't be frightened of me. I won't ask you to do anything.'

Silence; then, in a burst of temper.

'All right, you silly beast; you coward; you ugly dirty beast. I'm sick of you. Good riddance.'

Between the sudden thrusts of the wind she could hear silence waiting in the room, full of tiny prickling sounds, unguessed movements, and knew that he was there. She wondered if there could be anything in herself that shut him out; sought, but could find nothing, except that she no longer had entry to her invisible, obedient world.

Then James happened. He was an ordinary young man but for one or two engaging tricks which made him more adorable to Viola than the Greek god of her uncle's taunt. His hair grew very close to his head in the shape of a wig; he had large feet and large limbs that contrived to arrange themselves in soft puppy-attitudes. He had a mark like a little arrow-head near each corner of his mouth from smiling so often. Viola sat in the sewing-room more than ever, thinking; but now every part of her thought was concerned with James. She even brought him up once to see it, and gave him tea. He thought it an odd room for her to have chosen, and said so; he was not to know how she felt about him, nor why she was allowing him to see the place where her very self lived. At first he temporised.

'I suppose you feel more on your own up here, out of everybody's way?'

'No, I just like it.'

'Well, you're high enough up. Is there a view?'

But the sewing-room looked on to a couple of nondescript trees and the shed where the servants kept their bicycles.

'No. I hate views. I've had to live with too many of them.'

'What do you do up here, then?'

'Nothing. I don't read or sew or play the violin or cat's-cradle or learn anything or make anything.'

'Just one of the idle rich.'

She laughed because he did; and when he tried to lean back in the unyielding chair and fold his legs comfortably together in their usual way she laughed again because it was so obvious that he would have been happier on the sofa downstairs. She did not mind when he said that women could not understand comfort, for she knew it was true, and when he said that she was a Spartan and he must give her a little fox she was delighted with him for being so funny and so dear as to talk, even in joke, of giving her anything. She fussed over his tea, wanting it to be just right, and made one or two of the little faces she had noticed in her glass and hoped that he would like. While he coaxed a pipe¹⁸⁴ she looked hard at him so as to be able to remember the shape of his head as it bent forward, and his face, serious for once, the arrow-heads quite smoothed out with the pursing of his lips. She thought he would look like that kissing someone; kissing her; serious and intent, thinking only of one thing at a time. She was friendly and natural, not herself exactly, but the sort of self he probably liked, and which she played for love of him so that it almost became the real Viola. She let him laugh at her chairs, and her unattractive view, and the complete absence of what he called the woman's touch.

'I know just the sort of house you'll have when you're married. You'll go to the firm that does station waiting-rooms and give them a free hand. And you'll say to your husband, "There's a sale at the Office of Works tomorrow, dear; they're selling off a lovely lot of iron seats from the parks".'

'I'll marry someone who won't notice. Or someone that's never at home.'

'A commercial traveller.'

'Or a policeman. Or one of those men that sit all night with a street when it's up, with buckets full of charcoal.'

'Good idea. He might let you have the bucket to put an aspidistra in by day. I'll give you one for a wedding present.'

'Thanks, but it's to be a very quiet wedding. The bride and bridegroom will leave by Tube for the Edgware Road, which will be their address for the season.'

'It's funny about you. You've really got a sense of humour.'

'I had the three permanent jokes in Punch carefully explained to me when I was little. Since then I have used no others.'

'You are an ass. But nice.'

'Thanks. Your old-world courtesy is charming.'

When they came downstairs and were under observation once more she was casual and normal, and there was not a word to be got from her that was amusing. She interested and stimulated him, so that he found himself that night writing a marvellously good letter to the lady in Ebury Street who had taken charge of his sentimental education. While he wrote and admired Viola sat in her room, or walked irrepressibly about it, with her arms lifted above her head. The room of her mind was to be bare no longer; it should be hung with tapestries and have a thousand candles in gold sconces alive on the walls. She stared into the fire, smiling, trying to see it there as the red and white heats shifted. She thought,

'I wish I had lots of things that I could give him. I wish I was rich and most frightfully beautiful, and that he was poor. I'd ask him to marry me and he'd be surprised and would hate not having anything of his own. But I'd make him and we'd be together. Happy.'

She could see herself, dressed in silver and much taller than at present, standing with him on some balcony, some terrace which looked out on to water. There was no moon, and no light except that which came from a long window open behind them. He would be looking at her, dreadfully in love; and then she would put her hand on his and say,

'We love each other. What does it matter who says it first?'

She did this scene over several times, improving it here and there, changing the décor. At the end it went beautifully, with several admiring people looking on, unseen, of course; but she heard their comments afterwards.

After this her own bedroom, with white lights everywhere and incorruptible mirrors, was an anticlimax, and she went to sleep at once, in a prosaic attitude.

She saw him often, for a time. He had a car and would call for her at odd hours, just after breakfast, just before luncheon. They would race through sixty or eighty miles of country while he tried to draw her out and make her say the things which tempted him to wit. She knew what he expected and gave it, thinking that even to make him laugh was something; but compared with the other gifts she wanted to put into his hands it was rather pitiful.

Upstairs in her room she tried to send messages to him, patiently imagining him as he might be at any given moment, sitting with his legs crossed and one foot twisted under the other ankle; reading a newspaper; bending over the shining body of the car. She made herself see these pictures of him so clearly; even the grain of his skin and the way his eyebrows grew were visible to her as though she were in the room with him. And holding him like this in her company she would talk to him, and give him those other things. Now and then his head would lift as if he listened, and tilt on one side as though he could not hear all her nonsense, or her passionate boasting.

'You don't know all the things I can do. I can make ordinary things not be the same. You feel that when I'm with you. I'm a kind of witch. I could do all the magic, godmother things for you. Can you feel me now, standing beside you? I've gone out of myself, I've left myself quite empty, to visit you and talk to you. I'm strong, aren't I? That's why I can come to you like this. When I go back I shall be weak, because I'll have left part of my strength with you. We'll share. I love you when you laugh at me.'

At the end of three weeks he said that he was going back to London. It was dreadful. She was shocked by the thought of not having him near her, and by another thought, that perhaps it would not take him long to forget her. Only one thing could have made it bearable, if she could have been sure that the night messages reached him. She was almost sure— the pictures were very real— but she was afraid to ask him, lest, to tease her, or because he would not admit he was sensitive, he might deny it. The day before his departure she begged him to come. He refused, lightly, offering some very reasonable and acceptable excuse. She insisted, with a curious force that surprised him.

'I want you to come, please.'

'But I've got ten thousand things to do.'

'One more won't matter, then.'

'No, seriously—'

'Seriously, I want you to come.'

'Any particular reason?'

'One.'

'Tell me now.'

She lifted her left shoulder, and the hand that held the receiver, in a shrug.

'It's far too indelicate.'

'What's that?'

'Nothing. Will you come?'

'Only for a minute, then, and probably cross. About six-thirty.'

'Right.'

She spent the day waiting, and wondering if the whole thing were madness, or a kind of primal sanity. She had not the energy even to smoke. She was utterly listless, surprised at the outgoing of her strength. It could not, she thought, disappear like a blown candle-flame; it must go somewhere, touch something. It was satisfying to imagine those waves of strength beating continuously against the strong wall of his mind. It was worth being tired to have that going on, but she had to keep away from mirrors in order to believe it. Her square child's face and body made an incredible shrine. If she could hardly believe, seeing herself, how should he?

When he came he found her sitting by a fire that was red and low, with only a candle beside her to light the room.

'Well, Cinderella,' said he.

'The light's fused. Can you put up with a candle?'

'I'll fix it.'

'No, don't. Let it alone. You're going back to marble halls¹⁸⁹ tomorrow.'

'So I am, and not a thing packed. What's this indelicate secret?'

'It's not, really.'

'You said it was. Why do you tell such appalling lies?'

'I thought you probably wouldn't come if I didn't.'

'Perfectly correct, I wouldn't have.'

'I thought not.'

'Well, what? Are you going to make an offer for my hand?'

'Not quite. It's something that's been worrying me. I want to ask you something.'

'Don't make it too difficult.'

'I— you see, when I was little I could do all sorts of funny things. Make things move just by willing, and so on.'

'Things? What?'

'Oh, well; a pair of scissors, once. Flowers.'

'Move?'

'Yes. I know it sounds silly, but other people saw them too. This hasn't anything to do with it really, only it sort of leads up. I used to do it for spite, chiefly, then. It was something in the house— oh, I don't know. At least, I do, but it's no use my explaining that part of it. Anyhow, these last few weeks I've been trying something else.'

She leant forward. The light, placed a little behind her, showed her round head and thick shoulders; her voice was that of a child, and all the candle did was to make her outline correspond to the voice. But already she had forgotten why she had arranged the candle. He felt that he must say something.

'All sounds pretty necromantic.'

'Yes, that was; the first part. This is different, what I'm trying to do now. I'm thinking how to put it. Well, I've been trying to communicate with people. I get out of myself somehow and go to them.'

'Good lord, who?'

'You, for one. And I'm sure I've got you once or twice.'

'Viola, look here—'

'No, let me tell you. Two nights ago did you go out at ten minutes to six to look at the car? Pat was with you. He put his paws on the mudguard and you knocked him off because he scratched the paint. Did you?'

'I don't know what I was doing at ten minutes to six on Tuesday. I think all this is a trifle far-fetched.'

'Well, last night, then. Did you go to bed about eleven and take two books up with you, and drop one on the stairs?'

'No.'

'Don't just say that. I mean, don't tell lies just to snub me. I'm frightfully serious about this. Did you?'

'No.'

'But you must have felt something. Did you hear me saying I was strong?'

'No.'

'Have you ever thought you could hear me talking to you? You mightn't have known what I was saying. Did you ever think I was sort of there?'

'No.'

'Honour?'

'Yes.'

'But where's it gone, then?'

He was alarmed by the change in her voice; it cut through his indifference and his impatience. He tried to cover it up, talking loudly, even advancing to pat her shoulder.

'Of course I often think about you. Look here, don't you think this sort of thing is rather unhealthy? You're only a kid. Eighteen is only a kid, after all. I don't like to think of you taking it out of yourself over a silly thing like this.'

She was not listening to him. She was leaning sideways and back, behind the candle, watching a shadow that was beginning to take shape on the forget-me-not patterned wall of the sewing-room. It was a shadow without definite edges, almost formless, but certainly there. It was a sleek shadow, not angular; like a fish, perhaps, or a slug. She began to laugh when she saw how it was growing, and James, who had his back to it but was frightened, ran to the switch by the door and pressed it down. Instantly light flooded into the room, overwhelming the candle and its shadows, and he was brave again, so that he could even bear to kneel by her and hold his arms round her while she fought with her laughter.

_____________

10: The Ordeal By Fire

C. Ranger Gull

1875-1923

Wagga Wagga Express 20 Jan 1900

THE ROAD which led to the old manor house was on the very edge of the moor and skirted the sea. A veritable house of the winds it seemed, and wild voices rang round it at all times.

Upon an angry lowering afternoon in the early autumn Charlie Probert walked rapidly over the moor, and came out upon the white cliff road. From the great height of his position the sea appeared perfectly smooth and still; but it was the color of gun-metal, save where the red spears of the sunset touched it into fire. Frost was in the air, and the load rang like iron under Probert's feet.

There was a splendor in all this world of sea and sky; but it was sinister and gloomy, harmonising well with the young man's thoughts. Charles Probert was going to hear his fate. In five minutes he would know what life would mean to him in the future, if for him it held one chance more.

The situation had been brought about in this way. At twenty-one Probert had been left entire master of himself, a moderate income and a small pile of buildings known as Palion Hall, in Cornwall. Until that age, his guardians, a firm of solicitors in Chancery Lane, had kept him short of money, and under a rigorous system of supervision. He was, at the time of his emancipation, a good-natured, rather sensitive youth, who was morbidly anxious to be liked. His ideals were not very high, though he was on the edge of turning out a very decent fellow.

But, to save trouble, he began to buy his friends, and with astonishing celerity found himself the centre of a genial group of as thorough-paced scoundrels as ever pulled a horse, squared one of the seconds in a glove-fight, or came up against the law over some question of an accommodation bill.

The result was as logical as its cause. Three years found him almost penniless, coarsened in mind and face, and in that transition stage when, having ceased to be a pigeon, a man's thoughts begin to turn towards the advisability of becoming a hawk. Even when he had carried his affairs into some unpleasant muddles indeed, chance gave him another opportunity of pulling up. He had come down with some friends to Palion Hall for some shooting. A neighbouring manor house had been taken by a Colonel Vynne, a widower with daughters. One of these young ladies was pretty and a flirt, the other beautiful, rather cold in manner, and with a heart of pure gold.

Contrary to expectation. Charles Probert fell in love with Beatrice, the elder and more reserved of the two. In direct contradiction to everyone's prognostications, the grave silent girl made an instant and loving surrender. There was something lovable about the scamp despite his weakness. He was a mail in spite of it all. Perhaps, also, she was a little pleased at the idea of helping the boy to make a finer thing of his life, to lift him with tender compassion into her own serenity. Most good girls have this wish latent in their hearts, for it is but another manifestation of the gracious maternal instinct. Whatever her reasons might have been, Beatrice loved Probert deeply and well.

For a time he gathered himself together, weeded his garden, and tried to tune himself into correspondence with the new music. A little jaunt to London was the occasion of the first lapse— a visit to the Empire with one or two of the old set; a noisy entrance of the half-drunken men into a restaurant, and a kind friend to report it all to Beatrice in the house by the sea.

It was forgiven and much more that followed it. Probert, finding so much ready forgiveness, began to presume upon it. Gradually he sank back into his old way of living, and keyed himself up to a self-pitying regret by occasional visits to the girl. He knew nothing more pathetic than the spectacle of his own debacle.

The end was swift. A fortnight of wild gambling and extravagance in town, a mortgage foreclosed upon, and on this winter's afternoon he found himself ruined, and walking over the moor to hear that his one dear possession was to be taken from him.

AS HE REACHED the turn in the road where it dipped down in the hollow, be stopped and sent his eyes out over tho sea. The sun was dipping, the air was shrewd and cold, and winds began to circle round tho headland. Not a sail was in sight, no sheep bleated upon the moor, and the sea-birds were not calling to one another. There was a terrible loneliness in it all; he shivered and walked on.

Soon he was actually in the room with his love. She had allowed him to kiss her, had returned the caress, and now they were seated on either side of a great log fire. It was her own room, and full of dainty expression of her personality. The pose of a room, its decorative effect, is often an index of, and sometimes a comment on, the character of the owner. He sat by the fire and gazed into her face, watching the glow stabbing her hair with spears of crimson and gold.

At last she spoke.

'Charlie,' she said, and her voice was as mournful and hollow as the sound of a stone dropping down a well, 'Charlie, dear boy, it's come to the end. I love you dearly— oh, I shall never stop loving you! But I think there is more in life even than love. When I kissed you first and promised to be your wife, I swore to myself that I would try to help you. And now'— she went on with a dramatic gesture, a throwing out of the hands very foreign to her general way, 'and now, Charlie boy—'

He sat staring at her, his foolish eyes full of child-like appeal.  Yet, as he raised his face to hers, there was certainly something that hinted at better things in it; there was a possibility of something fine. He was too full of face, drink and dissipation had had their way with him, but the trim moustache, straight nose and close cropped hair gave him some distinction— lent him a flavour of the soldier.

'What's going to happen, Bee?' he said. 'Is there no chance for me?'

'There is one chance,' she replied. 'Father says it is the only one. It is a horrible one, but it is the only one.'

'Yes,' he answered eagerly.

'You must fight for me, Charley,' she said, with a wistful little smile? 'You must go out at once to the Transvaal, and enlist. If you fight through the war, live hard, and prove yourself a man, then I will marry you. You must be a soldier, dearest. It is the ordeal by fire.'

He sat up eagerly, with bright eyes. His back straightened, the skin round his mouth tightened into lines of resolve. So he was given another chance in the blue and yellow room.

The details were soon settled. Colonel Vynne knew Lord Cheyne, who commanded the Ombulwane regiment of irregular horse. He gave Charlie a letter which would ensure his enlistment at once. He was to sail in three days.

As he swung home over the cliff road that night, the moon, like a great pearl, was globed high in heaven. The sea was all dancing silver, his heart went out to its loveliness, and he was very resolute and strong.

LORD CHEYNE and Captain Jim Robertson sat dining in a shelter made by stretching a tarpaulin over two or three great boulders. The irregular horse were encamped on the top of Hartje kopje out on the veldt about ten miles from Weenan village and twelve from Estcourt. The night was perfect. The sky was like a hollow sapphire, and the world below was lit by an enormous copper-coloured moon. Down below the hill the veldt was covered with a carpet of silver mist which hid it for miles. Only here and there a dark hill rose out of it like an island in a fairy sea. A fire of scrub burnt brightly on the plateau, and illuminated the scene. Rows of horses tethered to iron pegs driven into the ground stood munching heaps of cut grass, and men took round buckets of water mixed with a little vinegar to them.

Not far from the fire stood two dark objects covered with waterproof canvas. These were the Maxims, housed for the night. The men sat round the fire at supper, drinking cocoa out of tin mugs and smoking cigarettes. Very few of them had pipes. One lean, wiry fellow in a stained khaki uniform was standing by the blaze singing a comic song

We were such rollicking, frolicking,

Devil-may-care young blades;

Fright'ning the prim old maidies;

Kissing the nice young ladies...

The chorus sang and pulsed into the night. As it swelled and died a horse would stamp uneasily, and once a lean, vicious-looking pack mule began to plunge and kick.

An elderly man, with a long red beard and a tanned, weather-beaten face, sat writing on a pad. From time to time he refreshed himself from a flask by his side, and read over his script with a satisfied smile. This was Pimlott, the well-known war correspondent, and he was writing a spirited account of the defence of Ladysmith, which would presently be published in Fleet-street.

In the centre of the plateau rose a tall pole, like a flagstaff, made of length of bamboo jointed together. At tin bottom of the pole stood a little tripod table, carrying a mahogany box and a dial like a clock. This was the temporary installation of wireless telegraphy, by means of which the scouting force could, under favorable conditions, be kept in touch with the main body many miles away. The regiment had now been encamped upon the kopje for three days, but no message had as yet come through.

Captain Robertson took a hunk of tinned beef in his fingers, cut a piece from it with a pocket knife and handed the remainder to Lord Cheyne, who was studying a map.

'Filthy stuff this tinned meat is,' he said.

'Foul,' said Lord Cheyne. 'My brother, whom I saw last week, says they manage to do things awfully well in the Guards. They've had tons of things sent up from the stores, best possible sort of things— wine even.'

'The commander-in-chief,' said Robertson in a drawl, 'says in that invaluable guide to military life, The Soldiers' Pocket-book, that officers on active service should abstain from luxuries— especially wine— for the sake of example to their men, even, he adds, when they can be readily obtained.'

'Let's drink his health,' said Lord Cheyne, and with that he produced a leather bottle, which was not entirely innocent of something stronger than water.

'Pimlott,' he shouted to the war correspondent, 'come here. There is about a pint and a half of very diluted and very filthy Durban whisky still left here. Come and help us say good-bye to it.'

'I WONDER what the pantomime at Drury Lane will be like this year,' Pimlott said. 'I have a perfectly juvenile passion for pantomime, frank, unalloyed, sincere. I thing Dan Leno—'

He stopped suddenly. There was a hurried movement at the foot of the telegraph pole. A young man in a Norfolk jacket and riding breeches jumped up from the ground where he had been lying reading, and putting on a pair of spectacles run to the tripod table, kneeling down before it.

The message came through in sharp sentences that hit like hailstones. At Prinsloo Farm, ten miles from their position, one hundred Boer sharpshooters were encamped, guarding an ammunition train on its way to the front. Cheyne was ordered to send a force of fifty men and one Maxim gun to take the place.

The details were soon arranged, the men chosen and told what was in store. Robertson would command the company. 'No. 2' gun was detailed for the service, and its rapid passage across the veldt would principally depend upon the vigilance and skill of the wheel-driver, Charles Probert.

The skirmish had been more severe than was anticipated. The Boers held the farm with great determination and the rifle practice was excellent. Early in the morning Captain Robertson had been compelled to send for reinforcements from the kopje. From the long, low range of farm buildings ever and again would came a puff of white smoke; there would be a distant moaning in the air, which in a second changed to a furious shriek as a shell tore past and buried itself in the earth, or exploded. Here would be an explosion of sudden and strangulating violence, a great cloud of dust and smoke, and in five seconds a strong man would be nothing but of bundle of rags, covered with blood. The air seemed full of wasps, as the invisible bullets rang all round. The Maxim gun was mounted on a slight ridge, and its continual rattle, sounding like the noise of some gigantic express train going over an iron bridge, filled all the air. Out on the veldt for half a mile the troopers were lying behind any cover that was available and taking long shots at the figures moving round the farm.

Charlie Probert, grimed beyond recognition, was busy in his shirt-sleeves about the gun. A Mauser bullet had carried away the cartilage at the top of his right ear, and his face was covered with blood. The heat of the sun was intense. His throat seemed filled with flour, and his mouth was tamed to heated leather. The gunner, who was sitting on the saddle of the gun, with his thumbs upon the trigger button, which kept the deadly machine in action, released the catch for a moment and got up to stretch himself.

Probert was tending over some ammunition boxes when he heard a slight noise behind him. He turned quickly, in time to see his companion falling limply to the ground. A crimson stain spread over his chest, his legs writhed and worked convulsively. Charlie bent over him and as he did so the sight of the man's contorted face caught him by the throat and turned us thirst into a raging fire.

The gunner began to whimper.

'Water,' he said, 'give me some water.'

His voice bleated away into silence, but his fast glazing eyes made a dreadful appeal. Suddenly Charlie thought of the canvas bottle of water which hung between the wheels of the Maxim, and was for the replenishing of the steel 'water jacket' which kept the barrels cool. He ran to the gun, unlaced the bottle and screwed off the top. He was some little time in the operation, for it was securely lashed, and when he got back the man was stark in death. He gave a start and a little sigh— men soon grow callous in war— and then his eye fell on the bottle which he was carrying. His thirst tore him with steel fingers; his tongue was black with it. He lifted if to his lips and drank deeply. Suddenly, as the living water poured new life into him— never was anything so sweet— the bottle, struck by a bullet, fell from him, ripped up, to the ground. He exclaimed aloud in dismay, and as he did so he saw Captain Robertson with his hand upon the gun breech. His face was angry and threatening.

'This gun is red hot,' he shouted, 'and you've drunk the water, you scoundrel, the gun must go out of action. When we get back to camp, if your treachery does not kill us all, you'll be shot for this, my man.'

Probert saluted, reeling with terror at what he had done. The thought of Beatrice flashed through his brain. He knew in one swift moment that he had lost her now. One means of atonement came to him. Two hundred yards away, across the firing line, he knew there was a stream

He told the officer, and asked permission to make the attempt to fetch some water from it. Robertson looked at him, not unkindly.

'Go,' he said, 'and retrieve your honour. If you die, you deserve it; if you 'live you shall have earned my silence.'

Without a word Charlie took two helmets, his own and the dead man's, and slung them on a cleaning rod. Then he started to run over the veldt. The bullets sang in the air, but none touched him. Through his head the single word 'Beatrice' raced and drummed. He reached the stream, stumbled through the mud, and filled the helmets. Half way back he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder, almost stopping him. But he struggled on.

'Beatrice, Beatrice!' he kept murmuring to himself.

When he reached the gun, a knot of men were standing by it. They cheered him as he stumbled up.

'You're a man, sir!' shouted old Pimlott; and, without further ado, sat down on the veldt with his note-book to write a picturesque cable of the incident.

IN THE hall at Palion are two battered helmets, and an old canvas bottle. Beatrice sometimes tells the children of Father's heroism, and Captain Robertson, who often comes to Cornwall, smiles, and says nothing.

_______________

11: Why Mrs. Wetherton Went Home

Carlton Dawe

1865-1935

From Kakemonos, 1897

CAPTAIN Wetherton was A.D.C. to the general commanding the forces at Hong-Kong, and was personally convinced that he was an individual of considerable importance. Indeed, he carried himself as though the whole honour and glory of the British Army lay upon his insignificant shoulders; nor, if one might judge by appearances, did he find the burden an exceedingly heavy one. Though small in stature, he atoned for this physical failing by an exceedingly colossal carriage. To see him swing along the road in his tight coat and tighter trousers was a truly aweinspiring sight. The coolies kow-towed to him with apprehensive humility; flew from his path, not daring to use the same footway with him, and made their obeisance from the road. It is true he did occasionally acknowledge the salutation, remembering that greater people had frequently to appear civil; but it was a bit of a nuisance all the same— the penalty one pays for greatness. It might be doubted that greatness was worth it all.

Personally, Wetherton was a little darkhaired man, with a dark face, a pair of piercing eyes, a nose with a thick end and no bridge to speak of, and a prodigious black moustache. A formidable little man, to be sure, who, when seated upon a horse, presented a front like that of Mars. People used to say that he ought never to be seen except on horseback. Mounted upon his prancing steed, he was the perfect picture of a furious fire-eater; on foot he was quite an insignificant little being, whom you would think twice before you kicked, for fear of hurting him. Yet he had a devil of a reputation, and had seen some fighting in the hills in India. No stricter disciplinarian drew breath, and while the men thought him a coxcomb they knew he was not to be trifled with; and when they remembered that he had smelt real powder— a long way off, perhaps— they frequently forgave him his idiosyncrasies.

And yet, when you came to ponder over it, it was astonishing how much of the heroic that little body held. There was infinite resolution in the cut of his mouth, determination in his keen eye, while his snub nose completed the dogged, pugnacious look of the whole face. A pocket-martinet, that 's what he was; a determined fighter every inch of him. One may be a giant without a giant's bulk; and Wellington and Wetherton both began with the same letter and ended with the same syllable.

Whenever he put in an appearance at the club, we invariably extracted a little quiet amusement from him, for his conversation, if at times somewhat patronising, was almost entertaining. There was a certain self-consciousness about the little man which lent a delightful flavour to his remarks; and while listening to him, you felt convinced that here was the man who could set the world in order, here was the man who should be ruling at the Horse Guards and not resting in a God-forsaken hole like China. But what would you? He could not expect the world to abandon its crooked ways for his especial benefit. Habit had become a second nature, and second natures come to stay. Wetherton, despite his martial yearnings, was philosopher enough to see and understand: but I will not go so far as to say that he never chafed at the bit. We all admitted that he would most probably do something if he ever got the chance, for he possessed in abundance those qualities which, on paper, make a great soldier. Moreover, he possessed that best of all qualities— a profound belief in himself; and the man who believes in himself can always get other men to believe in him.

Then one day the rumour spread that his wife was coming out to join him, and this lent him a still greater importance. The news sent our sluggish blood beating a throb or two quicker, for we had all seen her portrait— he had half a dozen of them in all shapes and sizes in his diggings— and she had duly passed our critical scrutiny. Of course we envied him more than ever. Brilliant prospects, an unbounded belief in himself, and a fresh young wife longing to throw herself into his arms. In England a man does not fully appreciate the manifold charms which surround him; but let him live long among the yellow or black people, and he will go mad at the thought of a bit of cool, white skin.

We were filled with a thousand wild conjectures. He had led us to believe that she was considered a great beauty in her native town—  a renowned south-coast watering-place— and we began to wonder if she had any of the dash and 'go' of that famous resort. If so, some of us boys might expect a lively time, and Wetherton would have other than his military duties to look after.

As for him, the near approach of his wife brightened him up wonderfully. We had long known that the little man was inordinately proud of her, but we had no idea he was such a devoted husband. His face flushed and his eyes sparkled as he spoke of her, and we could see that, however much he was bound up in himself, he was none the less bound up in her. It was 'I must drop that sort of thing when my wife comes.' 'My wife always objected to this,' or 'My wife always objected to that.' 'I rather fancy she's a bit prudish, don't you know, and the life you chaps live here'll give her a devil of a shock.' It was 'my wife this and my wife that,' till we began to wonder what monster of propriety was about to descend in our midst. And yet it was quite pleasant to see little Wetherton cock-a-hoop— not that such a state was unusual with him, but his cock-a-hooping now was of the magnificent and enviable order. His martial face relaxed its grimness as he spoke of her, and even his fierce moustache took to itself a soft curve of love. That he was superlatively happy in the prospect of being united to her was indubitable; and little wonder, if, as he said, she could give points to any woman in the colony.

He had been with us now for more than a year, and, though we knew he was married, we had little hopes of seeing his wife; for the woman who can stay away from her husband for so long a period is either very indifferent to his personal attributes, or physically incapable of undertaking the long journey. The latter, it seems, was the cause in this instance and so accustomed had we grown to the thought that Mrs. Wetherton was a hopeless invalid, that the information that at last she was coming out struck us as a sort of impossible rumour.

But, impossible as we deemed it, it was nevertheless true, though the Yang-tse— the ship she was on— seemed a long time coming. Indeed, the first excitement was already dying out when we heard that the vessel had arrived at Singapore, This wakened us up a little; but being a slow craft, and having to face a strong north-east monsoon, another week elapsed before the Yang-tse steamed into the harbour of Hong-Kong.

That night, after dinner, I looked Wetherton up, curiosity playing the deuce with my discretion. I found him on the verandah pulling thoughtfully at his moustache and watching the smoke from his cigar pass into the mystical shadows above. A young fellow was with him whom I never remembered to have seen before. As I approached, this individual very politely rose, though Wetherton merely waved his hand by way of greeting.

'Welcome, my dear fellow,' he cried cheerily, or with a heroic effort at cheeriness. 'Glad you came round. Sit down and have a smoke. Boy, another tumbler— quick ! By the way, let me introduce you to Doctor Vine— the doctor of the Yang-tse,' he added, by way of explanation.

Doctor Vine, a tall, dark young man with a long, loose figure and an uncertain smile, favoured me by dropping a long, limp hand into mine and telling me that he was extremely pleased to make my acquaintance, for which I expressed myself as duly grateful, slipping meanwhile into an easy-chair beside Wetherton.

'So the Yang-tse is in at last?' I said, as Wetherton took the tumbler from the boy and mixed me a whisky-and-soda.

'Yes,' he answered, but doubtfully.

'And Mrs. Wetherton has profited by the voyage?'

'Exceedingly, I should say. I have never seen her look better.'

I turned inquiringly to the doctor.

'Oh, we had a capital passage,' he explained. 'No bad weather worth speaking of till we left Singapore. I think Mrs. Wetherton is an excellent sailor.'

'She certainly looks remarkably well,' said her husband enthusiastically.

'One of the advantages of making friends with the doctor,' I suggested. Wetherton looked meaningly at me, and, immediately conscious of having made a false in step, I grew confused. His shifty, piercing eyes met mine. I saw his heavy brows contract, a rigid look steal down his face. Then he fumbled his cigar into his mouth and began to smoke violently. The doctor quietly sipped his whisky-and-soda and lit a fresh cigarette. I at once led the conversation into another channel, and we were discussing the benefits to be derived from the rainy season in Hong-Kong when Mrs. Wetherton burst upon the scene.

With reluctance I admit that the first view of her did not fulfil expectations. Wetherton had led us to believe that she was in every essential a model of her sex, whereas her figure was very slight, not to say thin, her hips and chest apparently undeveloped, her face absolutely colourless. At least, so it appeared to me in the uncertain light. Fine teeth she had, to be sure, and fine eyes, if somewhat heavy. Indeed, such heavy eyes seemed to be fixed wrongly in such a little face. But they were expressive, ye gods! And the light stealing through the loose masses of her pale brown hair lit it with gleams of fire. As she stood there in her white dinner-dress I compared her with sprites innumerable, but never once with a woman of flesh and blood.

The hand she gave to me at parting was firm, if dry and cold, and this latter qualityseemed to strengthen the strange opinion I had formed of her. Somehow I did not envy Wetherton the possession of his icicle, though there was some consolation in knowing that no icicle could stand the climate of Hong-Kong.

As I was going to walk back to the club, I asked the doctor if his course lay in a similar direction. He started nervously, looked at his watch, and said he feared it was getting rather late. Wetherton continued his strenuous puffing, but his wife exclaimed that it was ridiculously early, and begged I would not think of rushing away so soon. She wanted me to tell her more about the place, the people ; what was the thing and what was not the thing, and answer a thousand other inconsequent queries. Of course I declared I was hers to command, but that she really must excuse me to-night, as I had a very important engagement. She pouted prettily, said she believed all the people in Hong-Kong were horrid, and then very graciously allowed me to depart.

The next morning I met her in the Queen's Road, and stood chatting with her for a minute or two before Lane-Crawford's. The doctor of the Yang-tse was her escort, and in the broad daylight he looked more like a second rate clerk than ever. Nor did the daylight render her more fascinating. The mystic charm of the evening had flown, and a little pale-faced woman with drab hair stood before me. I went away feeling that Wetherton had been hugging a delusion to his soul, for which that arrant fraud, Distance, was mainly responsible. Who has not gloated over the irregular features of his dear till they become perfect in their classic cut? Her undeveloped figure takes to itself a delightful contour: even her empty talk has a resounding fulness as of the sea.

I saw her again that night at a bazaar at the Town Hall. Wetherton was with her this time— that is, he was as near as he could get. The doctor's long figure had blotted him out, and a curious slouch the medico looked in his long tails and black tie. He had evidently been dining with the Wethertons.

And thus it was all the time the Yang-tse was in port. Wherever you saw Mrs. Wetherton you had not far to look to catch a glimpse of the doctor, who seemed to follow her about like a great stupid dog.

Of course the fellows began to talk. First it was an extremely knowing look, then a smile, then an expression of good-will towards Wetherton. I like such expressions of good-will. They are so consoling. But people will talk in these small places, the curse of such places being that you cannot do a thing without your neighbours knowing it. Wetherton, however, being perfectly oblivious of their good-will, went unconcernedly on his way, and, if he had any qualms, he managed most skilfully to conceal them. His black moustachios still retained their formidable bristle; in fact, it might almost be said they bristled more than ever. To all outward appearance Mars himself had set the seal upon that face. And yet I thought that the eyes were not as steady as of yore.

I met him again some three days after the Yang-tse had sailed for Shanghai, and speedily learnt that the doctor had gone with her.

'Shanghai!' I echoed quite innocently, for at times the best of us are nothing better than sucking doves. 'I thought she had gone home.'

And then, before he knew what he was doing, he blurted out, 'I wish to God she had.'

He saw the surprise in my face, and flushed darkly. Then taking out his handkerchief and mopping his forehead, he bitterly complained of the excessive heat for that time of the year. Poor little chap!

Some two weeks later I met Mrs. Wetherton in her chair, and, behold! there was the long doctor walking by her side! So the Yang-tse had returned from the north! I passed on with a bow and the stereotyped smile, but I was not without the belief that there might be serious developments at any moment. The doctor, though stupid, had the tenacity of the mule; the woman, though frail of body, was not without some force of character. She would be very thin one day, angular and ugly, but she would nevertheless issue the word of command. Woe betide the underling who disobeyed those clean-cut lips!

I only called once after the Yang-tse had returned, but the reception I met with was one not calculated to appease my personal vanity. The doctor was there, Wetherton was there; and while the former seemed exceptionally stupid, the latter appeared like a man who knows not whether to charge or to retreat. Mrs. Wetherton was polite, if distant, but as unsociable as a woman with a headache. Indeed, she only seemed capable of the least utterance after inhaling the inspiration from her smelling-bottle. Wetherton saw me to the gate, and at my expression of the fear that his wife was not looking well he launched out into a fierce diatribe against the island. It was not fit for white men to live in, much less delicate white women, and he was a fool ever to have allowed his wife to come out. She couldn't breathe, simply couldn't breathe, in the heavy atmosphere, and— here he shook his head gravely— he had no wish to leave her at Happy Valley, pretty as that resting-place was. Though I didn't think such a contingency was possible, I hypocritically told him to cheer up and hope for the best. The climate always affected new comers more or less, but it was marvellous how soon they grew accustomed to it. I knew it would rapidly improve once the Yang-tse left the harbour.

If I remember rightly, the ship stayed about a week in port on her homeward voyage; and though I saw neither Mrs. Wetherton nor the doctor during that period, I heard that he was still as attentive as ever, and that Wetherton was rapidly developing into the worst-tempered man in Hong-Kong, The woman, I could believe, was cool enough. I could imagine her thin, curling lips, her white, placid face, her heavy eyes aglow with determination. Wetherton would find it much easier to rule five thousand able-bodied privates than one such delicate woman.

The night before he sailed, the doctor dined with the Wethertons at the Hong-Kong Hotel, and I afterwards saw them at the theatre, apparently enjoying the rather stale humours of a local Christy-minstrel show; but as to what happened after there is considerable doubt. One says one thing, another tells you a totally different story, and between conflicting rumours a pretty set of exaggerations was circulated.

But it is a fact, and one to which the policeman on the landing-stage will bear witness, that between half-past five and six on the morning that the Yang-tse put to sea, Captain Wetherton, his face livid with excitement, his attire in a shocking state of disorder, arrived and made some breathless inquiries concerning that particular ship.

'Sampan!' he shouted wildly, 'sampan!' and when the boat came alongside, he stepped aboard, and, waving his hand out across the bay, cried, 'The Yang-tse, quick, quick— the Yang-tse!'

The sampan man looked up with open mouth and a smile peculiarly Chinese. 'Yang-tse 'ave all-ee same gone, Cap'n.'

Wetherton looked round like a man in a dream, and clutched the roof of the sampan for support. 'Is that so, constable? '

'Indeed, sir, yes. The Yang-tse sailed at daybreak.'

Wetherton groped his way out of the boat, and staggered across the road like a drunken man.

WHEN I met him a week after, I thought he had aged a good ten years. His head was not carried as proudly as of yore: even his tight trousers had lost their spruce, aggressive look.

'They tell me Mrs. Wetherton has gone home in the Yang-tse?' I inquired.

'Yes,' he said, with a bold attempt at easy familiarity; 'I was always afraid this damned climate would never suit her.'

________________

12: Spy!

The case of the Strange Villa

Max Brand

Frederick Schiller Faust, 1892-1944

Detective Fiction Weekly, 5 Jan 1935

Max Brand is the best known of Faust's psuedonyms, although he was invariably known to his friends as "Heinie". He was immensely prolific, and his technique, as related by his good friend Frank Gruber in "The Pulp Jungle", was simple. Each and every day, starting at 9 am, he would sit at his typewriter and write fourteen pages, no more, no less. He kept this up, year in year out, for many years. From 1926 to 1938, his most productive years, he lived in Italy, in a villa near Florence. (This story was written in that villa.) During WW2 he conceived the idea of going back to Italy as a War Correspondent, and he was killed during action in 1944.

1: The Leader From the Sky

UP there at seventeen thousand feet the moon shone and the stars were scattered, with the plane of Anthony Hamilton flung across them like a flat stone skidding over a pool. But he had to sink out of that clear beauty to the earth, and all the warmth of his electrically heated clothing could not comfort him. Two miles beneath him lay a smooth white sea of clouds, which meant a low ceiling out of which he must land.

Or perhaps clouds and fog continued all the way to the ground, and in that case he was probably a dead man. Usually he looked to every detail of preparation himself before stepping into a plane, but on this occasion he had left arrangements in the hands of a subordinate. A parachute was missing. To get one meant delay and in the counter-espionage service of the United States delay is not permitted. Lives must be run to a schedule like a train-service. So he had taken the chance. The little monoplane had shot him through the chill of the upper spaces at four miles a minute and here he was over his goal, with the tank empty and the gasoline fading out of the reserve. There again he had been a fool to trust another man's word about the rate of fuel consumption in this new type of engine.

In spite of the fog, he knew almost to a hair's-breadth the exact scene which was clouded over. Just south lay Mont Agel with Monte Carlo at its feet, and just about under him, in the rough of the hills, lay that flat valley where he was expected.

If the head of a single mountain had lifted above the white floor, he would have been able to place himself perfectly, but perhaps not perfectly enough, to locate that narrow strip of valley. At four miles a minute there is not time for deliberate calculation. He remembered, suddenly, the last time he had teed up a bail on the golf course of flat-topped Mont Agel, with a feeling that he could drive off right into the blue of the Mediterranean, Now all that beauty was stifled in deadly white. This great, liquid bowl of the sky had at the bottom a dirty sediment into which he had to sink.

He banked and turned, with a slight giddiness, a sense of losing balance, a pressure in his ears; then he dived. It was as though he stood still with the stars flying upwards, turning from-dots into dashes of brightness. The air screamed on the struts, whistling a tune as loud as the hurrying drum-beat of the motor. The clouds lifted at him, not the smooth white floor they had appeared from above, but high-surging waves, a sea struck to ice in the middle of a storm by one touch of interstellar cold. The waves grew into hills of volcanic crystal; they exploded upwards, and now he dropped like a stone through the upper translucence, through a brief margin of gray in which cloud-forms appeared, abortive and shapeless, and down into the blind hollow of darkness.

The altimeter showed him a thousand feet, and still the wet darkness blew about him. He had the inevitable feeling that the instrument was wrong and that he was about to strike that instant, on earth which would be turned hard as steel by the force of the impact. But the altimeter must be trusted. That is the first lesson in blind flying. He set his teeth, smiling a little.

Five hundred feet— three hundred—

The bottom of the well was just beneath, and still there was not a gleam, not a glimmer of light. The curtain of cloud dropped its thick fringes right down to the earth. On such a night, even automobiles would be crawling in second along the winding mountain roads.

Something appeared on his left, vague as the first loom of land to a ship at sea. He turned right and felt, rather than saw, the ragged side of a mountain. He was flying level, using that sheer instinct which was one of his greatest gifts in the air. He had readjusted the angle of his propeller-blades so that they would take a smaller bite of the thick sea-level atmosphere, but he wished for more power when he felt again that presence of a solid mass on the left.

He turned right, and again from another crag to the right once more. He realized, now, that he was swirling about blindly inside the cup of a mountain valley which was very narrow but perhaps three or four miles long. It must be that he had dropped down on the very goal of his journey. He dropped his one landing-flare. The gleaming line of it flashed, went put. It had struck water.

He sank lower, to two hundred feet, to one hundred—the very sword-edge of danger was at his throat, now, when he saw three dim eyes beneath.

He circled at fifty feet. Hands blacker than the darkness struck up at him. He had slid just over the tops of some trees, but he could make out a cone of radiance extending from those three eyes— a cone that flattened on the lower side. That flatness must be the ground. He shut off the motor and flattened out. Wings beat at him, left and right— more trees. The wheels struck, staggered the plane into a crazy wobbling which he righted with a delicate touch, and then the little monoplane was whispering lightly over grass, slowing, stopping.

WELL, the thing was over and in the service men must not allow themselves to ponder over many strange phases which they add, from time to time, to the history of their past. Anthony Hamilton pulled at a few buckles, shed his heavy flying suit, and stepped out of the plane into the creamy verge of the illumination shed by the three headlights. At this moment one of them went out ; the other pair swerved forward and an automobile stopped just before him. The full glare fell on Hamilton and showed him a little older, for the moment, than his twenty-seven years. He had that sight stoop of the shoulders which comes from much bending over books— or tennis-rackets. He seemed a bit grim— for this instant only— but a moment later he was smiling. He was always smiling, and this gave him an air of inexhaustible, boyish good nature.

A big man got out of the automobile and came up to him. The headlights" were dimmed at the same moment, leaving only a dusty glow in the fog.

The waxed ends of the big fellow's mustaches were gleaming as he came up to Hamilton.

"This is not a landing field for airplanes, monsieur," said he.

"It is not a highway for automobiles, either," said Hamilton.

"Monsieur, I am an agent of the Sûreté. May I ask for your paper of identity?"

"Certainly," said Hamilton. "Will you take a cigarette from me, at the same time?"

"You are very kind," said the big man. He took a cigarette from the case which Hamilton offered and himself supplied the light, holding it just a part of a second longer than necessary close to the rather unhandsome face of Hamilton. And Hamilton turned, as a man will, a little to the side as he reached into a inner pocket. He took out a pigskin wallet among whose contents he began to fumble slowly. In the meantime the eye of the big man was occupied by certain characters which became visible along the cigarette, little luminous marks that showed, one by one just before the paper curled and charred. The first portion of a signature became visible, letter by letter, before the agent of the Sûreté cried out:

"But you can't be the man! You're twenty years too young! I beg your pardon, Mr, Hamilton."

"I suppose I ought to thank you for a compliment," said Hamilton. "You're Harrison Victor, of course?"

"I am Louis Desaix, of the Sûreté," said the other, "and only Harrison Victor in Ohio and a few points east."

He shook hands, then called:

"Jack! Come here, will you?"

A second man came from the automobile.

"John Carney— Anthony Hamilton. This is the new chief, Jack. Carney's the man to take care of the plane, Mr. Hamilton."

"How you dropped it down the middle of this well I can't understand," said Carney. "We saw the landing flare hit the pool yonder and then we waited for the machine to smash and you to bail out and come floating down in the parachute."

"I should have bailed out instead of feeling my way around this room in the dark," said Hamilton," but a fellow at the other end of the line forgot all about the parachute."

"You came anyway?" asked Harrison Victor. "You must have known that there was fog down here before you started."

"I couldn't tell that there was fog all the way to the ground. Did you bring out gasoline for the plane?"

They had plenty of it and the two helped Carney carry the tins to the monoplane,

"How is she?" asked Carney. "I'll have to wait here alone until daybreak and I'd like to have something to think about."

"She's fast as a bullet and nervous as a two-year-old filly," said Hamilton. "She takes the air like a bird, but watch her when you make a landing."

They said good-by to Carney, who knew where to take the plane, and got into the car. Harrison Victor trundled it over the field, gained the road, and slid through the white smother with increasing speed. He seemed to feel the road by instinct.

"Will you paint the picture for me?" asked Hamilton,

"Show me the part you know, first of all."

Hamilton leaned a little closer. "That letter was a beauty. I can recite it.

"'Number 1815'— my number is the same as the date of Waterloo, so it will be easy for you to remember— 'Number 1815, you will go at once to Monte Carlo, abandoning all other work. At the Pension Mon Sourir there now resides, or frequently visits, the Number One secret service man of Japan. His nationality and name are unknown. Discover both, together with his present purpose in Europe. Our source of information cannot be drawn upon further. It is dead.' That was the main portion of the letter. The rest was a sketch of how I should proceed down here and where you would pick me up. They might hare picked out an easier spot, I suppose."

"SOMETIMES," said Harrison Victor, "Washington is a little more than three thousand miles away from good sense. But at any rate you're here, and that's a comfort. Officially I heard that you were coming; unofficially, I learned that you were the man who did the big job in Okhotsk. That was why I was surprised when I saw you."

"You know in a Russian winter it's easy to grow a beard," said Hamilton.

"How old are you, really? Twenty-four?"

"Twenty-seven."

"I was wrong again. It must come from living a lot and not giving a damn."

"Victor, what have you fellows turned up, down here? What's the Villa Mon Sourir?"

"You know Les Roches?"

"That point which runs out to sea?"

"Yes. Mon Sourir is down there in a huddle of pines. An old Italian villa. It's owned now, or rather rented, on a long lease by a Californian, a bearded fellow called George Michelson. He has his daughter with him. She runs the place as a pension."

"What sort of boarders?" Hamilton asked.

"Usual Riviera run. Polish girl— invalid. A German. A Czechoslovak. An American called Harbor. John Harbor. Vicomte Henri de Graulchier. Just the usual Riviera hodge-podge. No, nicer than usual, most of them. We've looked the place over as well as we could."

"Have you put an agent in the house?"

"We tried to. We sent out Louise Curran. Know her?"

"No."

"Ah, you don't know her? Louise is a card and she's turned up some good tricks in her time, for the service. She went out and tried to get a room, but the place was full up. No vacancies in sight. So I had Bill West go out to lake a look at things. You know him?"

"He worked for me in Ireland, one summer."

"Great Scott, are you the man who—?"

"Ah, never mind that."

"I mind, but I'll shut up. You're the whalebone and rubber man who did all the fox-hunting, are you? Ah, well— I sent Bill West out, as I say, and he got into the place all right."

"Find out anything?"

"Yes, he found the Vicomte de Graulchier looking down a revolver at him. Hardy fellow, that vicomte. Fat-looking little chunk, but hardy. Of course Bill had to go to jail as a burglar. He's in for five years, and nothing that any of us can do about it. That's all the forwarder we are about the Villa Mon Sourir. As far as we can make out, the place is innocent, all right. All except John Harbor. And I think that he's the Japanese Number One. You never would expect it, either. Sleek, lazy, good-natured blighter. Likes his afternoon vermouth. But we've caught him cold taking code messages."

Drifts of blinding light poured towards them, like bright-blowing squalls of rain. A succession of automobiles wound by, each screeching a horn in sudden alarm, all of them groaning in low gears; but Harrison Victor shot his own big car along with a sort of random ease, as though he were not aware that his fenders had clinked once or twice like small bells against the passing mudguards.

"Got the code?" asked Hamilton.

"No, it's a hard one to work."

"Where does he got the messages?"

"In the Casino at Monte Carlo; but we don't know the source. We've tried, but we can't tell where he gets them. However, we have copies of a lot of them. A whole book of them. Once we decipher the code, the job will be finished."

"That sounds too easy."

"Everything is easy in this game— unless you die while you're winning."

"Japan wants the entire east for herself," Hamilton said. "If she has sent her Number One man to the Villa Mon Sourir, hell is going to pop. And I don't think it will be simple to get to the bottom of that hell."

"We've thought of that in a good deal of detail?"

"Do you know who Japan's Number One is?"

"Not even his complexion."

"No one does," answered Hamilton. "We only know one bit of information. Japan's Number One is the fellow who induced Theodore Roosevelt to intervene in the Russo-Japanese War. Honestly, you know— to prevent bloodshed, bring world peace nearer, and all that. But his intervention probably saved the skin of Japan. She'd spent her last yen on the job when Roosevelt started persuading Russia towards peace. Wherever Japan's Number One is now, you can depend upon it the entire interest of Japan is invested. She wouldn't send him five minutes away from Tokio unless there were some new stars in the sky. This job is vital, Victor."

"I guessed at most of that."

"Going back to Mon Sourir. You don't find anything extraordinary about the place?"

"Not a thing. Not a single thing except George Michelson's daughter."

"Well, what about her?"

"The loveliest thing I've ever seen."

"Ah, I see," said Hamilton.

"No, you don't see," said Harrison Victor. "When I said 'loveliest' I mean just that. Perfect."

"Greek goddess, eh?"

"She's what the Greeks might have produced if they'd kept maturing for another twenty-five centuries. Phidias a little lighter in the bone. I've looked into her because I've looked into everyone in the Villa Mon Sourir. I've found out that she swims the American crawl, went around the rocks and bumps of Mont Agel in seventy-eight honest strokes, flies an airplane, drives an automobile like an Italian devil, speaks French, German, Italian, Spanish and— God help me— Russian, also."

"Describe her, will you?"

"She's going to he with her father at the Casino, tonight. And that's where I'm taking you. You'll see her for yourself. Luminous as a blonde, mysterious as a brunette. Most damned, exquisite smile."

"And she runs a little pension on the Riviera?" asked Hamilton.

"You know. Her father isn't so young or so welL"

"What an equipment she has to be the world's Number One secret service agent," said Hamilton.

2: Red and Black

THE architect of the Casino at Monte Carlo is the man who erected the Opera House in Paris, a fellow with an instinct for overloading everything. His attempts at ornateness merely gave a puffed and stuffed effect to his exteriors, and his interiors are as overwhelming as an assemblage of fat dowagers. Besides, gilding and regilding cannot brighten Monte Carlo, and all the lights cannot penetrate the grave shadow which enters the mind. The flush and sparkle of after-dinner parties who come in for a dash of play soon passes. Women assume Spartan manners. They never cry out with joy; they never groan or exclaim. They win with austerity and lose with contempt. Besides these casual visitors there are the serious players, who sit about the tables equipped with paper and pencil, making rapid notes, busy as bank clerks with their systems. These are the real devotees, and their pale, stern faces tell us that Chance is a dark goddess.

Anthony Hamilton, entering in a dinner jacket in the middle of the evening, looked so young, so rich, so American, so flushed with wine and good nature, that it was astonishing to see such a man without company. His presence was felt at a roulette table at once. Even the serious players looked up at him with a faint gleam of contempt and prophesy as he began to play single numbers.

He laid hundred-franc bets, three of diem, always on the nine, and watched his money whisk away. In the meantime he was spotting the characters from the Villa Mon Sourir who, as Harrison Victor had promised, were gathered at this table. By Victor's descriptions he could identify them easily- The big fellow with the rigidly straight back and the sour face who kept consulting his "system" and jotting down numbers was John Harbor, the American from Mon Sourir. The fellow with the short legs and large head, he whose swarthy skin was pricked full of small holes like needle-scars, was the Vicomte Henri de Graulchier. He had the stiff upper lip of a drinker, and his black eyes were continually empty.

Yet his dignity was interesting, and so was the purity of his English, which retained only a slight oil of the French "r's." The very blonde girl was the Pole, Maria Blachavenski, too thin to be pretty except when she smiled. George Michelson of California wore a beard and mustache, so trimmed that he had a Continental look, but a certain bigness of body and of voice betrayed his Western origin from time to time. He stood behind the chair of his daughter, Mary Michelson, watching her lay her small bets with careful precision.

She was beautiful, yet her beauty seemed to Hamilton to be a very dull affair. He was about to decide that Harrison Victor's paean of praise was a worthless enthusiasm, when she looked up to her father with a smile. Then Hamilton saw the light; a great deal of it. It was true that she could have been lost in a crowd, but everyone who looked at her twice would be stopped.

These were the representatives from the Villa Mon Sourir. As for the agents who worked under Harrison Victor, there was only one present.

That was Louise Curran, exquisitely dainty and fresh and good to see. Apparently her "system" could not occupy all her attention, for every now and then she would lift her hand-bag to powder her nose.

In reality, as Hamilton knew, she was catching in the glass, and memorizing, with lightning adeptness, whole columns of the figures which John Harbor continually scribbled on a small pad, jerking off the sheets one by one and putting them under the pad. It was in this manner, and with other simple methods, that Harrison Victor had collected quantities of the notations of Harbor. The instant the code was known, a flood of information would pour into the hands of the American counter-espionage service.

Well, all codes can be solved. That is the old saying, but Hamilton did not believe it. In the meantime, what was the source of the information which Harbor was noting down? It might have been almost anything; one of the horns which sounded dimly from the street, the almost imperceptible tremors and fluctuations of one of the lights in the room, the hand movements of some other person, writing at the table, the finger-work of the croupier as he wielded his rake. There were a thousand ways of conveying steady messages such as Harbor was writing down; and that he was scribbling a code there could be no doubt to anyone who considered the sort of numbers he employed. At roulette there is nothing higher than thirty-five, but a typical page of Harbor's notes had read:

15 — 331

245— 86

90 — 191

Under this column of figures appeared a line for addition, but the sum which appeared in the result had, apparently, nothing to do with the column of figures itself.

STUDYING the calm, still face of Harbor, Hamilton decided instantly that the man himself did not know what he was taking down. The figures were not his shorthand report. They made an unintelligible jargon until they were decoded.

Hamilton, laying his fourth bet on the nine, was surprised by a win. Thirty-five hundred francs was not a great haul, but it was something; eyes lifted to him again from around the table and he permitted himself to laugh with a vacuous joy.

It was one of the major triumphs of his art, the production of that laughter, whether it were silent or noisy. He had worked for months perfecting it until, at his will, it could sweep every semblance of intelligence out of his face and sponge all record of thought from his brain. John Harbor seemed overwhelmed by disgust as he stared at the laughing face, so overwhelmed that he suddenly rose from the table, dropped his writing pad into his coat pocket, and left the room.

Hamilton drifted behind him through the room. The size of the stake he had won furnished him with an excellent excuse for leaving the table at that particular moment. He watched John Harbor go out into the garden and slipped after him.

The fog still covered the night, so that the garden lamps shone through enormous halos. The pavement was wet. The palm trees glistened dimly. John Harbor, walking impatiently up and down, tipped one of those gracefully arching branches and cursed the chilly shower of drops that fell on him. He began to brush his coat dry with a handkerchief but still he looked about him, until it was apparent that he was waiting to fill an appointment.

Hamilton slipped quietly up behind the palm tree nearest to his quarry and then— he had eyes in his feet like any jungle tracker and the thing should never have happened— he stepped into a hole left where a small paving block had been removed, no doubt for replacement the next day, and pitched forward on his knees.

He had trusted to the tree and the fog so entirely that he fell almost in touching distance of Harbor, and that big fellow whirled about with a grunt of fear. He must have been keyed to an electric tension because, as he turned, he snatched a gun and fired point-blank.

The thing was incredible; it could not have happened; but while the brain of Hamilton was disclaiming the possibility of the entire affair his hand was jerking an automatic from the spring holster which supported it under the pit of his left arm. The first bullet had missed him; the second would not. Still down on both knees and one hand, he shot John Harbor through the head and saw the body fall face down. The impact was like the whack of a fist against bare flesh.

Hamilton, rising, waited for half a second. No footfalls came towards him; from the streets of the town roared and whined the noise of the automobile traffic. At any moment attendants might pour out around him, and in that case, he was a dead man. The first rule of the counter-espionage service is that its agents receive no government support when they operate abroad. So, for half a second, he contemplated instant flight.

The next moment he was leaning over the dead man with swift hands at work. Fountain pen, wallet, watch he recognized by the first sweeping touch. A hard, flat box in the left coat pocket he drew out and found it to be a book, a little volume of Everyman's Library bound in dull green cloth— The Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, by J. H. Speke, that strange fellow whom the great Burton had hated and envied so. He slid the book back into the same pocket, located the little writing pad with its rustling loose pages beside it, and decided to leave all in place.

Tie looked once more down at the loose body, the hands which grasped inertly at the stones; then he drew back into covert behind the palms. No doubt it was still dangerous for him to linger near, but it was very important to discover the persons with whom Harbor had appointed this trysting place.

Another long, long minute drew out; then he heard the quick, light tapping of heels and saw coming straight towards the dead man Harrison Victor's angel of beauty and of grace, Mary Michelson.

3: Cold-Blooded Angel

SHE was tall, and she moved with the crisp step of one who is enjoying a walk. From brightness to brightness, she moved across the cloudy dazzle of the tall lamps.

He waited to see her take heed of the falling body but there was no pausing in her approach. She walked straight up to the dead man and leaned over him. Her hands were busy. As she straightened he saw that she was putting into her handbag the little Everyman volume; and with it went the notations which John Harbor had been making that evening.

That seemed cold-blooded enough, but that was not all. With her handkerchief— to prevent finger-marks, of course— she picked up the automatic, which had slithered away to a little distance, and put it inside the grasp of the dead fingers of Harbor. Then with that swift, light step which seemed a special attribute of virtue, she went back into the Casino.

He followed; after making sure that there was no mark on the knees of his trousers to indicate the place where he had fallen. He was just coming in from the garden when he saw Harrison Victor pass out through the doorway. He hailed Victor with a murmur and drew him aside.

"Your beautiful angel is one of them," said Hamilton. "John Harbor is dead, and I've seen her plunder him of his notes of this evening as well as a book. What the book could have to do with the business I can't tell. She was as cool over the dead man as a bird over a fallen seed."

"Is she one of them?" said the agent of the Sûreté, sadly. "Well, I've never fallen in love without having it shaken right out of me again. What killed Harbor?"

"I did," said Hamilton. "A damned clumsy, stupid business. But at one time I was on my knees, and he was putting bullets past my ears. He was just a little nervous. But the girl, Victor— she's the one for study. If she were honest, she'd be an angel; since she's a crook, she's probably a devil. I have to be introduced to her."

"You killed Harbor?" murmured Victor, but he added, calm at once: "I don't know Mary Michelson."

"Send one of your men to the table where she plays and have him try to nail her stakes; I'll interfere; that will be introduction enough."

"If you want to go about it— if you don't think that's too much college farce?"

I believe in college farce," said Hamilton.

"Farce in the house and dead men in the garden, eh? I'll arrange it as you say, of course."

Well, it was not strange if Harrison Victor were distinctly cool. Who could tell what disastrous effects the killing of Harbor might have? Before he went in, Victor said:

"I've just had a report from Jack Carney. The fog lifted back there in the valley and as soon as he saw a star he jumped the plane at it. He says that little amphibian swam across the sky just like a goldfish across a bowl. In three wriggles it was over the sea and through a lucky rift he was able to get down to the water. He says he still feels as though he had been riding in a thunderbolt; he's bumped a shower of sparks out of the sky."

Hamilton went back into the game rooms, but stopped a moment on the way to have a pony of brandy. There is nothing that loads the air with alcohol fumes as cognac docs. If he gave the impression of having had a drop too much it would be as well.

The girl, as he had expected, was back in her place with her father now at her side. If she were a part of an international spy ring, it seemed certain that her father was implicated also. The great forehead, the noble openness of eye in this man denied such a thing as much as did the beauty of the girl; and Hamilton remembered with a leap of the heart that men and women can give their lives to espionage because they are capable of loving danger and their country.

He drifted idly about the table, making his bets two hundred francs now, and merely laughing in his foolish, silent way when the croupier raked in his money. The girl had just won on the black when a long arm reached from behind and collected her entire bet.

"The lady's money, my friend," said Hamilton, and gripped that arm at the wrist. He looked up into the face of a tall man who was breathing whisky-fumes.

"Hello! Hello!" said a very English accent. "Isn't that money mine?"

"I'm afraid it is not," said George Michelson.

"Oh, I laid my bet over there," said the stranger. "Frightfully sorry."

He moved off.

"THAT was nice of you," said the girl, smiling up at Hamilton. He favored her with his witless laugh.

"I was watching your system," he said," and I can't make a thing out of it. Deep, isn't it? I've tried systems, but can't keep on any of them for a whole evening. Some idea of my own comes buzzing along and there I go again, chasing butterflies. May I sit down here?"

"Of course," she said.

He took the chair beside her, luckily vacant. She was giving him only a partial attention, the rest going to a consideration of the lists of figures which composed her system. Now she was placing a new bet. The lack of makeup, he saw, was one thing that made her beauty a little dim, but the absence of artificial color set off the intense blueness of her eyes. He never had seen anything quite like that blue.

"You're English, aren't you?" asked he, babbling along.

"No, American."

"Ah, are you? So am I. Came a had cropper down in Virginia a while back—schooling a green idiot of a five-year-old over ditch and timber—and the doctor said I'd better have a change of air and no horses. So over I came to take the old spin around."

He pointed to a small lump at the side of his forehead. It was quite true that he had had a bad fall from a horse, but not in Virginia. A bullet from an old-fashioned Persian musket had killed the gray Arab mare he was riding as he got out of Teheran towards healthier and less romantic names on the map. Well, that was simply another sentence that belonged to the dead book of the past.

"I know some Virginia people," the girl was saying. "Sally Keith, for one."

"Do you, really?" He flicked like lightning the complicated card index of his memory. "Why, this is like an introduction! Sally taught me my manners cub-hunting, ten years ago. Perhaps you've heard her mention me, because she still makes table-talk out of the silly things I did that day? My name is Anthony Hamilton."

"Perhaps I have heard her speak of you. I'm Mary Michelson. Father, this is Anthony Hamilton, who knows Sally Keith in Virginia."

The big, bearded man stood up and shook hands with a good, strong grip. "That was a quick eye and hand you used on that sharper, a moment ago," he said.

4: Fools Rush In

WHEN he left the table he signed to Victor and met him outside the building.

"Have the Michelsons a car?" he asked.

"I have it spotted," said Victor. "Any luck?"

"No, I've registered myself as a feather-brain, a poor, harmless blighter. That's all. They're charming, but they won't be drawn. We've been introduced, and that's all."

"What do you make of her?"

"Absolutely nothing. She might be a saint, except that I've seen her pick the pockets of a dead man. Put a good man on Michelson's car. Have him fix it so that the machine will break down hopelessly a few miles out of Monte Carlo. And not too near to Les Roches. The moment they start off, send a man to my car and wake me up."

"Wake you up?"

"I'll be asleep."

He went to his parked machine. It had a compact body and one of those all-weather tops that go up and down as easily as an umbrella. The seat beside the driver's could be flattened out until it gave almost the comfort of a couch. Hamilton stretched himself on it, closed his eyes, and resolutely toppled himself off the edge of consciousness into the fathomless oblivion of sleep.

A voice at his ear brought him at a step back to full possession of his wits. A shadowy arm was pointing and the voice saying;

"There they go— Michelson and his daughter alone in the car."

He had his own swift machine instantly on the way. It had the long, low hang that he liked and it took corners as though it were running on tracks; so he snaked through the crooked streets of Monte Carlo without ever losing sight of his goal. He was not really out of the city at any time, but merely away from the thickest heart of it. Michelson drove fast, but it was child's play for Hamilton's racer to keep in touch.

He wondered whether or not he should have spoken to Harrison Victor about the singular importance which seemed to attach to the copy of Speke's "Journal." However, that importance would no doubt be a few mysterious annotations which John Harbor might have made on a fly-leaf. Perhaps it was chiefly to receive this book that the girl had the appointment with Harbor; and yet they lived in the same house, where she must have the leisure to meet him as she chose.

These questions were so small that they were only worth registering, not long consideration.

They were well out from the city when the tail lights of Michelson's car wavered, then stopped at the side of the road.

Anthony Hamilton halted immediately behind them.

Big Michelson had the hood open and was leaning over the engine, but it was the girl whose hands were busied. "Ah, Mr. Hamilton! What a chance to meet you here!" said Michelson.

The girl, however, did not lift her head at once from the engine she was examining.

"Not a chance at all," answered Hamilton. "You see, there's not much around here for me except weather and wine and roulette, and I wanted to find out where you live. You don't mind, Mr. Michelson? Let me try to be useful."

"The carburetor's gone," said the girl, straightening at last. "Hello, Mr. Hamilton. Will you give us a lift home? We'll have to send garage people to bring in the car."

"But how could the carburetor go, my dear?" asked the father.

"I don't know," she answered. "It's a bit weird, altogether."

"I'll get your things out," said Hamilton. He was already at work as he spoke, lifting an overcoat and a wrap out of the little automobile. But first his hand had touched the evening bag of the girl— and found it empty! She had disposed of Speke's "Journal" as quickly as this. The book became, suddenly, of a vast importance It was instantly the entire goal of Hamilton's search.

He got them comfortably into his car and drove, turning in the seat so that he could keep on chattering. But the way to Les Roches was all too short. The car was quickly among the boulders and pines of the little peninsula and now they directed him to stop at a great gate of wrought iron in the middle of a pink wall.

The yellow mimosas of the garden within showed vaguely through the mist in the glow of the headlights. The same light, passing down the length of the wall, found the rocks of a beach and the thin hint of waves under the fog. Over the gate appeared the name: Mon Sourir.

"We should ask you in," said the girl, "but we're responsible for the pension, Mr. Hamilton, and one of our guests is slightly ill and is a frightfully light sleeper."

"You know," said Hamilton, "if you have an extra room I'd like to come here. I'd move in tomorrow morning."

He stood so that the light would fully illumine the vacuous smile with which he admired her. She showed not the least amusement or contempt.

"What a pity that every room is full, just now," she said.

"But may I call?"

"Ah, of course you may. Good-night, Mr. Hamilton. How kind you've been!"

Michelson gave him that hearty handshake again.

"Drop in any time," he said. "We both want to see you."

That was all. Hamilton, watching them through the gate, studied the coat of Michelson with care. There was a slight bulge of the left coat pocket— about such an enlargement as one of the Everyman volumes might make.

HARRISON VICTOR came to his room in the hotel the next morning and sat in a corner smoking a foul black twist of an Italian cigar, turning his mustaches to more delicate points. He looked perfectly the part of Louis Desaix of the Sûreté.

"There's no note in the papers about the death of John Harbor," said Hamilton, in the midst of dressing.

"The body's been found, the Villa Men Sourir consulted, and John Harbor is at the morgue. The papers will carry no articles about the suicide."

"Suicide?"

"Of course. The gun was found gripped in his right hand."

"The girl put it there, and his gun was not of the right calibre to make the wound."

"My dear Hamilton, this is Monaco, where the skies are so blue and the sunshine so golden that people don't want to examine into every ugly little death. The authorities help to smooth things over. Suicides in the Monte Carlo gardens don't help the flowers to bloom. And then it seems that John Harbor was a very obscure fellow. No connections to bother about him. He'll be quietly buried and forgotten. This has happened before." .

A boy brought up a long white cardboard box. Hamilton gave the tip and opened the box when the messenger had left. Inside was a long sheaf of pink roses, freshened with a sprinkling of dew.

"Who's sending you flowers?" asked Victor.

"Old fellow, I'm in love. I'm taking these flowers for a morning call. Yes, a morning call. Because, last night I was swept off my feet, overwhelmed, devastated by meeting the beautiful Mary Michelson."

"You're a cold devil," commented Victor, without smiling.

"On the contrary, I'm burning with passion," said Hamilton, yawning. He was in his morning coat now, and he turned this way and that to examine his appearance. He was, in fact, a very trim figure, except for that slight stoop and forward thrusting of the shoulders. More than ever he looked, from behind, like a student, and from in front like an athlete.

"You know people don't go in for that sort of thing own here?" asked Victor.

"I'm an outstanding type," said Hamilton. "I'm one of those genial young asses who, having been raised in a certain way, never varies a trifle in any habit of his way of life. My mindlessness is so complete that I could never manage to vary my clothes according to my climate. And, this being the morning of the day, morning clothes are required. Also this stick."

He drew the beautiful, mottled Malacca through his fingertips, admiring its delicate luster.

"And these gloves of yellow chamois cleaned just enough times to fade them white. And the monocle, too. That's a real convenience. It can drop out of my fool face at an embarrassing moment and give me another second to compose my answers. Besides, I have an extra glass in my pocket that turns it into a good magnifying piece."

"You're an extraordinary smooth article," grinned Victor. "Do you never lose your face? I mean, do you always remember which face you're wearing?"

"No," said Hamilton. "Years and years ago when I was just a youngster— it must have been four years altogether— I forgot myself completely while I was sitting cross-legged opposite one of those black Sahara Arab sheiks. He showed me my error by reaching for me with a knife."

"He didn't harvest you?"

"You know, if you sit cross-legged in just the right way, your feet are always free. I kicked the sheik in the stomach and managed to get to his best camel. She was milk white, and she did all my thinking for me for three days."

"Are you off now?"

"Not until you approve of me?"

"You'll get a glance from every eye. You'll be well-known to half the people in Monte Carlo before the day's over."

"If I can keep attention fixed on my left hand, Victor, I can do wonders with the right. By the way, which was the room of John Harbor, over at the Villa Mon Sourir;"

"On the ground floor, the third door on the left down the main hall."

"And the girl's?"

"Mary Michelson's? She has the room opening on the second story loggia and looking out to sea. Hamilton, I know that you're a clever workman, but I want to remind you that already we have a man in jail for snooping about the Villa Mon Sourir. And Bill West is a clever fellow, too. Awfully clever."

"Of course he is. But he wasn't in love. You forget, Victor, that all the world loves a lover."

5: The Vanishing Room

RIVIERA climate is as unreal as a colored postcard. Beyond the mountains lies the land of the cold mistral, but along the Ligurian coast a fringe of summer remains when all the rest of Europe is overcast with white winter. That golden warmth seemed to Hamilton, on this morning, more like a pictorial effect than ever before, a bit of expensive staging put on by the Casino to content its guests.

But the fragrance of the mimosa was real. It carried an honest touch of spring into the air. So he was breathing deep as he drove with the blue sparkle of the sea on his left and that delicate fragrance in his face. Coming down the Avenue de Monte Carlo, he took the Boulevard Albert Premier past the great bowl of La Condamine, and so on by the gardens and palace of the prince until he came out on the road to Beaulieu.

He was taking his ease in the car, with the top down and this warmth of the miraculous summer flowing about him. Okhotsk had been a different affair; and in a few days a new order from Washington might fling him half-way around the world on a new mission. Even that uncertainty was a delight to him, for it was part of the joy of the chase, whether he were the hunter or the hunted.

He turned left, now, into the road which wound among the glimmering boulders of Les Roches, and when he looked out through the trunks of the pine trees the ocean rose as a steep blue wall on either hand, about to flow inwards and close over him. The pink walls of Mon Sourir appeared, and he drove through the open gate with an odd feeling that the panels were closing automatically behind him. The drive circled around a tall cluster of mimosa trees. He stopped his car at the side and rang the bell of the house. The dark fingering around that bell seemed to tell him that the Villa Mon Sourir had abandoned the dignity of a private residence and become a public place.

A butler in gray-striped working jacket and apron opened the door to him. Hamilton gave his card.

"I am calling on Miss Michelson," he said.

"She is not in, monsieur."

"Not in? But I'll wait for her. I'm sure she expects me."

It seemed to him that the square, solemn face of the man forbade his entrance still, but he stepped forward with his witless smile and the butler gave back.

"This way," he said, and ushered Hamilton into a little waiting room. The open window of it let him see in a group all the inhabitants of Mon Sourir except Mary Michelson. They were seated in the spicy shade under a pair of stone pines: the gigantic Czech, Karol Menzel; Hans Friedberg with no back to his German head;, Ivan Petrolich, the Russian invalid in his wheelchair; the beautiful young Rumanian, Matthias Radu; sleek and soft as a Levantine, or a woman. The Polish girl, Maria Blachavenski, was there, at the side of the huge George Michelson. and the Vicomte Henri de Graulchier was not seated but sauntered slowly about. He wore a loose tweed coat in spite of the weather and kept his hands in the pockets of it. He spoke with authority that had a caress in it, like one speaking to children, explaining difficult things with a restrained impatience.

George Michelson was saying, at this moment:

"The great southern valley of the Volga is the storehouse, the granary of the country, and if that were held securely—"

But here the butler, crossing the room to the window, said rather loudly:

"Is the light too glaring? Shall I lower the shade. Monsieur Hamilton?"

"It's very pleasant that way, with the sea breeze blowing in," he answered. "Will you put these flowers for Miss Michelson in water?"

The man carried the long box away, and Hamilton, taking a chair and lighting a cigarette, observed that he still could command a view of the interesting group beyond the window. They had altered a little. The hand of George Michelson was no longer raised as though about to emphasize an important point. Pale Maria Blachavenski no longer sat so eagerly erect. It was as though a stress were removed and the people were relaxing after the strain of effort. The talk was still about Russia, with the vicomte now holding forth in the lead.

"Come, Ivan Petrolich! You are a Russian. Maria, you are almost a Russian—"

"Henri, no Polish woman is a Russian. I beg your pardon, Ivan Petrolich, but a Polish woman is removed by thousands of light-years from a Russian."

"Ah, I understand," said the invalid. His head sank into the cushion at the back of his chair and his pale face was smiling a little. He had almost closed his eyes.

"You are both Slavs," said Henri de Graulchier. "And when we talk of race instinct, there is something more important than national boundaries, little national prejudices and blindnesses."

"Unless one is French, Henri, and then of course it is understandable, it is necessary," said Friedberg, the German.

"WE should argue peacefully," declared the vicomte. "And the point that I wish to make is that the Russians are not a melancholy people."

"Ah, come, come!" murmured Matthias Radu, the beautiful young Rumanian.

"I mean it, and I ask for unprejudiced witness. The Russian is not melancholy. He is simply Asiatic. Because he rubs elbows with the Occident and is different from it, he is erected into a mystery by the Western nations. His music, which contains some of the natural wail and minor quality of the Asiatic, strikes the Occidental ear as an expression of sadness. The contrary is the truth. The Russian is gay."

"These are simply statements, de Graulchier," said huge Karol Menzel, the Czech. "I know a good many Russians."

"You don't!" said de Graulchier. "Not at all!'

"Ah, I don't?" murmured Menzel.

"Certainly not. All you know are the educated upper tenth of one percent. And those are the people who speak French and English, drink more Burgundy than vodka, and have been expected by their European friends to be mysterious, day-dreaming, melancholy; expected so long that soon they are willing to play the part that is desired. Half Hamlet, half Gargantua. That is your educated Russian— again I beg your pardon, Ivan Petrolich."

"You always delight me with your aphorisms, Henri," said the Russian.

"Not aphorisms. I am telling you the truth. Open your eyes to see it. The real Russian, the peasant with his bit of land, is always happy unless he is starving to death. On half a franc, he knows how to make fiesta. There is nothing mysterious about him except the depth of his beard. Admit that I am right."

"There's no use disputing with him," declared Karol Menzel. "Since the days of Napoleon, every Frenchman has argued by Imperial edict."

They talked on, but there was to Hamilton only one thing of interest in this conversation, and that was the quickness with which it had been changed in temper. When he first located the group, it had been tense with attention to the words of George Michelson, who had been declaring that the Volga valley was the granary of Russia, and that if this district were held....

Well, held by whom?

It would have meant a great deal to Hamilton to have heard even ten seconds more of the speech of George Michelson. But suddenly— as if at a signal— the talk had altered, still flowing smoothly along about Russia, but totally diverted in significance, and devoid of any importance.

In fact, the signal had been given, either by the voice of the butler at the window or by his gesture as he lifted his hand to the shade. It was very significant. It meant that even the servants in this house were deep in the affairs of the masters; it meant that the master, the guests, the menials, every living soul in the Villa Mon Sourir was engaged in working towards a single purpose!

What was that purpose? Something which was the will of Japan, no doubt To he sure, exactly such a hodge-podge of nationalities might be discovered in a dozen pensions or hotels along the Riviera, where the world comes to recapture spring; yet it was noticeable that in this group there were representatives of Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Roland, Germany, France— all nations which bordered on Russia or had some vital interests in its future and the fate of its government.

Perhaps there were still other representatives— in the kitchen or the garage! Perhaps Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Sweden had sent men to this conference with Japan's Number One secret service agent.

Was he one of those men who sat there talking outside the window? A fellow who had been alive—though only in his early twenties—at the time of the Russo-Japanese War, would now be in his middle fifties at the least. Friedberg was old enough; so was George Michelson. They were the only ones. No, perhaps the smooth face of Henri de Graulchier made him seem a full ten years younger than the fact.

However, the great probability was that Japan's ace was well hidden from view. He was more apt to be an occasional visitor to Villa Mon Sourir than one who dwelt in it.

A TINGLING passed through the nerves of Hamilton. He knew perfectly that dramatic situation in the Far East caused by the swift expansion of Japanese population, Japanese ambitions, Japanese trade. They had a great floodgate opening for them in Manchuria; and even that bitter land would be a Paradise of opportunity to many of them. But they were not likely to rest content. They needed more and more soil. Their population would be a hundred million, before long— a hundred millions of intelligent, strong, active people, all welded into a single purpose.

Who could deny them? The Philippines were close to them, an ideal extension of their empire; Hawaii was not very far away. And if the fringes of China were already crowded with inhabitants— well, the inhabitants could be swept out and place made for the conquering Jap. But while these great schemes were in progress, the wisest course for Japan was to keep the Russian bear well occupied with domestic problems west of the Urals. With war, or revolt.

The picture grew in the fertile imagination of Anthony Hamilton. Villa Mon Sourir might be the nerve-center of the entire brain of Japan, at the present moment. And one wasp-sting, planted on the vital spot, might paralyze the will of a nation of ninety millions.

He rose, walked to the door, and glanced down the hall. The third door down— that was the room of the dead John Harbor. Hamilton, bending his head a little, tried to listen around the corners, since he could not look around them, and when he made out no sound near him, he walked down the hall. He realized that he might be making his last steps if he were discovered prying into the rooms of Mon Sourir— that is, if his first vague conjectures about the people in it were proved to be correct.

When he reached the door, he paused for another instant, then quickly opened it and glanced inside.

It was no longer a bed-chamber. It had been changed overnight into a living room.

6: Silly Ass

THERE was no trace that the room ever had been equipped with a bed. A pair of comfortable sofas flanked the fireplace. A very good Persian rug with the famous pine-tree pattern on it occupied the center of the floor. On the window there was a pair of curtains of heavy linen, with peacocks embroidered on it in blues and in rich greens. A rather silly little bronze group of Zeus and Europa crowned the mantlepiece.

Hamilton closed the door and went back down the hall. There were reasons, of course, which the owners of the pension could give. They would declare that they did not wish to continue in the intimate role of a bedroom a chamber which had been rented only so short a time before by a man now dead. But what was really important was that, in this way, they were enabled to wipe out every identification mark of the man who had lived in that place. Not a footstep remained behind him— and the work had been done quickly.

An almost running footfall came up behind Hamilton.

He turned, and saw the butler bearing down. There could have been many ways to interpret the expression of the fellow's face, but to Hamilton there was only one: it was physical threat

"What's the way out into the garden?" he asked. "Awful lot of people out there, but I don't seem to find the way."

The butler paused. He was breathing a bit hard, and he looked down at the floor as though to disguise the expression which was glowing in his eyes.

"Mademoiselle Michelson, she is coming to see you," he said.

Hamilton returned to the waiting room and was not surprised to see the group outside the window had disappeared. He lighted another cigarette, because he needed to think. But before thought, in came Mary Michelson, carrying in the scoop of her arm a bowl that held the great spray of roses.

"Did you bring these?" she asked.

"They made me think of you," said he. "No blue in them, so they're all wrong. But somehow I thought about you when I saw them. So lovely and fresh, you know. Never can think of anything when I see a florist shop. But today I thought about you. Glad you like them."

She looked at the flowers and then transferred her smile to Hamilton. "I do like them a lot," she said. There was a certain gentleness in her voice that Hamilton had heard before, and he thought he recognized the intonation of a girl addressing a man who was patently a weak-wit.

Consequently he smiled more radiantly than ever.

"You know what I was thinking, Miss Michelson?"

"I'm afraid that I don't."

"Down at the Métropole they have a new orchestra. All-American like a football team. All champions. There's a fellow there on the slide trombone— you know how a trombone blasts the cotton out of the ears? But this chap makes it sing. Actually sing. You know, I thought we might trot down there and have a dance or two, one evening. Spot of dinner— and they have some fine old Pol Roget. Absolutely the stuff! Then we could dance a couple of turns. What do you say?"

"How sorry I am that I haven't this evening free!" said the girl. "You've been in England a good deal, haven't you, Mr. Hamilton?"

"Now, how did you notice that?" asked Hamilton, beaming. "Went to a school down in Sussex. You know the sort of place. Headmaster all full of algebra and Greek and gardening. Nothing heated except the entrance hall. Boiled in that and froze every other place. Chilblains. Great place for chilblains. Never saw so many chilblains. Hands absolutely purple with them. Good old England! You know— history and all that. Forbears, and that sort of thing. But I'd rather think about it and let the other fellow live in it."

"Would you?" she said. "Well—"

She kept on smiling, quietly, thoughtfully. She was seeing all the way through him. Or was it quite all the way? She was in very crisp white and the reflected light shone on the brown of her throat. Her smiling, he thought, was like an added color to the picture. In her hair there was a special radiance.

"Or, you know," said Hamilton, there's Ciro's, if you like that sort of thing. Wonderful cellar, there. Good music, too. We might trot around Ciro's for a while.

"There's so much to do here at the pension," said the girl," that I never have my work finished. So I never know."

"Ah, don't you?"

"No, I really don't."

"AH, but look here. You'll come out with me one evening, won't you? Never know what to say when I have to sit and talk. That's the reason they have music. A few fox trots in the air—they give a fellow like me a chance to entertain. You will come out with me one evening, won't you?"

"Oh course," said the girl.

"But soon, I mean?"

"I hope so."

"I know what it is— being busy," said Hamilton. "Used to travel with a valet and it wakened me early in the morning to think out something for the fellow to do, all day. Can't give a valet nothing to do. Corrupts them. Ruins them for their next master."

"Mr. Hamilton, I lead a very simple life here and—"

"A simple life can be the devil, can't it?" interrupted Hamilton, with his smile. "My Aunt Hester leads the simple life. In a barn. It used to be a barn, at least. At Worcester, Mass. Gets along with three servants. I know all about that. But all I mean is a simple party. Listen to some music. Trot around a little. Enough music to wipe out the silences. I never know what to talk about very well."

"I think you do— amazingly," said the girl.

"Ah, do you? That's nice of you. The fact is that I think we could get on. The moment I saw you, I thought we could get on pretty well. If you can put up with a silly ass like me. My Aunt Hester always says that I'm a silly ass."

He laughed his most vacuous laugh.

"Not at all," said the girl. "And of course we could get on. I want to see you very soon."

"The butler has my card, and I scribbled the telephone number of the hotel on it. You wouldn't give me a buzz, would you, when there's time on your hands?"

"Oh course I would. I'm so sorry that I have to look after things in the kitchen."

"Oh do you? Well, I'll trot along, then. Won't forget me, will you?"

"Of course not."

"Really, though? That's a promise?"

"Of course it's a promise."

"That's fine," said Hamilton. "It warms me up a lot. It's good to hear. This Riviera— you know— a lot of climate— blue and gold— all that— Casino— only silly girls. You know, the ones that won't listen to the music. Just chatter. I'll wait to hear from you, Miss. Michelson. Tell you what— I can whang a guitar. Quite a bit. And sing a little. Nothing to write home about. Untrained. But I'd like to sing to you, if you can stand it?"

"I want to hear you," she said.

Her smile had almost worn away before he got out. He could nearly hear her comments behind the closed door, as he stepped into his long, low-hung racer, and shot away towards Monte Carlo.

From the hotel, he sent for the agent of the Sûreté, Louis Desaix, alias Harrison Victor, who found him lounging beside a window in the westering, sir, drinking wine and eating Roquefort with crusts of French bread.

"I had to have you, Victor," said Hamilton. "When I found out that they had Château Lafitte, 1906— glorious year, eh? I knew that if I didn't have company, I'd finish off the bottle all by myself. Château Lafitte! 1906! My God, Victor, when you think of the fellows who spend their money for brandy and soda—"

"How long have you lived in Europe?" asked Victor, touching his, mustache-ends tenderly.

"That doesn't matter. I only need to tell that I was raised on a farm. So things go deep. Things like 1906 Château Lafitte."

"Tell me a dash about yourself."

"Sometime, I'd like to."

"Sometime, eh?"

"Nothing personal,old fellow."

"Hell, no," said Harrison Victor.

He poured some of the wine into a glass, looked towards the. sunlight through the glass, and sniffed at the brim.

"Ah, God!" he said. "Why is it that France is so full of the French?"

"Otherwise," said Hamilton, "all the world would want to live here. It's one of the acts of the Almighty. I hope you have a religious nature, Victor?"

"If I didn't, how could I be in the service?"

"Exactly. I, for one, have a religious nature. In France, I take the French wine and leave the French."

Harrison Victor tasted the Bordeaux and closed his eyes.

Hamilton covered a bit of crust with a green bit of Roquefort and handed it to his assistant.

Said Victor, presently:

"They call Roquefort the drunkard's bread. Now I understand for the first time."

"There's the pity of it," murmured Hamilton. "We never can get drunk."

Victor sighed. "What did you find out?" he asked.

"The thing has to do with Russia. Japan's agent Number One is probably George Michelson, Friedberg, or Vicomte de Graulchier."

"De Graulchier is not old enough."

"Perhaps not. I though of that, too. But on the other hand, he's the only one of the lot who might be a Jap."

"Jap? He's perfect French!"

"You may not know all about the Japs. Perhaps you haven't lived in Okhotsk. Anyway, tonight I'm going to try to find out."

"How?" Victor Harrison asked incredulously.

"By entering Mon Sourir."

"Hamilton," said Victor," don't do it. Something tells me that those fellows would shoot anyone at night."

"Not a dog who's in love," said Hamilton. "And how in love I am! I've even asked her to spend an evening at Ciro's, and you know that costs like the devil."

7: The Burglar

THERE is hardly a thing in the world so clumsy, so malformed, so apt to speak with a voice of its own at the wrong moment, as a guitar. Anthony Hamilton decided that before he had scaled the pink wall of the garden of Villa Mon Sourir. A light tap brought from the instrument a groaning sound which would not die quickly. The felt in which it was wrapped seemed to retain the sound like moisture and cherish it whole seconds after it should have died.

In addition, the night was clear. Even frost could not have made the stars glitter more brightly, and in addition there was a half moon sailing like an ancient ship across the sky and throwing its golden shadow down the sea. From the top of the wall Anthony Hamilton contemplated that beauty without pleasure, partly because light was the last thing he wanted for his excursion, and partly because the top of the wall was guarded with fragments of broken glass, imbedded in the cement. Moreover, he saw a shadowy form approaching him through the little orange trees. He should, of course, have dropped back outside the wall into safety. Instead, being Anthony Hamilton, he dropped down inside the wall and scuttled to the shelter of a black shadow beneath a shrub.

Crunching footfalls came near him from one side; footfalls which were not echoes drew close from the opposite direction. The first man paused not three strides away. The second halted facing him. Hamilton, through the black openwork of the leaves, could see them both against the stars.

"All quiet?" said the first man.

"Too quiet," said the second.

They spoke in the Czech tongue, which was just a little odd for night-watchmen on the Riviera, and which strained the brain of Hamilton to the utmost. He had hardly more than a book knowledge of that strange language.

"What was that which came over the wall?"

"Nothing. What did you see?"

"A shadow dropped over. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye."

"A cat, perhaps."

"Or a man, perhaps."

"A burglar, you mean?"

"There are better things than money to be stolen here."

"No one m the world suspects this house."

"So we think, but the Head, the Master, does not think so."

"He calls 'fire, fire' so often that no one will believe him even when the flames begin to rise."

"It's better to talk about fire than it is to be burned."

"Well, what do you want to do?"

"Keep the eyes open and look about."

"For a man?"

"Yes."

"Begin here, then."

They separated. One of them walked straight towards the bush which sheltered Hamilton. He put a hand on the gun under his coat. The fellow halted with the leaves of the shrub brushing against his trousers.

"Nobody would try on a night as bright as this," he said.

"Nobody but a fool."

"Fools don't matter."

"Aye, and that's true. Come on, then, but keep your eyes wide open."

"Do you think I'd sleep on the job when I'm working for him?"

"No, because you'd never wake up, perhaps."

They continued their rounds in opposite directions. It was very odd indeed. Even the French police might like to learn of a quiet little pension which employed two private watchmen to walk the rounds ceaselessly every night, watchmen who talked such good Czech!

Hamilton waited until the footfalls were soundless, and then he walked straight across the garden. He avoided the gravel paths, leaping over them, because the most cunning step in the world, even the velvet paw of a cat, cannot help but make a slight rustling noise when it passes across gravel. The rest of the soil was dug up about the roses and the iris, of which there was an abundance, but Hamilton knew the cunning art of sinking his feet into soft ground without allowing so much as a whisper to sound on the air. In this way, taking long, slow, dipping steps, he crossed the garden and stood in the shadow under the wall of the house.

Voices were speaking inside the place. He could not dissolve them into words and he could not identify the speakers except when a booming laughter, resonant as a note struck on a great gong, came sounding out to him. Only the throat of huge Karol Menzel could have produced the sound. He had made on the mind of Hamilton an impression that grew with the passing of time. He was a sort of smooth-shaven Richard Lion-Heart, big in body and bigger still in savage potentiality. Among the voices of the men he could distinguish.. slightly. the higher pitch of women speaking.

That should mean that the loggia above him would be unoccupied—unless burly Czech watchers made the rounds of the house as well as of the grounds. He looked upwards to estimate the best way of approach.

AS convenient as a ladder, the bars of a window climbed in a great, half-decorative scroll towards the loggia above. He gripped the felt covering of the guitar in his teeth, and climbed. He would have been wiser, perhaps, to have left the guitar on the ground below, but in case of a crisis such as might happen, the guitar was really his passport, his proof and voucher of idiocy.

He climbed very slowly, though even so the infernal guitar gave out certain murmurings and moanings as though ghostly hands were thrumming it. Now he stepped over the low wall of the loggia and entered the shadow cast down from the moon. The cold of danger was in that darkness.

A glance over his shoulder showed him the dusky sea, flowing with a quicksilver brightness down the path of the moon. A sail blew out of nothingness, stood black against that path and slid away into dimness again; far out a thin line of lights marked the passing of some big passenger steamer.

The loggia was full of chilly little whisperings from the sea breeze in the vines. Some pots of large, strange-shaped flowers stood along the foot of the wall. There was a mat of woven grass and a long bamboo chair for bathing in the southern sun. Beyond appeared a double door. The glass panes of it winked at him like a dozen black eyes. He tried the handle. It was not locked, and he pulled half the door open, slowly, slowly.

In spite of all that care the door made a little trembling jingle of sound; and out of the darkness laughing voices were suddenly loud. To his sharpened senses, tongues seemed to be speaking in the very room before him, mocking the stealth of his entrance; but of course that was illusion. By degrees he placed the noise at its proper distance down the stairs. For the inner door of the room was open.

That was tenfold unfortunate. If he closed the door, a passing servant might notice the change. If he did not close it, he was apt to be seen at any instant as he began his search. One of those queer, senseless panics which he had known before swept over him. As the years went on, his nerves did not grow better. They became distinctly worse and the time might come when he would betray himself by a shuddering palsy of fear in a crisis.

He moistened his lips and took hold of himself with a firm grasp, frowning a little. Then a ray from his pocket torch— it was hardly larger than a fountain pen— cut the blackness like a knife. If by chance he were seized and searched, he would be damned by the possession of that clever little light, perhaps.

The ray glanced over the rough yellow satin of a bedcover, over the blue wall-hanging at its head; it glimmered across the mahogany top of a table, flashed like a startled eye in the triple mirror on the dressing table, touched the chairs right and left. In a moment the plan of the room was mapped faultlessly in his memory. He could switch out his light and walk as though by daylight from place to place, secure of not touching any obstacle. In Okhotsk he had learned that art of moving in darkness with the surety of the blind.

Under the mattress of the bed, in the drawers of the dressing table, under an edge of the rug, somewhere in the closet, in the adjoining bathroom— through the half-open door he had caught the sheen of porcelain— in any of a dozen places he might be able to discover what he wanted—that little Everyman volume of Speke's famous "Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile." It was so important that a dead man's pocket had been picked to obtain it. Now Hamilton was determined to find the true reason for its significance.

He was about to start towards a small hanging shelf of books near the fireplace when he heard a soft pulsation— a rhythm rather than a sound, which passed down the hall. He shrank back towards the door to the loggia. But it was too late to escape that way. He was still long steps from it when a thin silhouette appeared against the obscure gloom of the hallway; then the electric lights flashed on.

A gray-headed man with towels over his arm went with a soft whisper of slippers straight into the bathroom. His head was bowed a trifle, thoughtfully. Hamilton, as he disappeared, sank on his knees behind the back of a chair.

The light in the bathroom, clicked off; the whispering step recrossed the room. Once more it was snapped into darkness; but still Hamilton remained for a moment on his knees, taking breath.

When he rose, making sure that nothing stirred outside the vague gloom of the inner doorway, he took an instant for thought. It might have been that the servant, going on the routine of his work, had seen nothing living in the room. Again, if it were true that every member of the household staff was a trained secret service worker, as Hamilton suspected, the man might have been aware of Hamilton instantly, but have gone on his way with an automatic calm, retreating to cut off the stranger's way of escape. The alarm even now might have sounded. Downstairs, not a voice was heard—then a subdued murmur of laughter.

Perhaps they were laughing as they received word that a stranger had dared come into the lion's mouth.

Still, Hamilton went straight forward to the hanging shelf of books because there was a decided understratum of the bulldog in his nature. The torch light he ran across the books in that case found them all volumes of Everyman, all of them dull green. And one, just to the right of the middle section, bore the title of Speke's "Journal!"

8: The Song of Life and Death

HE had it out instantly. He was by no means sure that this was the identical volume which he had seen in the possession of dead John Harbor, until he noticed a deep wrinkle at one corner which might have been caused by a fall. He would not have been able to mention that peculiarity if he had been asked to describe the book, but now he remembered it by touch. This was the very volume which he had taken from the coat pocket of Harbor!

He opened it swiftly, not to the text but to the fly-leaves, playing the slight radiance of his torch upon the paper, but there was not a mark either in pen or pencil, however faint!

Sighing, he shook his head with a frown and fluttered the pages of the book. A small white slip disengaged itself and fluttered away like an awkward moth. He caught it out of the air. It was a bit similar to those on which Harbor had made his notations. On it appeared the swiftly scrawled column of figures, except that there was no line for addition at the bottom of the sheet, like the following:

336 — 211

469 — 172

436 — 64

The answer struck him suddenly, with a shock like that of remembered guilt. It was simply a book code and the interpretation of the mysterious numbers which John Harbor had written down in the Casino was, simply, numbers of pages and of words on pages.

He turned to page 336 and, counting from "we hoped would soon cease to exist " at the top of the page, he got down to word 211.

"Tolerably."

That word would probably make sense in a message. It was a beautiful start, but of course he had to check the result. Very swiftly, because his trained eye had learned to calculate with a smooth speed, he reached word after word and found himself writing out a sentence:

"Tolerably Burial To To The—" No, there was no sense in that at all.

He went back and added, to his counting, the title words at the top of the page, on the left, always, "Source of the Nile," and on the right the sectional topics.

In this way he reached the following word group:

"Indifferent Chiefs The Villagers Fact Men Arrive Customs."

It seemed to have a vague sense. If it was a collapse telegraphic form of expression it might mean that "indifferent chiefs" had some sort of relationship to "the villagers." But "men arrive customs" was a stumbling block.

He lowered the book and closed his eyes. Down the stairs the voices were carrying on merrily. A very thin fragrance of tobacco smoke ascended to his nostrils.

Then he started his work all over again. He included this time, not only the titles at the tops of the pages but also the page numbers, including the numbers as words to be counted. In this manner he got at the following message:

"Opportunity In England Killed Rely On New Diplomacy."

A fine sweat burst out on his face. He set his teeth over an exclamation of triumph.

An opportunity in England had been destroyed. They must rely on a new diplomacy!

That made sense, perfect sense. It meant that in a single night's work the mass of copied messages which Harrison Victor had accumulated could be turned from naked figures into speaking words. It meant that Tokio had been stung to the quick— if indeed Tokio were at the bottom of all this. It meant that he, Anthony Hamilton, had scored another tremendous success—if only the brilliance of his work would be appreciated in Washington. And at least one of the brains there was not asleep! The suddenness of his triumph would be a convincing thing, after Victor and the rest had worked so long!

He felt an imminence of something— a danger coming— and then through the trance of exultation, he heard light footfalls coming very rapidly up the stairs.

He replaced the slip inside the pages of the book, slid it back into its place on the shelf, and glided to the door. The footfalls were very near, now, but he used a precious second or so of extra time to push the door open silently, and then, catching up the infernal burden of the guitar, he stepped out onto the loggia and shrank back against the wall.

AT the same time the lights went on inside the room. He could see beautiful Mary Michelson in a dress of clouds of smoke-colored lace, with a red silk wrap thrown over her arm. She was singing softly, smiling as she sang.

Well, however exquisite, she was one of them. She would have to be involved in their ruin, when he managed to compass that. And it would go very hard if out of the mass of notes in the hands of Harrison Victor, he did not manage to build up a charge of espionage against this whole crew. The French system of justice worked with wonderful precision in dealing with such cases. Sentences were dealt out quickly, and no sentence was short.

Mary Michelson, her father, the pale Russian invalid, thin-faced Maria Blachavenski, overbearing Henri de Graulchier— they would all be erased from the scene at a single stroke!

He retreated to the side of the loggia and was about to swing himself down onto the window bars beneath when he heard a voice saying:

"Well, he could have gone up this way?"

"Where?"

"Along the bars of the window, fool!"

"That's true."

The two Czechs were murmuring quietly together.

"And then through the door of Mary's room. It's never locked, day or night."

Very odd that two hired night watchmen should refer to their mistress by her first name!

The thing was as perfect as a blossoming flower. It was rounded and beautiful and complete. Every man and woman at Villa Mon Sourir belonged to the group of international plotters.

The fly in the ointment was that the retreat of the spy was cut off neatly and hopelessly. If he stirred from the loggia, he would be seen by the two men. If he attempted to withdraw into the room— why, there was smiling Mary Michelson, who, with one outcry, could bring a swarm of hornets about him.

There was one device left. The childishness of it set his teeth on edge, but stripping the felt from the guitar, he reclined in the bamboo chair and began to sing, softly, gently touching the strings of the guitar, that popular song about "the wavering ocean" and the "flood of his emotion," with "eyes" and "rise" and "skies" all neatly rhymed in the middle of the chorus.

He had about reached that spot when the door of the bedroom was thrust open and Mary Michelson appeared, with one hand behind her. He could guess what that hand was holding. But at the sight of her, he closed his eyes, bent back his head, and gave his whole soul and his whole vocal strength to the silly words of the song.

As the song ended, he saw Mary Michelson sitting on the edge of the loggia wall, smiling at him. From the corner of his eye he was vaguely aware of two shadowy forms beginning to loom. But the girl's hand moved, and the two half-seen shadows instantly disappeared.

"Mr. Hamilton, how did you manage to get here?" asked the girl.

"Over the wall like an alley cat," he said. "That was a pretty good one, don't you think? I mean, kind of a good ring and swing to the chorus, you know!"

"Yes, it has a sort of swing," said the girl, still smiling.

She was watching him, not very intently.

Into the doorway of her room burst the gigantic form of Karol Menzel.

"What's this?" he called.

"My friend Mr. Hamilton dropped in with the loveliest serenade," said the girl.

"Ah?" said Menzel. "Serenade? Ah?"

"Ask him out to join the fun," said Hamilton.

"Won't you come out and join the fun, Mr. Menzel?" asked the girl.

"Fun?" said Menzel. "No. I won't join the fun. Excuse me, Mary, if you please."

"Certainly, Karol," she answered.

The giant disappeared. For the first time, Hamilton was able to appreciate his strength fully. There was something about his hands which called attention to his physical force.

"Oh, by the way, Karol," called the girl, "will you tell Henri that I'd like to see him— after a while?"

"I'll tell him," boomed the voice of Menzel, which was always like a sound out of a cave.

"I say," said Hamilton, "you know that song, 'Nothing to Tie to?'"

"No, I don't."

"It's like this." He sang:

"Nothing to hang to;

Never had an anchor;

Nothing to sigh to;

Nothing to tie to—

"Do you like that?"

"It has a nice rhythm," said she.

"It picks up your feet, what?"

"I think it would," said she.

"When the old saxophone comes in there— ta-da-ta-deedle-dum! 'Listen, is that good?"

"Yes, it is," said Mary Michelson.

SHE nodded, smiling just a little. She was so lovely that the least bit of smiling cast a great light. "Here's one of the newest of the new," said Hamilton.

He leaned back his head and sang, sadly:

"Snow in the sky,

That's why I cry;

Everything gray,

Ever day.

All around

Only the ground

Is bright

And white;

But when I look up, every day,

Ev-er-y-thing, is gray!

"What do you think?"

"Ah— well, I don't quite know what to think," she said.

"Something neat about the words, what?" said Hamilton. "Look at that bit:

"All around

Only the ground

Is bright

And white—

"I mean, it seems to mean something. And look at the way the rhymes come in so fast!"

"Yes, the lines are short!" she said.

"I was thinking about that song today," said Hamilton. "I mean, it was meant for me, today. You know— plenty of sunshine— mimosa in the air— the sea bluing itself up bluer than ever. But I was down."

"Ah, were you?"

"I was. I was wondering what you were thinking about me. Some people feel that I'm a silly sort of an ass. I was wondering: do you think that?"

"No. I think you might be very clever— one of the cleverest fellows I ever knew."

"No, not that," he answered, laughing. "Not after what my algebra teacher said to me in the good old boyhood days."

"Perhaps the classics were more in your line?"

"I got as far as Caesar's bridge," said he, "but I never crossed the blighter. He was still laughing. "You know what we ought to do?"

"What do you think?"

"We really ought to go downtown and try the Métropole orchestra. Saxophone player there with a real soul."

"I'd like to," said the girL

"No, but really?"

"Yes, of course."

"A real party, I mean."

"That's what I mean, too."

"All the way from orchids to champagne, is my idea."

"It's so long since I've gone all the way from orchids to champagne," she said.

"Is it? Then we ought to."

"Yes, I think we ought."

"And just let the music talk for us."

"I'd like to just talk about nothing," she answered.

"The moment I saw you, I knew that there'd be something between us. You know, sometimes you can tell. Why shouldn't we step out tonight?"

"I'd like nothing better," she said.

"But?" asked Hamilton, anxiously.

"Couldn't we make it tomorrow?"

"Well, why not? But—"

"I never know why

The nights pass by."

He sang it with a wailing earnestness.

"It seems to mean that the nights we miss will never come back," he said.

"Yes, it does seem to mean that," she replied. "Suppose we say tomorrow evening?"

Henri de Graulchier's voice sounded at the door of the girl's room.

"May I come in?"

"Come in, Henri," she called. "Mr. Hamilton has just been surprising me with some music. And I was wondering if he wouldn't like to have you show him the house— because I have to go to bed so early? Won't you entertain Mr. Hamilton for a little while, Henri? Ah, but you haven't met. Mr. Hamilton, the Vicomte de Graulchier."

9: The Ordeal

IT all happened so smoothly and easily that Hamilton hardly realized how he was slid into the hands of the vicomte. Mary Michelson said good-night to them both with a charming smile, but as Hamilton turned away he had a distinct sensation that a telling glance had passed between the girl and the Frenchman. And he knew instantly that he was on trial for his life. When the door closed between them and the girl, he was sure that a distinct chance for mercy had been shut away.

Or could he be sure? Under her smile was the bright hardness of steel.

She had turned him over to the vicomte for an acid test.

The great form of Menzel appeared in a doorway.

"Come along, Karol," said the vicomte. "You know Mr. Hamilton, don't you? Mr. Karol Menzel. Come on, Menzel. Mary thinks that Mr. Hamilton would like to see the house. She had to turn in early. Poor girl hounded by the domestic duties, eh?"

He spoke very good English, with the slight French oil poured over it. Hamilton could feel it in his throat. Menzel had shaken hands.

"Might have a drink," he said.

"A drink, of course," said the vicomte with his fixed smile. A certain difference entered his face when he was smiling. "Any man who plays single numbers at roulette is sure to like his liquor."

"Funny thing," said Hamilton, "how lucky the nine can be, you know. You find them in fairy stories. The nines, I mean."

"Do you?" remarked de Graulchier.

"You know the fairy stories, of course," said Hamilton. "Tom Thumb and all that?"

"Ah, fairy stories? Yes, of course. Tom Thumb? Of course."

He did not know them, it seemed plain. He knew them so little that actually he attached slight importance to them. And in French there are plenty of the tales. Every Frenchman knows Tom Thumb.

Hamilton looked at the pin-pricked skin, the long, oval of the face of de Graulchier, and the odd shape and intense blackness of the eyes— a blackness with no shine to it. He remembered the queer effect that a smile had on that face, the sudden alteration, and he realized with a burst of inward light that he was not walking at the side of the real Vicomte de Graulchier. He was not with a Frenchman at all. This short-legged, heavy-shouldered man of an uncertain age was, in fact, an Oriental, a Japanese who by the grace of chance was endowed with rather Caucasian features. And if that were the case, this was the famous Number One of the Japanese secret service! This was the nameless and wonderful man who, at last, had left his post in control of the entire Japanese organization in order to go far abroad and create trouble with his own mind and hands.

Yet his French was perfect. His English was that of a Frenchman. Even the faults in it must have been acquired by infinite and patient practice.

Hamilton, pressing the guitar a little more tightly under his arm, knew that he was walking a path so narrow that one misstep would cast him over a precipice. In the choice of each seemingly casual, seemingly silly word lay the difference between life and death. Henri de Graulchier was walking down the stairs with a singularly elastic step. In fact, from his movements he seemed to be nearer forty than to the sixty which must be the truth.

They went down into the library, where Pierre brought in coffee and cognac. His square of a face retained habitually a look as sour as that of red wine.

Henri de Graulchier said:

"We keep a night watchman about. How did you manage to come across the garden without being seen?"

Hamilton winked and held up a forefinger. "I'm a hunter," he said. "When I heard footsteps, I dived into a shadow. The guitar made a moaning sound; and I thought that I was done for. But no, the watchman went on. I got up and skidded for the house. Not on the gravel paths. No, no!" He laughed.

"Ah, not on the paths?" said Menzel, looking very straight at him.

"No, no! Too much noise. Over the cultivated ground stepping with the toe pointed like a dancing master. No sound at all, except what a field mouse might hear. And so— there I was!"

"Well done, Mr. Hamilton," said de Graulchier, smiling.

"Aye," grunted Menzel.

"Queer thing, though," said Hamilton," I was half afraid to climb up to the loggia. Really was, on my soul. It didn't seem quite the picture— climbing up there. I wanted to tune up and sing my songs standing down there at the foot of the wall But then I remembered the night watchman, what? The jolly old boy might have collared me and walked me right off the grounds. So I climbed."

Menzel looked over at de Graulchier.

"Have another cognac?" asked the vicomte.

"RATHER!" said Hamilton. "I can always use a spot of the good stuff after an adventure like this. You don't think Miss Michelson minded, do you?"

"I think she was delighted," said de Graulchier. "Music and young girls—the two ideas go together, eh?"

"Music and young girls?" said Hamilton. "Hold on— that's good, isn't it?"

"De Graulchier is full of good things," said Menzel sourly.

"Well, perhaps I ought to trot along."

"Do let us show you the house," said the vicomte. "Miss Michelson asked us to."

"Thanks," said Hamilton. "Imagine turning in at this time of the night, though! Poor girl!"

"She runs the pension and that means a great deal of work with bills, and accounts," explained Menzel.

"Rotten luck, though," commented Hamilton. "Wonderful girl! Wonderful!"

"Let's show you the house, as she suggested. It will fill in a bit of the evening for you," said de Graulchier. "This room and the one below, eh, Menzel?"

"They're the best bits," said Menzel.

"Before the Riviera was a resort," said de Graulchier, "the Comte de Volens built this house. Built it big, as you see. Their minds were more spacious, in those days; they needed room for their ideas; and the result was high ceilings and plenty of air. You see how he arranged this room, with the windows opening onto the terrace?"

"Did he put in all the books?" asked Hamilton.

"They came with a later generation."

"I like books," declared Hamilton.

"Do you?" asked the blunt, heavy voice of Menzel.

"Yes," said Hamilton. "They give a nice look to a wall, eh? Always make me think of the time other people put in grinding?"

"In fact, they cover the wall with time," said de Graulchier. "We see their colors, but really we are seeing thought. A fourth-dimensional beauty is given to our surroundings by them."

"Really?" said Hamilton.

He opened his mouth and his eyes, and stared.

"Well, well— quite right, too," he said, and hastily swallowed his glass of brandy.

He looked up in time to see a sardonic smile fading from the lips of Menzel, but the unlighted eyes of de Graulchier still reserved a doubt. He was testing his man, but he was by no means sure, it seemed. If that doubt grew— if it increased by a single step— Hamilton was perfectly certain that he was a dead man.

"Fourth-dimensional— ah!" said Hamilton, and lighted a cigarette.

"You can find the history of the Volens family by running your eyes over their books. Solid people. Good minds. Read in four languages. And even read a little too much, as you'll see when you come to their eighteenth century books. Because there they made the fatal mistake. Their lives were not pleasant enough; they had to garnish their aristocratic minds with democratic ideas. That was the touch of garlic in the salad dressing, you see."

"Exactly," said Hamilton, staring more helplessly than ever.

"So many people of today feel the same thing," said de Graulchier. "They have possessions, taste, means to employ their minds to the fullest, and yet they insist on adding an extra pungency. They must touch knives and handle fire. They play with the ideas of Karl Marx, make a mystery of him, and so teach the man in the street to look up as though towards a great philosopher. But that is dangerous. For the man in the street wants no ideas except those which he can use like a club to knock down others. Shall we show Mr. Hamilton what happened to the Volens family?"

"I don't think he'd be interested," said Menzel.

"The way I'll tell the story— yes— I think that that would interest him. Will you come to the room below, Mr. Hamilton?"

"Of course," said Hamilton, rising with a false alacrity.

He had been under close observation, and now he knew that a gun was to be put to his head.

10: The Chair of Death

THEY passed down the hall from the library to a door which de Graulchier opened, revealing a flight of descending steps. Down these the vicomte went with Hamilton behind him and the giant Menzel in the rear.

"A pity that this part of the house isn't used more, in these days," said the vicomte, leading the way across a lower hall and into a long, narrow room with a vaulted ceiling. "A little damp, but always cool. A resting place, we might say."

He laughed a little, something he rarely did. And his voice was surprisingly high and cracked. Only in his laughter did his advancing age appear, thought Hamilton. A switch had turned on one light in a wall bracket. It made a glare rather than an effectual illumination and allowed the eye to pass through a big open window at the end of the room, and so out over the moonlit, dusky sea. One chair stood before the window. There was no other article of furniture in the room.

"Observe what I was saying about the folly of dignifying ideas of social reform with the attention of people of good minds. That brought on the French Revolution," explained de Graulchier, "and the Volens family was driven out. The comte became an emigré. The revolutionists wandered for a few days through the big rooms of this place, and then they withdrew because they were not at home except in their kennels and rabbit warrens. In the meantime, the poor Comte de Volens had taken shelter on board the English fleet. He pointed out to the admiral that this little peninsula would make an excellent foothold on the coast. The English agreed. The Comte de Volens therefore landed secretly, came to the house, and prepared to make a signal from that window— a signal which would be seen at night by the English, who would send a small boat close in to observe the light. But one of those revolutionary rats ferreted out the secret of the comte's presence. He was seized. In that corner of this very room, he was tortured until pain had driven him mad."

Here de Graulchier turned suddenly and pointed to the corner of the room. And Menzel made a soft, long step towards Hamilton from the rear.

"Why didn't poor Volens talk, then?" cried Hamilton. "Before I'd take the torture, I'd talk for them— I'd sing and dance for them, too."

He laughed a little; the sound echoed mournfully through the long chamber.

De Graulchier shrugged his shoulders and glanced towards Menzel. There might have been a thousand meanings in that glance.

"When they learned what the Comte de Volens had intended to do," said the vicomte, "they fastened that chair to the floor with bolts— which still hold it in place— and then— then they bound him hand and foot, and lashed him into the chair to look as long as he pleased at the sea. For the English never received the signal, never landed, and the Comte de Volens died like a dog—died as a spy should die!"

The voice of de Graulchier at this moment boomed suddenly through the room; he fixed his glance steadily on the face of Hamilton. Menzel, keeping directly behind the back of Hamilton, made some movement of preparation. And the horror which had come over Hamilton once before that evening, now surged up in him again.

He could not speak; and yet he had to speak— at once! For half of a terrible second he fought the panic. He could not speak, and yet he had to do something the equivalent of speech.

He walked straight to the chair and sat down in it.

"I HOPE they gave the poor blighter a cushion to sit on," said Hamilton. "Think of the ache of staying here— there isn't even a curve to the bottom of the chair!"

He could feel, rather than see or hear, the noiseless approach of Menzel from the rear. In front of him, eyeing him steadily, de Graulchier was studying his face. A quiver of his nostrils, the slightest change in his voice, and the hand of de Graulchier would make a signal to the giant.

Hamilton said: "But after all, Volens was able to die sitting instead of standing. You know that new song?"

He lifted his chin and half-closed his eyes—so that de Graulchier could examine him even more closely, at will; and Hamilton sang:

"Wearily waiting,

Sitting alo-o-o-ne

Wearily sighing—"

"Stop that!" boomed Menzel.

"Oh!" exclaimed Hamilton, starting from the chair. "Don't you like it?"

"I do not," said Menzel.

"Come, come, Karol," protested de Graulchier.

"Beg pardon, Mr. Hamilton. I mean, the echo in this room— knocks like a hammer on a fellow's ears, you see."

"Yes, the echo— yes, that's bad," said Hamilton.

He turned about and flashed his brightest, his most empty smile at de Graulchier.

"Awfully good of you to spend all this time on me," he said. "You know, I never would have guessed that Mon Sourir had a ghost in it. Looks so pink and cheerful, you know. Never would have thought that a place like this had its dead man along with it."

"Well, shall we go back?." growled Menzel. He looked askance at de Graulchier, who nodded, and they left the room.

"I used to think that crack in the wall, there," said de Graulchier, "was over some hidden passage."

"Strange how mistaken a man can be," said Menzel, with a certain emphasis in his accent.

"Yes, we can all make foolish decisions," said de Graulchier. "But sometimes it's wisest to suspect everything."

"Even blank walls?" said the growling voice of Menzel.

But Hamilton, a slight warmth and weakness of relief running in his blood, knew that he was safe for this moment, at the least. He was not yet clear of the forest, but de Graulchier had at least missed his first spring.

He could understand the vast difficulties which confronted the vicomte. If he searched Hamilton, for instance, and found nothing; if Hamilton were really no more than an empty-headed, serenading fool; then the rough usage would be howled forth to the sky as a frightful outrage. That attention from the French police which cf course de Graulchier least wanted to draw would be poured upon him at once, and perhaps all his work would be ruined. He had to try out his suspicions merely by an artistic pressure. Now, perhaps, lie was satisfied that Hamilton was no more than he seemed to be.

As they reached the upper hall, Hamilton said: "I'll have to be toddling along."

"Sorry," said the vicomte. "Do come again; but just let us know beforehand. We're expecting to have some savage brutes of dogs loose on the place at night. Wouldn't like to have one of them dine on you, my friend."

"How can they dine on bones and laughing gas?" muttered big Menzel.

11: The Code

ALL the way to the gate, Hamilton was singing gaily and quite loudly, and he paid no heed to the shadowy form which followed him at a little distance among the orange trees. In the road, a taxi picked him up and whirled him off from the Villa Mon Sourir.

He sank back on the cushion, exhausted, eyes closed, breathing deeply of the mimosa-scented air which streamed through the open windows. The treacherous chill of the Riviera night was abroad, now, but he needed that cold to revive him a little.

Yet he kept wondering at himself a little. He had been through a thousand dangers more obvious. It was simply the strangeness of the Vicomte de Graulchier and the deadness of his black eyes that had been wearing down his strength, with great Karol Menzel like a tiger stalking them through the house, ready to strike and kill at a word.

Half an hour afterwards, he had Harrison Victor in his room at the hotel, eating hothouse grapes and drinking a bottle of dry Chablis. Hamilton had exchanged shoes for slippers, coat and waistcoat for a dressing gown. He had the deep windows giving on the sea wide open; the tops of trees rolled like more visible waves close at hand, trembling and sparkling under the wind; the gleam of the sea, farther off, merged with the faint shining of the sky.

Harrison Victor said:

"Well— you have news of some sort, Hamilton. Or are you just in a jam?"

"I'm in a jam," said Hamilton.

"So long as I'm part of the Sûreté, and this is France, how can you be in a jam?" asked Victor, bristling his mustaches with a smile.

"Suppose you find a woman," said Hamilton, "young, lovely, generous, good-natured, virtuous, clever, educated—"

"There isn't such a thing," said Victor.

"Strong, keen, self-possessed—" Hamilton went on.

"Ah, you mean Mary Michelson?"

"Suppose that the girl warms your heart, and then you discover that her talents are all bent towards a scheme that will smash your country between the eyes and, perhaps, involve the whole world in a war that will make 1914 seem like a fairy tale?"

"Interesting! I could love a girl like that!"

"Yes, and put her in prison, also?"

"Naturally."

"How would the French act, Victor, towards a beautiful woman? A woman like that?"

"The French can't see beauty in a political enemy."

"What would they do about her?"

"Devil's Island, I suppose— for twenty years."

"They might as well send her to hell forever."

"Of course."

Hamilton sipped the ice-cold wine and breathed the strange fragrance of it. It was like the mimosa perfume in January, spring and winter combined.

"I hesitate a little," he said.

"About what?" asked Victor.

"About Devil's Island."

"Do you mean that you've learned what we want to know?"

"More than we ever dreamed of knowing."

"About the girl, eh?"

"About everything. Tell me about the Vicomte de Graulchier in the first place. You've looked him up, of course?"

"Yes. Certainly. I've looked up everybody we could trace. Everybody in the Villa Mon Sourir."

"No doubt that he's the heir to the title?"

"No doubt at all."

"Get's the title through his father?"

"What was his father?"

"The usual thing. Country estates, income spent in Paris."

"What did the father do with his life?"

"Nothing particular. Traveled a little— chiefly in Paris. Wrote a book about the South Seas.

"Did he ever go there?"

"Yes, for a year."

"And returned a widower, with an infant son?"

"How did you guess that? Yes, that's the fact."

"His dead or divorced wife was a Japanese girl, old fellow. This present de Graulchier is half Japanese."

"Hai!" exclaimed Victor.

"He's the Japanese Number One secret service agent," said Hamilton.

"Not possible!"

"Hasn't he been away from Europe most of the time, recently?"

"Yes, yes. A traveler for years. In Africa, I thought."

"IN Tokio, more likely. He's the great agent, Victor. And he's gathered all of these people about him. We're going to find out for exactly what purpose."

"Don't string it out! Tell me how!"

"If I tell you, it means that Mary Michelson will be sent to hell."

"Do you mean that you'd let a woman stand between you and your work, Hamilton? My God, it may mean what you say— the peace of the whole world!"

"Yes," murmured Hamilton, "it might mean exactly that."

Harrison Victor, starting out of his chair, began to stride up and down the room. He began to grow red in the face, breathing hard.

"There was a time tonight," Hamilton said," when she suspected me. And if she had acted on her suspicion, I would be dead now. Dead and buried in the sea off Les Roches. Instead, she merely passed me on for further examination; and I managed to pass with a good mark. The great vicomte decided that I am only an ass. However, I know that she must go to Devil's Island with the rest— and then perhaps I'll keep one holiday a year in grateful memory of one of the dead!" He broke out, in another voice, "Victor, what dirty dog's work it all is, sneaking and spying and prying, smiling in the faces of people, stabbing them in the back when the chance comes!"

"Or being stabbed," said Victor.

"Yes, that's true," said Hamilton.

He took a deep breath.

"Well, she has to go," he said at last. "Who's the man who works out the code stuff for you?"

"D'you mean that you've got the key to the code?"

"I have."

"Man— where is the key?"

"In Everyman's Library. Speke's 'Journal.' It's simply a book code."

Harrison Victor jerked out a handkerchief and wiped his face hurriedly.

"But that will give us a whole library of information!" he said.

"I think that it will," said Hamilton. "We'll uncover enough to guarantee a passage for every living soul in Mon Sourir to Devil's Island. And that includes—"

"Come, come!" said Victor. "There are other women in the world!"

"Of course there are."

"See here, Hamilton, this job is going to make you the Number One of the whole counter-espionage! Remember that, and forget the girl!"

"Of course," answered Hamilton, faintly.

"I know she's lovely, but the work she's doing is probably ugly enough. You will forget her, Hamilton?"

"Of course I shall," said Hamilton," when I'm dead.

_______________

13: The Mother

C. J. Dennis

1876-1938

Worker (Wagga, NSW) 7 Dec 1911

IT all came of association of ideas, as usual. If Carson had not turned the talk on caterpillars, and if caterpillars had not suggested spiders, we should never have had from the silent bushman this story of the convict, and mother-love, and—

It happened this way. A small company of us— artists and writers— had pitched a summer camp back in the big-timber country. It is cold o' nights up there in those mountains, even in summer time; and, as we sat yarning around the log fire in the evenings, we were joined sometimes by big Jim Driver, who owned a selection nearby, and daily fought herculean battles with the giant timber. He would smoke silently and listen to our art jargon as though he enjoyed it; but Carson seemed to interest him mostly.

When Carson is not cursing his creditors he is talking about insects, which, he maintains, amounts to the same thing. For though Carson is allegedly an artist, and makes some sort of a living by painting things on canvas, he is, at heart, a rabid entomologist. In fact, it was he who had lured us hither, selfishly, that he might spend endless hours stalking the elusive saw-fly and tracking the white ant to its lair.

Carson had been telling us, at length and quite unnecessarily, of a wholly objectionable female spider who, in order to protect her young, heartlessly devours her lawful spouse at the end of the honeymoon.

'It is certainly tough luck for the bridegroom,' Carson admitted; 'but, for the protection of the race, that instinct is not uncommon amongst insects.'

'Why insects only?' demanded Britten, who, scenting argument, which he loved, was ever ready with a new-laid- theory.  'Why insects only? Isn't that protective, maternal instinct dominant in all animals? Why, it's one of the boss schemes of nature! Even a woman, in the same circumstances, would do the same thing.'

'Not uncooked, I think,' cried Carson, mildly.

'Don't be an idiot,' retorted Britten. 'You know what: I mean. What does Bernard Shaw say? "Any woman worthy of the name of mother..." '

And then ensued a pretty argument with which, however, we have nothing to do. At the end of it, Driver rose to go, and passed in his solitary contribution.

'I reckon Mr. Britten's about right,' he said, knocking the ashes from his pipe. 'When it comes to choosin' between the husband and the kids— mind, I don't mean in little things, but in something pretty big — the man gets it in the neck every time. It's the children that count with her when it comes to the dead finish. I know what I'm sayin', because I've known a woman to choose— once.'

We could get no more from him then; but later on, when he found me in the camp alone one night, I managed to coax this story from big Jim Driver.

FROM her very school days little Mrs. Ralph had seemed to invite, if not exactly sympathy, at least a quiet sort of patronage. Her fragility of body, her mild manners, and her soft, pleading brown eyes had easily earned for her, amongst the hardy, work-toughened bush-women, the title of 'the meekest woman in the mountain.'

Any hint of the tigress about little Mrs. Ralph would have raised the laugh of scorn amongst her neighbors. She was a 'nice little body' to be sure, and when she married blustering, masterful Jack Ralph, the cattle dealer, she became, all too quickly, that 'poor little soul,' very much in need of sympathy indeed.

The domineering, boastful Ralph, brutal at the bottom, had been just the man to attract such a type of soft, moth-like woman; but at the end of four years' married life Mrs. Ralph had little to live for but her child.

The brutality of Ralph toward his wife and child was a prolific source of gossip in the little settlement, and many a sturdy, timber-getter bit hard upon his pipe stem, as, on his home-coming, his women-folk had some fresh tale to tell of Jack Ralph's violence.

'It's the way she stands between him an' that child,' said the women. 'You'd hardly think it was in her, to look at her.'

But the men said little that is printable, and their was some stern, quiet talk amongst them of lynch law, and a salutary ducking in the creek for Mr. Jack Ralph.

But the matter was taken out of their hands just in time by the sudden arrest of Ralph for cattle-stealing. Then, indeed, the gossips revelled in a luxury of tongue-wagging. Almost satiated they were; for, as the case proceeded, the mysterious disappearance of many a mountain steer, many a domestic milker was accounted for; and, in the end, a sentence of seven years imprisonment solved for the time the question of Jack Ralph's correction.

That matter settled, sympathy, thrice deepened, began to pour out for little Mrs. Ralph. Cruel and brutal as he was, he had at least been her bread-winner. Now she was almost destitute. Open charity is unknown in the bush;   but amongst the hardly-worked the hardly-used ever find the sincerest and most tactful friends, and in kitchen and cow-shed many a cunning scheme was discussed for secretly aiding little Mrs. Ralph.

Then, one day, came the news that left even the hardest gossips almost breathless. Before he had served a month of his sentence, Jack Ralph, with another convict, had broken jail, and a warder had been murdered. One prisoner had been quickly recaptured, said the paper, three days old, but Ralph had got clear away, and was supposed to have made for the forest country.

On the next day police arrived hot-foot, and, willingly aided by the bushmen, scoured the forest without result. After a month's useless search the reward for Ralph's capture was raised, and the excitement in the little settlement waxed high.

Ralph's home was watched day and night; for his wife's repeated refusal to take refuge with the neighbors had made the police doubly suspicious.

Then an official rumor that the outlaw had got away to another State drew off the police, to the voluble indignation of the settlers' wives. And much of that indignation was directed at Mrs. Ralph for her obstinacy in refusing another roof than her own. In every offer she detected charity. Willingly she accepted the sewing and other little tasks they could give her; but to live with neighbors, who, she knew, could afford no domestic help, she resolutely refused.

And through all those weeks the meek and timid Mrs. Ralph went through her daily tasks, and starved herself that her child might have bread. And every night she listened with dread at her heart for the footstep that she surely knew must sometime come. Yet, overcoming all her terror of the man, was a fierce longing that he would come, and come soon.

And there, were many others in that little settlement who thought frequently of Jack Ralph. Although the police had apparently given up the scarch in the forest, there were those who expected that, sooner or later, he would make for his old haunts; and many a bushman kept his eyes open and his rifle oiled expecting and rather hopinging for the convict's sudden advent.

With bushmen the hunting of men is not congenial employment. Indeed, their sympathies are more often with the hunted

But amongst this small community Jack Ralph had been a pariah and an outlaw long before the Government had offered a reward for his capture.  The offer merely added zest to the chase. None had mentioned the outlawry, or the reward to Mrs. Ralph; but she had heard of it, of course, and when her thoughts first began to dwell upon it she put them from her as something unclean. But again these thoughts would come, and again, as she sat alone at night scheming vainly to earn bread for her child and herself.

Three hundred pounds! What would such a sum mean to her now— her child with barely enough to eat, herself practically starving. But of herself she thought not at all— it was the child, for whom her love was passionate. She had none to advise her, no relations that she knew of; and this was a matter that admitted the counsel of no stranger, however friendly.

So, one night the frail little woman had it out with herself; and, after a night of mental agony, she arose with a decision made for once and all. She had weighed everything, measured everything: her love for her husband, her anxiety for his safety, her love, for her child. And now she waited grimly, yet patiently, for her husband's coming.

And late one night he came, at last. She had just soothed her child to sleep and had taken up an interrupted task when she heard his step at the panels below the house. His voice, as he quietened the snarling dog, assured her that it was he, and, for an instant, terror overpowered her.

Then, with an anxious glance at the sleeping child, she braced herself for the encounter. She knew what she should do. For days she had known it, and now she prayed for strength that she might see it through.

In the next insiant he stood In the doorway, and, with a quick rush across the floor she threw herself wildly into his arms.

'Oh, Jack, Jack, dear Jack!' she cried. 'I knew that you would come to me!'

And there was no doubting the love that was in her eyes as they looked into his. She herself, even in that hour, knew that she loved him. And his answer was, worthy of the man who had won her love.

'Shut yer head!' he snarled, pushing her from him. 'Do yer want to wake the whole mountain with yer squealin'? I ain't come, to stay,' he added sneeringly. 'I want money— an' tucker.' Then, with an evil smile, as he watched her big, pleading brown eyes gazing into his, he asked: 'Ain't you afraid to touch— a murderer?'

'Jack!' she gasped, 'you didn't do it? Say it wasn't you!'

'Oh, it was me all right.' he boasted, his old assurance returning. 'I socked it into him good and hard; and he deserved it, the cow! Wonder I ain't afraid to tell yeh?'

He was so sure of her — this meek, timid, shrinking woman with the patient dog-like gaze. He knew the sort. Mentally he decided that his method with women had always been right. Treat 'em like dogs, and like dogs they come up whining to lick your hand. Now, when the whole country was hunting; him, hounding him down, here was his only ally— this woman he had beaten and abused.

And as she sat, gazing back at him with her pathetic eyes, she was thinking— thinking hard; her woman's wit evolving a scheme to carry out her end.

'Jack, dear,' she said, 'you must stay awhile. No one will know. The nearest house is three miles away, and when you have rested—'

'Chuck that talk,' he commanded. 'All I want's money an' tucker, an' I'm off. So fork it out quick and lively. I must have enough grub to last awhile.'

In the instant she knew how she must act.

'Oh, Jack,' she said, 'whatever will you do ? There's hardly  a thing to eat. in the house.  The supplies came up by the coach to-day, and they're still down at the post-office.'

'Damnation!' he growled; and for a moment stood regarding her suspiciously from under lowering brows. 'You'll have to get 'em,' he decided at length. 'It's me only chance. 'And mind you, me lady, no monkey tricks.'

'But you, Jack?' she said. 'What if someone should come and see you here while I'm away? I can't leave you here alone.'

There was strained anxiety in her voice, but, had he only noted it, her glance was for the sleeping child.

'Don't be anxious' about me, my little pet,' he mocked. ' They don't catch Jack Ralph in a trap like that. I'm goin' to hide in the scrub down the gully. If it's all clear when you come back, you give a call. Understand?'

Relief relaxed her features as he spoke, and again her glance travelled to the sleeping child, lying all unconscious of the scene, its little, wasted arm pathetically outflung across the bed-clothes.

Hastily she donned her shabby hat and threadbare cloak, and, as she stood ready to go, he suddenly grasped her arm so that the grip made her wince; and his savage, hunted eyes looked into hers sternly.

'Mind,' he growled, 'no crook business with me, or, by the livin' God—!'

'Jack, can't you trust me, your wife?' she said. 'Kiss me, Jack, won't you, just once before I go.'

Roughly his face brushed hers, and he pushed her towards the door.

'Get a move on,' he said, 'and get back as soon as you can. This place ain't healthy for me.'

A HEAVY mountain mist was falling as the woman hurried on her mission,  and Jack Ralph, shivering amid the wet scrub, cursed his plight, the rain, his wife, as the minutes lengthened to an hour.

And then he heard her step by the slip-rails below the house, and, in his impatience, he joined her at the door.

'Well, how much?' he asked gruffly.

'You should not have taken such a risk,' she said, setting' her bundles on the table. 'Why didn't you wait until I called?'

'Curse it! I've waited long enough. 'What have you brought?'

'All I could carry,' she replied, her head bent low as she fumbled with the strings. 'Bread and meat. It's our supply for two weeks. You'll leave a little, Jack, for the child and me?'

With an oath, he wrenched the bundles from her hands

'By the Lord, I like your nerve!' he said.  ' "Leave a little for the child an' me"? D'yeh think I just dropped in fur a dinner party, did yeh? I want all I can get, an' more. You an' yer flamin' kid! You can root fur more if yeh want it. Now I'm off.'

'No, No!' she cried. ' Jack, you can't go yet— not yet. Listen, you are not-fit—   your boots— look at your boots. You can't travel in those. There are a pair of heavy ones in the bedroom. You must put them on.'

'Get them,' he commanded. 'I'll take them in the bag.'

'No, Jack, you must put them on.'

'Get them,' he snarled again. 'Good God, woman, d'yeh think— What's that?'

The sharp, metallic sound, as of a horse's hoof striking stone, came from  without.

'Nothing, Jack, nothing,' she tried to reassure him. 'Wait; I'll get the boots.'

'Not me,' he said. 'I don't like it. I'm off.'

But, before he could move, her arms were around him, pinning his own to his sides.

'Oh Jack, dear Jack,' she cried, wildly, 'you can't go like this. You can't, you can't!'

But in a flash, in the very touch of her frantically clinging arms,' he felt her purpose, at last.

'Let me go, d—n yeh!' he whispered. struggling to be free; but her encircling, arms and the burdens that, he bore made him almost helpless.

'By God! I'll choke yeh; choke yeh like a cat when I get at yeh!' he muttered savagely, as other sounds came from without, and closer. For a minute they stood there swaying together— he, with fierce eyes glaring into hers, as he breathed deep, labored breaths of a straining man; she with her convulsive arms wound about him, her breath coming in little gasping sobs. Then, driven to frantic effort by the sound of an opening door behind him, he flung, her off, and staggered back— into the grasp of two sturdy bushmen. Before he could resist they had flung ropes about him, and bound him fast.

'All right, Mrs. Ralph. He won't trouble you any more, I kin promise,' said one of the men quietly.

She had fallen into a chair, and lier y. child, awakened by the noise., of the struggle, came whimpering to her knee, and her protective arm was about his tiny wasted form.

Thus, for a brief moment, the woman and the man looked into each other's eyes. But, if he looked to see the mask fall from her now, to behold the tigress in this woman who had sold him, he looked in vain. Those big, brown, pleading eyes gazed up at him full of unutterable pity.

'Poor Jack!' she said, at last, 'Poor, poor, Jack! God forgive you — and me!'

'So you've sold me,' he said, quietly at first, between his teeth. 'Sold me like a dog!... for blood-money. D'yeh hear? Blood-money!'

Then a torrent of blasphemy and filthy abuse poured from him, as he cursed and reviled this woman who had betrayed him.

Quickly the men seized him and dragged him from the house; but, through the closed door, as they bore him away, she could yet hear his hoarse voice shouting:  'Blood-money! Blood-money!'

And the woman, with the frightened child strained tightly to her breast, her pale, faded hair mingling with his dark curls, was sobbing as though her heart would break.

'My darling, my darling, I did it for you! Only for you!' she wailed. 'Heaven grant you may never remember this dreadful night. Oh my God! Blood-money!'

___________________

14: The Ghost City

Fred MacIsaac

1886-1940

Popular Magazine (on sale date) July 7 1929

THE HIGH ROAD from Reno to Carson City was as straight as a spear and its polished concrete gleamed like steel in the morning sunlight, as over it rumbled and roared the largest and most glittering automobile that one thousand dollars had been able to buy for Philip "Bull" Moulton, erstwhile full back of Leland Stanford, waterfront reporter of the San Francisco Call and at present motor tourist.

Two weeks ago he had inherited two thousand five hundred dollars. The car had come out of that. In two weeks more the rest of the legacy would be gone and he would go back to the water front, impecunious as before; but he would have the car. In the meantime, the open road and sixty miles an hour!

Bump! Crash! Bang! Gerflum! A puncture at sixty miles an hour may be a serious thing, but Phil brought his leviathan to a stop without disaster, got out and saw that he had only ruifled a brand-new shoe. He shrugged his shoulders. That he had to change a tire worried him more than a torn and useless shoe; there were two spares on behind, and he had plenty of money in his pocket.

There were no garages, of course, for many miles. A few yards ahead was a crossroad and he ran the car off the highway into the side road to the left, stopping in front of a signpost which read;

Virginia City, 15 miles

Virginia City! That was the famous old mining camp where Mark Twain worked on a newspaper in days of old. Only fifteen miles away. As Phil labored on the tire he began to recall what he had read at various times about Virginia City— for that curious institution, the human mind, has a way of absorbing facts that make no apparent impression and of tucking them away in remote recesses of its spongelike substance, to ooze them out in time of need.

Virginia City, he remembered, had been the greatest mining camp the world had ever seen, the biggest, richest, wildest, most fantastic town that gold had ever caused to be born. Scraps of its history came to him as he sweated over his left rear wheel. The Comstock Lode was at Virginia City, the richest mine

America has known. He had read somewhere that, in ten years, more than a billion and a half in gold and silver had passed through the clearing house of the mountain town, and a billion and a half in 1870 would buy what ten billions would be required to purchase today. The place had sickened and died when the mines gave out and it was just a ghost city now.

"If I ever get this tire changed," Phil exclaimed aloud, "I'll go to Virginia City! Probably nothing there, but I'll have a look just the same."

It wasn't as if he had definite plans. His character was antipathetic to itineraries and schedules. When he left Frisco he had no intention of going to Reno; he just followed his nose. In an hour he had successfully replace the torn shoe, tossed it into a, field, climbed into his seat, left the pleasant present as symbolized by the perfect concrete pavement and headed into the past over a very uneven country road.

For some time this road crossed a flat, uncultivated plain, a brown sunburned waste, uninhabited and dreary. Phil fixed his eyes on the mountmns ahead and presently the road began to climb. Fifteen miles, the signpost had said. That was nothing on a paved highway, but fifteen miles through the mountains could be a hard trip.

Now the road began to rear like a rampant horse. He passed a signpost which read "Geiger Grade," and that recalled things. It was one of the steepest mountain roads in , the Rockies. In stagecoach days, passengers had to get out and walk up this grade but, coming down, the coaches took the curves on two wheels.

Would his pretentious-looking but inexpensive car be equal to the task? He went into second gear and she climbed. The road wound around the mountainside and he looked down into a dry, desolate valley. The hills were bare and dismal, just gigantic rock piles, treeless, grassless; grim mountains which had contained in their hard bosoms vast wealth in gold and silver. Signs of old excavations were everywhere.

Up, up, up! He was in low gear and the car was laboring. Wisps of steam came out of the radiator despite the tightly screwed cap. It seemed that he had traveled twenty miles and was already on top of the world, yet the road lifted and wriggled and each turn showed him higher hills.

Was it possible that forty thousand people had ever chosen to reside on top of a mountain in a land as desolate as one of Dore's pictures of Dante's "Inferno"? The power of gold! When the golden river ran dry they had moved away with great speed. Ah!

He had rounded a curve and the grade was ended. A mile or two ahead of him lay a city on the border of a great lake. Not so bad to have lived on a lakeside. And this was no ghost city; it was solid and substantial.

As he gazed a monstrous thing happened. The lake was an illusion. It was dissolving before his eyes; its bluish-gray expanse was sinking rapidly.

What he had taken for a lake was a cloud which filled the deep valley, and it had melted and left Virginia City perched precariously upon the precipitous slope of a mountain— above the clouds. He must be eight thousand feet up.

For a moment he thought the city might be a mirage, but it did not disintegrate; it was a real settlement of brick and mortar which he was fast approaching. Below, where the cloud had rested, he saw the stamping mills of the old mines and the vast slag piles of bluish white— refuse from which the precious metals had been extracted. From the tall chimneys of the mills, no smoke issued. Probably a quarter of a century or more had elapsed since there had been fires in those furnaces.

He was moving slowly, now, along a wide, paved street lined with three and four-story brick buildings. There were people here. He saw persons moving on the sidewalks ahead, and there was a traffic cop.

A man in khaki had stepped into the road and lifted his baton— which was curious, for Phil's was the only automobile in sight. Slowing down in response to the signal, he. approached the policeman and received a shock. The traffic cop was a man with a wooden sword, whose wizened face cracked and who cackled like an imbecile as he saw the car obey his signal.

Now Phil realized that these brick buildings on either side of the street were ramshackle and tottering; that the windows were broken and the doors padlocked. Not one shop in fifty was open for business.

He drove the full length of the avenue, more than a mile, until he came to a large, four-story schoolhouse which was in good repair; then he swung back upon an upper street which ran parallel to the main thoroughfare. This had evidently been more of a residential avenue, for it was lined with what had been fine houses, some of timber, some of brick. At the end of the avenue, Phil passed an imposing courthouse which gave evidence of tenancy. Beyond it was a huge brick theater in sad disrepair. He swung down a steep side street to the main avenue and parked his car at the curb. His spirits, which bad soared during the adventure of the Gieger Grade, had sunk under the influence of the depressing remnants of former grandeur. It was a dead city, though there were a few people moving in its ruins.

It was lunch time and a whiskered loafer, who leaned against the front of a vacant store, told Phil he could get food at the only eating place of the town—a lunch room half a block up on the opposite side of the street.

Phil passed two or three male idlers who regarded him with lackluster eyes— they were too far gone, he thought, even to be curious— and then he entered the lunch room.

Its interior was vast and dusty and dismal. At one time it had been a dance hall and gambling saloon. Behind the long bar was a coffee tank, and a few pies and pastries under glass covers were on the shelves. At least fifty years had elapsed since paint had been applied to this interior. It was empty, but he climbed upon a stool at the bar and pounded upon the board with his fist.

A service door at the rear of the room opened and a waitress entered. Phil gaped at her. The girl fitted this interior no more than a poinsettia growing from a rubbish heap. She was young, blonde, star-eyed, and radiant as a mountain sunrise. Her big, blue eyes regarded him speculatively.

"Hello!" he exclaimed. "Is this a joke?"

"What?" Her voice was sweet and mellow.

"You, in a place like this?"

She smiled and her teeth were pretty.

"We have ham and eggs," she said.

"I'll have 'em."

Phil Moulton's soubriquet, "Bull," had been earned in college, because he was what might be called impulsive; he acted first and thought about it afterward. He was big, broad shouldered, black haired, sunburned, with a laughing devil in his gray eyes and a heavy jaw which indicated determination or stubbornness.

Girls of every variety of beauty had buzzed around Bull Moulton in his time. He had gone to a coeducational college, and had been a spectacular kind of football player, so he knew what feminine adoration was like. In recent years girls hadn't been so important in his life; one doesn't meet many attractive ones on a water front.

This waitress, exceptionally pretty as she was, might not have bumped Phil very hard if he met her at a hotel dance or at a house party, but she had caught him unawares, so to speak. All his defenses were down in this distressing wreck of a great city, and that hair and those eyes just bowled him over.

"Why, you darling baby," he murmured, addressing the service door, "you rose of the Rockies, you gazelle, you infant cyclone, you—you mountain goddess— to think you should be hidden up here!"

He drummed on the counter and waited impatiently for her return. The way she had said "ham and eggs," the allure of her pose, the coquetry of her smile as she took his order, the grace and litheness qf her-

"Hurry up!" he yelled good-naturedly. "I'm starving!"

She was evidently the cook as well as the waitress for, when she returned with his order, her face was flushed from the fire. She drew a cup of thick, Wack coffee from the tank and laid it beside the platter of ham and eggs, then she drew' from under the bar an open can of condensed milk and placed it beside the cup. This done, she leaned her elbows on the bar and gazed saucily at the customer.

"I suppose you came to view the remains," she observed.

"Something like that," he replied. "But I can't reconcile them with you, Miss—er—"

"My name is Virginia Nevada Darrell. What's yours?"

"Philip Moulton. I'm a San Francisco reporter."

"Come to write us up?"

"No. I was going down to Carson, saw the signpost and obeyed that impulse. Pm awfully glad I did."

"Why?" she asked with a smile.

Phil was anything but shy. "Don't you know ? Can't you guess ?"

"Stranger, if you mean me, pipe down. This claim has been pre-empted by a local light, a fellow with old-fashioned bad-man ideas. He packs a gun and shoots from the hip— or says he does." Her laugh belied her words.

"Ohl" Phil exclaimed, somewhat dashed. "What can you see in that sort of person?"

Her face grew serious. "Any company is good company in a graveyard."

"'You aren't a native, I'm sure. Where do you come from?"

"Chicago."

"How can you stand it here?"

She laughed satirically. "I love excitement. I suppose you'd like my life story?"

"You bet."

"Well," she began with mock intensity, "two years ago I was running a typewriter in Chi. I had three dollars in the bank and was happy but overworked. Then I became an heiress. My grandfather, one of the pioneers of Virginia City, died, leaving me two hundred dollars in cash and the sole ownership of the Golconda Hotel, a five-story brick building completely furnished, containing fifty rooms and built in 1870 at a cost of two hundred thousand dollars. I took the first train to claim my inheritance. Would you like to buy a hotel?"

"How much?" he smiled.

"I'm asking a thousand dollars, but I'd take less— much less."

"But it cost two hundred thousand dollars. Why give it away?"

"Look around you. We have a population of two hundred, all broke, and almost no visitors, so the hotel is not doing very well; in fact, there is a padlock on the door."

"I suppose it is a white elephant, but it's a bargain at your price."

"Friend," she said solemnly, "if you paid five dollars for it you would be stuck."

This absorbing conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a customer. He was a small man, wearing a two-gallon Stetson hat, a corduroy jacket, riding breeches and puttees. Around his waist was a wide, leather belt containing a big revolver in a holster. He had a mustache of reddish brown of the variety known as "walrus," and had thick, bushy eyebrows over sunken eyes of pale blue. He inspected Moulton sharply, then addressed the waitress.

"Hello, Jinie," he said in a husky voice. "See you caught a tourist."

Phil sensed immediately that this was the person who had built a fence around the young lady. He would have taken umbrage at the man's manner anyway.

"Hello, Mr. What's-your-name," Phil said insolently. "Not a tourist— a settler. I'm going to grow up with your town."

"Hah!" exclaimed the astonished native. "Say, mister, you're crazy. This burg's gone."

Phil beamed. "On the contrary, I think it has a great future before it."

The man with the mustache wagged his head.

"Jinie," he said, "this guy is bugs."

"I'm so confident of the future of Virginia City," proclaimed Phil, himself surprised by the statement, "that I've just bought a half interest in the Golconda Hotel. Here's a hundred to bind the bargain, Miss Darrell."

He considered the astonishment and dismay of the native worth the expenditure. The girl mechanically accepted the money, but her dumfounded condition was obvious.

"You don't really mean it!" she gasped.

Phil smiled at her joyously. "Certainly. Put the money away. I'm your partner now."

"Well!" exclaimed Miss Darrell's admirer. "I'll be dinged!"

"And you're interrupting a business conference," declared Phil.

"Jinie," said the man hoarsely, "I forbid you to take that money. And you get right out o' this town, young feller. It ain't goin' to be healthy for you."

Virginia thrust the hundred-dollar bill into the bosom of her blue dress.

"If you would like to buy a half interest in my hotel for the same price. I'll refuse to accept this offer," she said derisively.

"You know it ain't worth nothin'," the native protested.

"I'm surprised at you," mocked Phil. "Don't you want your town to boom? I bet this is the first real-estate deal pulled off here in a quarter of a century."

"I ain't talking to you," retorted the native. "Gimme some ham and eggs, Jinie."

"What time do you close, Miss Darrell?" asked Phil. "I'd like to inspect our hotel."

"I'll lock up in an hour, till dinner time."

"Meet you here in an hour," Phil promised, and then, ignoring the rival, went out into the street. Despite his warlike trappings, the fellow had not impressed Phil and he had no doubt the girl could handle him.

Even in the days of its glory this must have been a weird town, Phil thought. The three avenues had been cuts in the mountainside and all the side streets were twenty-per-cent grades or more. Behind the buildings on the opposite side of C Street, the main thoroughfare, the ground dropped abruptly. A man might start to roll and wouldn't stop for a mile unless he popped into one of the many cellars where houses had once been.

He drifted along until he came to a curiosity shop, the proprietor of which sat in the doorway, smoking a clay pipe and looking down into the valley. He was bald but he owned a long, white beard, stained with tobacco juice. His show windows were piled high with rubbish and were so dirty that one had to enter to identify the contents of the windows.

"Can you tell me, please, where is the Golconda Hotel?"

The old man pointed with his pipe.

"Up on the other side. It's closed. Most everything is closed."

"Been here long?" Phil asked.

"Man and boy, more than sixty years. Mister, I seen the rise and fall of 'Ginia City." He cackled. "I seen it when the sidewalks was so crowded with ladies and gents in grand clothes a man had to walk in the gutter. I seen it when we had fifty thousand people."

"Really? Where did they live? It looks to me like a town of four or five thousand."

"Ain't nothin' left but the business center," explained the old man. "Lot of this is gone, too. The kind of winters we have in these hills carries off everything that ain't cared for. Man, the houses stretched from the bottom of the valley to the mountaintop. We had a lot of fires, too. We had a seven-story brick hotel with three hundred rooms and lots of baths, just like New York. It used to cost thirty dollars a day for a room without grub. Burned up about twenty years ago."

"What do the present inhabitants live on?"

"Nothin' much. Only a few of us left. We grow garden truck and hunt a little. Nobody has any money. We had seven hundred people here up to three or four years ago when the last mine shut down. Now we've got less than two hundred."

Phil wished him good day and continued on to the Golconda Hotel. The sight of it caused him to laugh ruefully. It vrdiS a dingy brick building of four stories, with a sixty-foot front and a depth of a hundred feet. The ground dropped abruptly and the foundation wall at the rear of the hotel was fully twenty-five feet high. Architecturally, it was just a packing case. Over the restaurant was a sign which proclaimed:

The best fifty-cent dinner in the State of Nevada.

The show window of the cafe was broken and boarded up.

"Well," thought Phil, "the hundred dollars will take Miss Darrell back to Chicago." He did not regret his idiotic gesture in giving her the money. It was worth something to get her away from the man with the gun. Imagine that fantastic denizen of these rums making up to Loveliness, Incorporated. Ruins!

People journeyed many thousand miles to inspect historic ruins. There were Babylon, Pompeii, Athens, Luxor. Before him lay the ruins of a great city, arelic of a mighty past, of an age that has gone forever. Virginia City, El Dorado, La Golconda, perched like an eagle's nest upon a high crag in the Rockies, forgotten, forlorn and desolate.

"They'd come," he muttered as he started back toward the lunch room. "All Virginia City needs is a press agent."

Miss Virginia was locking the front door of the only food emporium of her city. She had changed her gingham work dress to a pretty little blue suit and had clapped a blue cap on her golden locks.

"How did you get rid of the 'Bad Man of the Mountains'?" Phil inquired.

She protested. "Fanshaw is rather nice."

Phil hooted. "To think his name is Fanshaw! What is he going to shoot with that gun? Rats?"

"There are plenty of them," she smiled. "And Fanshaw is his first name. His last name is Drummond. He is a clerk in the courthouse. Here is your money."

He waved back her outstretched hand.

"You can't back out of a bargain. I'm offering five hundred, not a hundred, for a half interest. I'll pay the rest out of profits."

She looked puzzled. "You are absurd. In another year there won't be a dozen people in Virginia City."

He took her hand, perhaps to add conviction to an impossible-sounding statement.

"In a year this avenue will be packed with automobiles and there won't be a vacant room in the Hotel Golconda."

"Mountain sickness, but it's a strange variety of it," she murmured.

"You wait. Let's take a walk. I've seen the hotel. Show me the points of interest."

"Well, we'll climb up to A Street and I'll show you the ruins of Millionaire Row and what's left of the coaches and carriages in which they rode in state."

His eyes snapped. "Great! The place is full of romance and color. It was fate that caused me to puncture a tire at the fork in the road down below. It led me to Virginia City and you."

"Please don't start that sort of thing," she pleaded. "You are a nice boy and I'm not so happy in this place."

Phil faced her buoyantly. "Listen, doubter. This is the wonder city of the West, the most romantic spot on our continent, the source of the wealth that built the Atlantic cable and put the Mackays and Fairs at the top of the heap in New York. Here was the first great city of the Rockies, and nothing like it has arisen since."

"Well," she smiled, "what of it?"

"The American people have forgotten it— the American people can forget anything. But if they knew what Virginia City meant in American history, there would be a thousand motor cars up here every day and the Geiger grade would have to install traffic control. Do you know what we have to show here? Ruins!"

She laughed rudely. "I'll say so!"

"But what ruins!" he orated. "Worth crossing the continent to see. A city above the clouds. A swell hotel to accommodate all. No parking problems. Think of the profit in gasoline alone."

"Rave on," she scoffed. "You require a low altitude to restore your equilibrium."

"Do you know," he demanded, "that two hundred thousand automobiles entered California from the eastward last season ? Are you aware that there are a million motor cars in California, owned by people who are crazy to find new places to visit? Do you appreciate that hundreds of thousands visit Lake Tahoe each year, and that that's only fifty miles or so from here ?"

"But if they cared anything about this place, they would have come," she protested.

"Man alive— I mean woman alive— they don't know! They have to be told and I'm the boy who's going to tell 'em."

"This is B Street. You see that it was lined with all kinds of impressive buildings."

"You bet. Here we have the only ruined great city in America. To every visitor, one free brick from the ruins of Virginia City."

Virginia was holding her sides with laughter. "Barks like a coyote and almost as wild," she declared. "If these things were possible they would have been done."

"A press agent never came along. We'll open up the hotel, start the restaurant and fix up some of the rooms. I'll handle the publicity. On all main highways will be billboards telling tourists that Virginia City is the Pompeii of America. In every tourist hotel in California will be booklets describing the place and how to get here. Say, the traffic we shall divert from the Lincoln Highway will make this town look like Market Street, Frisco, on a busy afternoon."

"If it were only possible," she sighed, her eyes wistful.

"Publicity does it. Look at the toothpaste that everybody uses because it's advertised. Wait till I get the dope. I don't really know much about it. Do you?"

"I know my grandfather used to tell me it was the wickedest city under the

"Marvelous!" he cried. "Think of the people who'd like to see the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah. They can't, but they can see Virginia City. That's the best selling argument yet. You have a talent for publicity, Vir— Miss Darrell."

"The hotel is in a frightful state of repair," she complained.

"What do we care how bad it is ? We have no competition. Let's go look at the joint."

She sighed. "If I could make money enough to go back to Chicago."

"Chicago— nothing! If you go anywhere, it's Frisco—" He broke off and flushed. She glanced at him out of the comer of her eye and then she blushed. She was very pretty when she pinkened.

"That's the famous theater," she said quickly. "Grandfather told me they paid Forrest and McCullough and Lotta and Jenny Lind as much as ten thousand dollars a week to play here. You see, they had to cross the continent over the Union Pacific Railroad— and in those days hostile Indians often attacked the trains and there were frequent train robberies—and then make the long journey back from California in stagecoaches."

"We'll fix the theater up and show movies in it," Hiil assured her. "That county building seems in good shape."

"Oh, yes. You see, the county offices are still there. This is the oldest county in the State and was the most populous. Now the jobs are a sinecure. You see, nobody has any money to pay taxes and nobody will buy property seized by the State for taxes. Isn't it all weird?"

She led him up to A Street where there were other wonders to be seen, but Phil thought the greatest wonder of Virginia City was its namesake, Virginia Nevada Darrell. He studied her as she chattered brightly. She was a city girl, a self-reliant, merry little stenographer of the superior sort; a keen, rather slangy, straightforward, self-respecting working woman. She was so pretty that she must have been popular, and doubtless she was an ardent devotee of theaters, concerts and dances.

Take an urban product like Virginia and bury her in this musty, dusty mausoleum for more than a year and the wonder was it hadn't slain her. He could visualize her departure from Chicago— arms full of flowers, candy boxes piled high on the seat of her section in the Pullman, her eyes sparkling with anticipation, her friends from the office waving good-by and some of them frankly envious, for she was an heiress going to take over her inheritance. He could see her when she set eyes on Virginia City and the Golconda Hotel— her cheeks white, her eyes brimming, her lip quivering with disappointment and dismay.

She had told him her story in only two or three sentences, but it was as tragic as tragedy comes outside of Greek plays. Penniless in this ghost city, all her courage had been needed to face the situation. She could laugh about it now, but doubtless she had wept before.

What a dauntless little creature she was to have survived and retained her beauty and vivacity! Her sense of humor had probably preserved her reason.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked sharply. "There actually are tears in your eyes."

"I was just thinking how horrible it must have been for you here."

"Well, don't cry about it. I got all over that long ago," she assured him; but she turned her head away so that he could not see that tears had formed in her own eyes. "Anyway, we're going to make this a popular place if you believe your own ballyhoo."

"Where do you live?" he asked.

"At Mrs. Wilkins' boarding house a little way up this street. She was a washerwoman twenty years ago, but finally she moved into a good vacant house and started to take boarders. She has never had to pay any rent, for nobody knows what has become of the owner. It's clean and that's about all I ask."

"And the imbecile with the uniform and the wooden sword— who cares for him?"

"He lives with his widowed mother. Their name is Freeman. Nobody knows how she manages to exist."

"Well, prosperity is on its way," he declared cheerfully. "Let's open up our hotel and see what it looks like."

The interior of the hotel was slightly less dreadful than its exterior, but it required an ardent disciple of advertising to believe that self-respecting travelers Would be willing to put up in it.

"Paint will do wonders," Phil assured her. "Paint and cleaning."

"I think there is enough good linen to supply eight or ten rooms, and the restaurant equipment is good enough," she said. "I can hire help very cheaply. Are you sure it is not a waste of money?"

"Positive. Now I'll leave you here to get things ready. I'll go back to Reno and arrange for printing and billposting and mailing. In two weeks from to-day you'll begin to see results. I tell you the West is full of automobile owners wondering where to go for a ride. I'm going to wire to Frisco for cash. Can you do much with that hundred dollars? I'll reimburse you when I come back."

"You will not," she retorted. "This is our gamble. You'll be surprised to find what I can accomplish with it. When will you go to Reno?"

"Right away. I want to get things started. I hate to leave you, though. It may take me four or five days to launch our advertising campaign."

"It seems so sudden. Are you sure?"

"I tell you we'll put this over big."

She walked down the street with him and saw him enter his car.

"Well— er— good-by," he mumbled. He wanted to say more but he didn't dare.

"Mr. Moulton," she said hesitatingly, "if you should change your mind, if things don't go as you expect— you will come back, won't you?"

He jumped out of the car and took both her hands.

"You blessed kid. I'd come back if I had to climb the grade on my hands and knees." He wanted to kiss her, she wanted him to, but neither could read the other's mind. He squeezed her hands and rode away.

PHIL WROTE daily from Reno the progress of the advertising campaign. Roadside signs cost more than he anticipated ; the job printers were exorbitant, the sign painters were worse, and he had to scale his plan to fit his pocket- book. Nevertheless, things were moving.

Virginia wrote him brisk little business notes in boyish handwriting. Everybody in Virginia City supposed her insane, but they had no scruples in atxepdng her money, so the hotel was being raffidly prepared for reopening.

Without the slightest hesitation Phil had wired for his back balance in San Francisco and gambled with it joyously. Sign painters were out on the roads from Reno down to Tahoe putting up boards bearing the following:

VIRGINIA CITY

America's Pompeii

Historic. Romantic

GOLCONDA HOTEL

Good Food, Good Rooms.

He would have liked to say much more, but motorists travel fast. His four-page circulars were in the mails, addressed to every hotel of importance in northern California. He had written newspaper stories of the charms of Virginia City and the comfort of its hotel, and had sent them to the Sunday editors of the leading papers in Reno and in California.

At last, having spent all but a couple of hundred dollars, he started back to the city and the girl named Virginia.

There was no doubt whatever in fail's mind that he was going to drag people up to Virginia City and, when they got there, entertain them at the Golconda Hotel. There was never any doubt in his mind that he would succeed in any project he tackled. He didn't have any doubt, for example, that he would capture Virginia Darrell. She fired his imagination, that youngster fighting her battle for life on a mountain top in a city of the dead. No girl had ever appealed to him in this way before. He had never encountered one so picturesquely situated. He would demonstrate to her what a great mind could achieve when it applied itself to a tough problem, and she would be so overcome with admiration that she would naturally fall in love with him— if she hadn't already. Our hero was no modest violet. They would make a lot of money out of the hotel, sell it, get married and then go to Frisco where he would set her in an apartment and go back to his newspaper job. Nothing to it.

He churned his way up the Geiger Grade, steamed down the main street and parked his car in front of the hotel. The boardings were down, the show window was replaced, the sign boasting about the dinner served within had been repainted, and a dozen of the inhabitants were lounging about outside, while half a dozen of them were parked in chairs in the lobby.

Fanshaw Drummond, minus coat and vest, but wearing his shooting iron, was mopping the floor; and Virginia, a dust cloth over her bright hair, was moving about the lobby. The place, already, was spick-and-span.

Phil colored under the battery of basilisk eyes, but he strode up to Virginia and put both his hands which she took in both of hers. For a moment they read things in each other's eyes.

"Well," she said, "I've done my part. We are ready to provide bed and board."

"You've done wonders," he admired. "The publicity is out and all we've got to do is await results."

Bang! Fanshaw Drummond had hurled the mop upon the floor. Arms on his hips he strode toward Moulton.

"You let go her hands!" he commanded. "Jinie, you don't have to be so friendly with this bozo jes' 'cause you're in business with him."

Phil confronted him, half angry, half amused.

"Let me tell you something, 'Alkali Ike,' " he exclaimed, regardless of the two drab females and four whiskered sitters who were watching the scene like spectators at a film. "There is more in this than meets the eye. Virginia and I are business partners, true, but we are also engaged to be married." He turned to Virginia and held out his arms.

Smack! Virginia slapped him on the left cheek so hard that the prints of her five fingers were plainly visible.

"We are not engaged!" she exclaimed, her eyes burning.

"Whee-oo!" bellowed Drummond, beside himself with delight.

"The partnership is dissolved and you march right out of here," continued the girl. Her voice broke in her anger.

Phil mechanically felt of his stinging cheek with his left hand and eyed her irresolutely. He had thought so much about Virginia and what he proposed to do about her that he had forgotten, in his exhilaration, that she knew nothing about it.

"You heard what she said!" snarled Drummond. "Out, feller!"

Phil glanced at him as one looks at a buzzing blue-bottle fly and saw that Drummond had gone into action. His gun— a long, blue-barreled Colt of a previous generation of firearms— was in his hand and pointed at Phil's middle.

"Out or I'll drill you!" the native threatened. "You coyote!"

He was standing less than three feet away. Phil's right arm shot out, and his strong hand grasped the gun and twisted it out of the grip of the "bad man." He swung Drummond around, got him by the collar, rushed him to the open door of the hotel and kicked him  into the street. Then he extracted the cartridges from the gun, and tossed it toward its owner, after which he felt better.

"I'll get you for this!" promised Drummond from a safe distance. "You big coward, I'll get you for this!"

During the incident, which occupied only a few seconds, Virginia had turned pale as death. The spectators sat silent and entranced.

"I beg your pardon. Miss Darrell," Phil said blandly. "I deserved to have you strike me and I shall leave the hotel at once. See, I'm outside. Now may I come back if I promise to behave myself?"

The color returned to Virginia's cheeks, and the smile that he considered so bewitching settled on her lips.

"Let's pretend you've just come," she said. "How do you do, Mr. Moulton?"

He entered gravely, bowed, shook hands and then turned to the audience.

"Would you people mind going now? I have some business to discuss with Miss Darrell."

"Say," said an old man, the same who kept the curiosity shop, "if it was me that had you covered, I'd have put six bullets in you 'fore you got your hand on my gun, mister."

"Mister," replied Phil with a short laugh, "if you ever pulled a gun on me I'd certainly say my prayers. This Drummond person is a cat of a different color. Shake."

He shook hands with all six natives and saw them out; then he returned to Virginia.

"Will you forgive me?" he asked tenderly.

Her answer was a laugh.

"Nothing to forgive; but your sense of humor some day will be the death of you. You have made an enemy of Fanshaw Drummond."

"That fellow just gets my goat. What I said about us stands, though, Virginia— about our being engaged, I mean."

She flushed. "I hardly know you," she evaded. "Now for business. You'll sleep here nights. I'll still go to Mrs. Wilkins'. I'll act as cook and waitress until we get so much trade that we'll have to hire a waitress— if we do. I have spent about eighty dollars of the hundred. Have you any money?"

"Certainly. Plenty," he lied.

"Because there are some small bills and we shall have to send to Reno for certain things. Oh, Mr. Moulton, what shall we do if nobody comes?"

He roared with laughter. "You certainly don't know me. The ads are out and the business has to come. You've thrown up your job at the lunch room, of course?"

"Certainly not," she retorted. "I'm still working there at noon and at night. I need the money. I've kept my share of our bargain, but I've done a lot of thinking since you went away, and— well, really, Mr. Moulton, it doesn't stand to reason that people will start coming here just because you have sent out a few circulars and put up some roadside signs."

"You're not from Chicago, you're from Missouri," he laughed. "Good Lord, he's in again!"

Fanshaw Drummond had strode into the lobby.

"Jinie," he said earnestly, ignoring his late antagonist, "I want a showdown. You going to marry me or this feller?"

Virginia regarded him with a furious look in her eye.

"I'm not going to marry either of you, but if it was a matter of necessity for me to decide I certainly wouldn't choose you. So, there!"

The little man looked so crestfallen that her heart smote her.

"I'm sorry, Fanshaw, but you would have it. I do like you."

"All right," he retorted angrily. "I just wanted to know. Now you look out for me, both of you. I was good  enough for you till this big dude came along. I come here to give you your chance. Now you wait and see what's going to happen."

"Do you want me to run you out again?" asked Phil, moving suggestively toward him.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Drummond," said Virginia. "I appreciate your kindness toward me—"

"Bah!" retorted Drummond. "You can't soft-soap me." He made a dignified and unassisted exit.

"What will he do— shoot at me from ambush?" said Phil.

Virginia shook her head.

"I don't think he's a killer. The gun doesn't mean much more than the wooden sword of the town idiot. You were mad to grab it, though. In this country they usually shoot when they pull a revolver. No, I don't think Drummond's threat amounts to anything. Poor little chap."

FOR two or three days both Phil and Virginia worked like slaves to get the hotel into shape and, yielding to his persuasion, Virginia left her job at the lunch room and prepared to receive guests at the hotel dining room.

Phil did not fail to note the daily grist of tourists— eight or ten cars, mostly flivvers. The proprietor of the lunch room, disgusted at the prospect of competition, padlocked his front door and went to Reno in search of a job, so what local trade there was immediately shifted to the hotel dining room. The returns did not total twenty dollars a day with the tourists.

A week passed and no improvement occurred, and then six touring cars, filled with Californians, arrived at once. They were a group of guests at the big hotel at Lake Tahoe who had made up a party after perusal of the Virginia City booklet which had been placed in the resort rack in the hotel lobby. There were twenty people in the party and they lunched at the hotel. Phil suggested that they remain overnight and make trips to other abandoned camps in the vicinity; but the ladies voted for putting up at Reno because it was livelier there.

Phil acted as waiter on this momentous occasion, and Virginia did the cooking. The guests praised the food and left some thirty dollars in the till.

When they Ivid gone the boy seized his partner and danced her joyously about the lobby.

"Now what do you think of my idea?" he wanted to know.

"Perfectly marvelous," she assured him. "Oh, Phil, won't it be glorious if we make this hotel succeed?"

"You . haven't seen anything ytt. They'll be coming by the hundreds soon, and those who get here late will have to put up overnight. These folks came too early. Say, if they had been delayed, we could have got forty or fifty dollars out of them for rooms."

"But we didn't."

"We'll rent our rooms, all right."

Next day the usual small quota of flivvers put in an appearance. These were not results from the advertising.

But the following day, when ten cars came with sight-seers from various points, the dining room did a rushing business and two rooms were rented that night. Phil immediately hired a bell hop and a night clerk.

Apparently all Virginia City had needed was a press agent for, during the next week, fully one hundred tourists came with sight-seers from various lently, a dozen rooms were rented and the total receipts of the Golconda went over two hundred dollars. The partners pinched themselves to be sure they were not dreaming, and Virginia had no hesitation in agreeing that half the money be sent in additional advertising.

THEY HIRED a cook who would work under the supervision of Virginia. They built air castles like a pair of children as they sat outside the front door of their biwming hotel on those warm summer nights and watched the moonlight up the deep valley which had once contained billions in gold and silver,

Phil was behind the desk one morning when Fenshaw Drummond entered briskly, drew a paper front his pocket and handed it to his rival.

"Well, well, well, 'Deadwood Dick,' " said Phil, whose mood was exceptionally benign. "Haven't seen much of you lately. We've missed you, so we have. Only last night I was saying, 'All I need to make me perfectly happy is to have Fanshaw Drummond come round and point his popgun at me.' " .

"Think you're smart!" sneered Fanshaw. "Just look at that paper. Mister Hotel Owner."

Phil unfolded the paper and his cheerfulness faded rapidly.

"What's this? It seems to be a demand by the State of Nevada for eighteen thousand dollars. What for?"

Fanshaw pulled his mustache.

"Unpaid taxes on the Golconda Hotel for thirty-eight years," he said dryly.

"But— but— I suppose we have you to thank for this."

"I thought of it," said Drummond. "It kind of come to me the night you kicked me out and chucked my gun after me."

"And what happens if we don't pay?"

"Sell the hotel for taxes in thirty days."

"This is your friendship for Miss Darrell," reproached Phil. "You plot to ruin her."

"No plot. State can grab any building in Virginia City, pretty near. Nobody's  paid taxes for years and years."

"But who'd buy the hotel?" demanded Phil.

Drummond's big mustache lifted as he grinned.

"Might buy it myself. Looks like a pretty good thing now you got people coming up here every day to see what the town looks like."

"You leave," said Phil, "before I lose my temper."

He was white with rage, and Drummond recognized the symptoms and kept his hand on his weapon as he departed, leaving Phil to inspect the tax notice at his leisure.

Such a contingency had never occurred to Virginia or himself; nor would it liave occurred to the State if Drummond had not made the suggestion. This city was a corpse and no revenue had been derived from it for years. Nobody in town paid either rent or taxes. Neverthelsss, the liability could not be controverted. Unless thirty-eight years' back taxes were forthcoming the sale of the hotel was inevitable.

Phil looked mournfully at Virginia, and she met his eyes bravely.

"Maybe no one will buy it," she offered.

"Don't worry," he replied dolefully. "We've started a boom and some Reno business man will drive up here and bid it for a couple of thousand. We made nearly four hundred dollars profit for the week ending yesterday."

"What are we going to do?" she asked plaintively. "There is money enough to take us out of town, but you've lost your investment."

"Do you suppose I'm going to let that motion-picture bad man chase me out of town?" he cried indignantly. "We keep right on, Virginia. We have four weeks. If business continues to improve it's possible we shall have a couple of thousand cash by that time. And I'll take my balance sheet to a Reno bank and borrow a couple of thousand more on my personal note. It means our first season's profits will all go for taxes, but at least we shall hold the fort and clean up next year."

"If we survive the winter— eight or nine months long and— oh, so cold!" she said with a shiver.

"Well, we'll carry on until the day of the sale and then decide whether to let the hotel go or try to buy it in. Here comes the first batch of tourists."

During the next few weeks Phil and Virginia worked hard and profited reasonably, but the enthusiasm which had marked the beginning of the enterprise was gone. They had supposed that their net weekly revenue was all free and clear; now it must be turned over to the State if they expected to remain in business.

At the end of the third week their total capital was just under twelve hundred dollars, and during the fourth week tourist trade began to fall off. Phil understood why. Such an enterprise required a steady expenditure for advertising, and he didn't have the heart to advertise when he had no assurance that he would reap the benefit of it.

He ran down to Reno one morning and interviewed a bank president, a person whom he recognized as having been a patron of the Golconda Hotel a fortnight before.

"I'm sorry," said the banker. "You have done wonderfully, Mr. Moulton, in dragging so many people up to Virginia City by your press-agent methods, but you can't keep it up. Your hotel is antediluvian, the town is dismal. What you are trying to do is reanimate a corpse. Take my advice and let the hotel go, provided anybody wants to bid it in. It's possible there won't be a single offer, in which case you can buy it for a few hundred. I can assure you that no bank in the State would lend you money for such a shaky enterprise."

That night Phil and Virginia had a long talk and they decided that the banker was right. But the tourist business revived next day, and on Saturday and Sunday the hotel dining room did the largest trade in its recent history.

The sale would take place at noon on Monday. Sunday night the owners pooled their receipts and found a total of one thousand three hundred and seventy-eight dollars.

"Shall we take a chance?" asked Phil.

"No," replied Virginia. "I want you to take out of this sum the amount you have invested, and if there is any left we'll split it."

He laughed and patted her hand.

"Fifty-fifty on the principal sum, my dear," he said.

THE ENTIRE population of Virginia City assembled in the lobby of the Golconda to attend the sale— the most exciting event in several years to the inhabitants of the dead city. From Reno came an auctioneer hired by the county, accompanied by several residents of the big town drawn by curiosity. Virginia and Phil had made their decision the night before. They were through. Let whoever wanted the hotel have it.

After reading the county commissioner's authorization, the auctioneer announced that the property would go to the highest cash bidder and that there was no minimum. He asked for an offer, but none was forthcoming. However, finally a man from Reno said with a laugh: "One hundred dollars."

There was a delay before getting a second offer and then Phil, at a sign from Virginia, offered three hundred.

"If we can get it for a few hundred, why not?" she whispered.

The Reno person came back with four hundred, but when Phil bid five hundred he withdrew. For a moment it looked as if the partners would get it at that price, but a voice from the rear of the crowd bid six hundred. Then Fanshaw pushed his way to the front row.

"Oh!" exclaimed Virginia. "Don't let him get it, Phil. Don't let him!"

"I won't," he said grimly, and raised Fanshaw's bid. In five minutes, going up twenty-five dollars at a time, they reached thirteen hundred dollars.

"Fourteen hundred!" shouted Drummond.

Phil gritted his teeth and exchanged glances with Virginia. They were beaten.

"It's yours," he said to his opponent

Drummond looked confused and frightened.

"I take back my bid. I didn't mean to go so far," he stammered to the auctioneer.

"Then I sell the hotel to Mr. Moulton for thirteen hundred dollars. Sold, Mr, Moulton?"

"Yes," said Phil.

There was a murmur of excitement in the crowd and a few weak cheers. Drummond was not popular, but neither was the young man from Frisco. They had nothing against Phil except that he was an outsider.

"Oh!" exclaimed Virginia, her face pale, her eyes burning as she realized too late what had happened. "Mr. Auctioneer, stop that sale. It was unfair."

The auctioneer looked up from his papers. "Why was it unfair?"

"Because I don't believe Fanshaw Drummond has any money. He couldn't have bought the hotel at any price. I demand that the auction be held all over again."

The auctioneer chuckled. "This gent, Mr. Moulton, has money. He's paid me and the hotel has been sold. As far as I knew, the other bidder was as well fixed as this one."

"You know you have no money, Fanshaw," Virginia reproached her former admirer. He grinned maliciously.

"I fixed it so the State got all of yourn," he said.

Virginia started toward him belligerently and he backed away.

"You get off my property and stay off," she commanded. "Everybody go, please, please."

When they were alone in the lobby they eyed each other ruefully.

"I was a fool," sighed Phil "I forgot everything except that I couldn't let this place, where you have worked so hard, go to that scoundrel Drummond."

"If you had I would never have spoken to you again," she declared. "We've got supplies on hand, our credit is— well, fair, and we'll carry on till the end of the tourist season. Perhaps we'll make enough to go to a big city for the winter. I can always get a job."

"You've got a job," he said meaningly. "Virginia, let's get married."

She laughed rather shakily. "With about fifty dollars in the world to live on?"

"Why not? A newspaper man can always make a living."

"W-ell—" She hesitated. "Not until we've fought this out to the bitter end."

The bitter end was nearer than they expected. The weather turned cold that night and a chill wind began to blow down the mountainside. Drummond, having passed the word around that the partners had spent their last cent for taxes, persons who had small bills against them began to demand payment, and tourist travel stopped abruptly.

Virginia was still observing the proprieties by sleeping at Mrs. Wilkins'; all the employees lived at home; there were no guests, and for several nights Phil was the only lodger in the Golconda. The sale had been on Monday. Bad weather had continued and up to Thursday night, aside from a few dollars taken in at the cafe from local patrons, receipts were absolutely nil. The boy had lost all hope, though he affected to be sanguine in the presence of his partner. Unless things changed for the better within a couple of days, he had determined to put Virginia, willy-nilly, into his automobile, drive her to Frisco, marry her, sell the car and apply for his old job on the newspaper.

He went up to bed about ten that night, after escorting the girl to her lodging, and stood at his window looking down into the valley. He occupied a room on the second floor back, which gave him a view that would have been worth thousands to a hotel in Switzerland or California. The wind was howling and he felt the old house shake now and then when the full force of it struck the ancient facade.

Sleep was impossible. Phil was too young to accept defeat with resignation. His nerves were on edge. And as he stood at the window he became aware of a vibration which was not the wind. It was a steady tap-tap as of a hammer on rock. There was no mistaking it. Softly he lifted the sash and leaned out.

By the fitful light of the moon he discerned a man stooping over and doing something to the foundation wall far below. There was nothing Phil could do against fate, but if he had a human enemy around whose throat he could grip his fingers—  Phil slipped out of his room, down the stairs and out the front door of the hotel. He ran to the corner of the building, climbed the shaky board fence and moved carefully down the steep slope, keeping close to the wall of the hotel. It was a hundred feet to the rear wall and a drop of nearly thirty— a rough, dangerous slope. He peered around the corner and saw a man approaching.

Phil waited until he turned the corner and then, with a whoop, sprang at Fanshaw Drummond.

The "bad man" uttered a terrified yelp and fell over backward, Phil on top, hands at Drummond's throat, and then they started to roll. Clinging together, they sped with sickening speed down the mountainside, the force of gravity augmented by the fifty-mile gale which accompanied them.

Weeks ago Phil had looked down this slope and estimated that a man could roll a mile if he once got started. Of course, he wouldn't be apt to reach the bottom alive.

However, fate had arranged to place in their path the debris-filled cellar of a long-vanished cottage, and into this they dropped with a thud and landed upon a thick growth of moss. This saved the skull of Drummond, who happened to be undermost, from fracture.

They stared at each other stupidly for a few seconds and then the sound of an explosion restored his senses to Phil Moulton. He clambered to his feet and looked up the hill. He saw a cloud of smoke at the base of the Golconda. The moon came out from behind a cloud and showed him the hotel swaying like a drunkard in the wind. A second, two seconds, and then the building toppled slowly and disintegrated.

Phil dragged Drummond to his feet and hauled the fellow, still stupefied, out of the cellar and ran him across the mountainside, out of the path of the avalanche of brick and mortar and rotten timbers. A hundred yards distant he stopped and looked back. The Golconda, in a million pieces, was on its way to the bottom of the mountain and, already, a torrent of bricks was pouring into the cellar which had ended their own descent.

Drummond burst into childish tears under the accusing eye of the man who had just saved his life. Phil needed no confession. The fellow had drilled a hole in the rear foundation wall of the hotel, thrust a stick of dynamite in it, touched a fuse and was taking to his heels when he met his Nemesis. Aware that only Moulton slept in the building, he had counted on disposing of his enemy and destroying the property of the girl who had refused to marry him. He was potentially a murderer.

Phil shut his right fist and drove it against the man's chin with every ounce of power he possessed, and when Drummond crumpled beneath the blow he left him lying there and painfully climbed the slope until he reached the main street.

He laughed suddenly. His problem and Virginia's had been settled for them. Nothing now to hold them in Virginia City. The cellar was almost empty because the building had just Tipped over and gone sliding down the hill. He accepted the condolences of the natives who approached him, and, annoyed by their importunities, started for Mrs. Wilkins' boarding place. Might as well get a good night's sleep.

He met Virginia, fully dressed, coming out of the lodging house. Taking her hands he told her what had happened to her inheritance, but he didn't feel just now like explaining the agency of Drummond in the affair.

"If it had only happened a week ago," sighed the girl.

"Well, the State of Nevada is that much richer. Go back to bed, dear, and in the morning we'll visit the ruins."

When they arrived next mornimg at the place where the Gokoada had stood, they found the proprietor of the curiosity shop poking about in the cellar.

"Looking for stock for your shop?" called Phil cheerfully.

The old man glanced up. "Just nosin' round," he said. "Knew you wouldn't mind. Found an old trunk here that belonged to the gal's grandfather. It was busted open by a rock, but there ain't nothing much in it."

"Make you a present of it," declared Phil. "We're getting out of town before the authorities make us pick up our property from the floor of the valley down there."

"Don't be so hasty," commanded Virginia. "Lift up the trunk, Mr. Payton, and we'll take it to your shop."

They carried the broken trunk to the curiosity shop and spent an hour pouring over its contents. There were musty ledgers, batches of moldy bills and a big envelope full of crackling parchment which Phil spread out on a table.

"Stock certificates!" he jeered. "He had stock in all these abandoned mines around here. Worthless, the whole lot of it. Wouldn't bring a nickel a bushel—  What's this?

He held up a green certificate, and his hand was trembling.

"Pick up that newspaper over there. Look up Grandlund Copper."

Virginia frowned over the stock quotations in a week-old newspaper until he snatched it from her hand.

"Grandlund Copper," he read. "Shares closed at two hundred and thirty-one dollars. My God, Jinie, you're rich? This is a certificate for a hundred shares. The old man probably paid five dollars a share for it forty years ago."

"Is it still good?" she exclaimed.

"Good as gold. Made out to your grandfather, and you are his sole heir. This piece of paper is worth twenty-three thousand one hundred dollars."

"Oh!" she squealed. "See if there are any more like that."

But there were no more.

Two hours later Phil and Jinie in their shiny thousand-dollar automobile, which descended mountains better than it went up, waved good-by to Virginia City.

When they were ten miles away, he told her about the part that Drummond had played in their good fortune.

"But you might have been killed!" she exclaimed. "Turn back. I want him punished."

"Punishment enough to have to live in a dead city," he chuckled. "We have important business in Reno— matter of a license and a preacher."

Virginia smiled up at him.

"Well, I suppose that is really more important," she admitted.

_________________

15: On the Turn of a Coin

Cleveland Moffett

1863-1926

The Black Cat, April 1900

DOWN the corridor, walking carefully, came four hospital attendants, holding the stretcher resting on two large wheels, rolling noiselessly. The operation was over. On the stretcher lay a young woman, unconscious. Her face was beautiful, but white as the covering sheets, and her head was wound with bandages. She breathed faintly through parted lips.

Out of the operating-room came the surgeon who had finished his work, and with him his assistants, young men in blouses and black caps, most of them wearing pointed beards. An odor of carbolic acid followed them.

"Poor girl," said one, as he watched the stretcher tum into one of the wards. "I wonder if she'll speak before she dies."

"It will be better for her assassin if she doesn't," said another. Then they went off to various duties. Last of all came Auguste Caseau, hurrying and behind-hand, as usual. He had risen late, had reached the hospital late, and had had no breakfast. Of all the medical students at the Lariboisiere Hospital there was none more popular than Caseau, but the pleasures of Paris at night often made him neglect his duties of the day. In the present instance he did not know who the young woman was whom he had just seen under the knife, nor had he any idea how her skull had been crushed with such frightful wounds. All he knew was that she had remarkable beauty and was doomed to die.

He was hurrying off to a neighboring café when a stranger waiting at the door touched his arm. The man's eyes were eager, he spoke with ill-concealed excitement and seemed like one who had gone many hours without sleep.

"Tell me," he said, "did she speak?"

Caseau shook his head, looking at the man suspiciously.

"Can she live?"

"God knows, the doctor took sixteen pieces of bone out of her head."

"Holy Mother, sixteen pieces of bone!"

Caseau was walking meantime toward the cafe, and the man followed him. His eagerness for information betrayed an interest in the case that argued some special knowledge, and Caseau was curious.

"Will you drink?" he said, when they had taken seats at a table. The stranger called for absinthe and drained his glass quickly.

"I must ask one more question, my friend," he said. "Tell me where were the wounds on this girl's head— were they on the back?"

"They were," assented Caseau, who had ordered his breakfast.

"Were there none in front, none on the forehead nor on the face?"

Caseau shook his head. "There were none."

"How strange," muttered the man. "She was facing him when... "

"Facing whom?" asked Caseau sharply, and the question seemed to bring the man to his senses.

"Pardon me; I forgot that you do not know. I have been through so much for the last twelve hours that I am dazed. Do you believe in occult things, hallucinations and so on?"

Caseau was only in his second year, and the lectures on hallucinations did not begin until the third, so he answered guardedly.

"That depends," he said, with an air of holding knowledge in reserve. He questioned with his eyes, and for the first time appeared sympathetic. The man ordered another absinthe.

"I will tell you about it," he said. "I shall go mad unless I tell some one. In the first place, let me assure you that usually I am the most matter-of-fact man in Paris; I never get angry, I never get excited, but last night—" He paused and a little shiver ran over him.

"But last night," repeated Caseau encouragingly.

"It was about nine o'clock and I was walking up the Rue Fontaine with my bat off because the night was hot, and whistling because business had been good. You see I am a grocer down on the Street of the Four Winds. When I reached the corner of the Rue Breda, where I live, I stopped in a little cake-shop to buy some sweets for my wife. Then I hurried upstairs, two at a time, for I was eager to see her. Our apartment is on the fifth floor, looking out on the Rue Fontaine, and a balcony runs along the windows where my wife keeps flowers growing. It is a nice place to sit summer evenings, and I expected to find her there.

"Imagine my surprise, then, on opening the door, to find the apartment quite dark, except for the glow of the little night-lamp from the bedroom at the end of the corridor. And instead of seeing my wife come running to meet me, all smiles, I found absolute stillness in the place, stillness and darkness. In that moment, as I stood with the door ajar, and my hand on the knob, there came over me a creeping sense of fear, something I had never known before. It seemed to me that some great danger was lurking in the air, that some evil presence was near me. So strong was this feeling that, acting on the first impulse, I stepped back on to the landing outside and closed the door behind me.

"In an instant, however, my reason reasserted itself, and ashamed of my weakness I opened the door again, closed it sharply behind me, and double-locked it. Then hanging my hat on a hook at one side I started down the corridor. There was a distance of twenty feet that I had to traverse before reaching the bedroom, and I assure you that I never in my life endured such torture as I felt in taking those few steps. At first it was a fear for myself that held me back, but presently this was superseded by a horrible sickening fear for my wife. I saw it was she whose life was threatened, or had been threatened, for the conviction grew upon me that I had come too late. When I was half-way down the corridor, I clutched the wall with one hand and pressed the other to my brow, which was throbbing with frightful fancies. They say that drowning men see strange things as death comes on, but no drowning man, I am sure, ever saw a vision more distinct than came to me there of my poor wife."

By this time Caseau was listening intently.

"She is a beautiful woman, I beg you to believe, and I saw her as plainly as I see you now, stretched on the bed, her face as lovely as ever in its setting of dark hair, only very pale. But there were wounds, dreadful wounds, on the back of the head, from which the pillow was stained crimson.

"But this was only the vision?" put in Caseau.

"Yes, a vision. God grant you may never have one. I was unable to move, afraid to speak. I seemed rooted to the floor.

"Finally my will conquered, and I staggered into the bedroom. With an awful fascination my eyes sought the bed, around which were drawn the red curtains. On the side toward me, on a little table, burned the night lamp. Everything in the room seemed as usual— there was no sign that ill had come— yet I cannot tell you with what feelings I stepped forward and drew apart the curtains. My wife lay there apparently sleeping, her lovely face turned toward me, and the pillow beneath her head as white as her hand that pressed it. With a sigh of relief I sank into a chair. At that moment I was startled to hear, behind the curtains, a gasping sob, and then a burst of hysterical weeping. Hurrying to the bedside I besought my wife to be calm, assuring her that I was there to protect her.

"At last my wife recovered sufficiently to explain her fright as well as she was able to do so. She had dined alone about six o'clock and about seven had given Amandine, our servant, permission to go out for the evening. Then she had spent a little time tidying up the apartment, and about half-past seven had settled down to read in the room where we have our library. This room faces on the Rue Breda. In front of this room there is a short stretch of balcony, which ends in an iron partition that separates it from the balcony of the house adjoining, which is No. 4. It would be possible for a man to climb over this partition and step from one balcony to the other.

"As my wife read she must have dozed, for presently, although her back was turned to the window, she seemed to see a man of large stature standing on the balcony outside and peering into the room. This man had bushy red hair and eyes of the palest blue— eyes that frightened her. Presently he withdrew stealthily, climbed over the partition, and peered into a window of No. 4. Once again he drew back, seemed to hesitate, smiled with a grim humor and noiselessly drawing a coin from his pocket spun it in the air and caught it deftly in his open palm. Then moving closer to the window for better light he nodded, put the coin back in his pocket and forthwith entered the room where my wife sat, passing easily through the long, door-like halves of the window, that were swung wide open.

"Spellbound, my wife watched the man, who paid no heed to her, but made his way at once to the bedroom, she following in mortal terror. Approaching the bed he noticed that its curtains were drawn and paused a moment, casting his eyes about him as if in search for something. Near the fireplace lay a heavy brass poker which he picked up, returning with it to the bedside. Breathless my wife watched as he put aside the curtains. A woman lay there sleeping, with her face turned away, but my wife thought it was herself. She saw the man lift the poker as if to strike, at which the woman lying in the bed started and looked toward him. At this my wife's terror burst the bonds in her throat and she cried aloud.

"Of course it was only fancy, a dream, if you like, something that was not real, for the next instant she was alone in the room. But the effect was most distressing. Do what she would she could not drive from her mind the face of that tawny-haired assassin, with his pale blue eyes. It seemed to her that he was still near her with murderous purpose. In vain, lamp in hand, she searched the apartment, and tried to convince herself that nothing was there; in vain she closed and bolted the windows opening on the balcony. That sense of nameless fear pursued her still; and whichever way she turned it seemed to her that an enemy was crouching behind her, waiting his cha.nce to spring or strike.

"Finally she went to bed, hoping that sleep would give her some relief; but she could not sleep, he could not get her thoughts out of the morbid channel in which they were running. So, anxious, restless, sick at heart, she had waited for me to come, and my coming, alas, brought her only added terrors, for my strange delay at the door, my opening it twice and closing it, then my long pause and silence in the corridor, instead of the cheery greeting I was wont to give her, made her sure that it was not I at all, but some intruder come to do her harm, some prowling assailant of the night, perhaps the very man whose eyes and fiery hair had frightened her so in the vision.

"Then, realizing that it was her husband who was there, the man who loved her, and that there was no danger at all, she burst into the fit of hysterical sobbing from which I had such difficulty in calming her."

"You are preventing me from eating my breakfast, sir, with your queer story," said Caseau. "And besides, I can't see what it has to do with the young woman who has just been operated on."

"Let me finish," said the man, "let me finish. We hardly slept all night, for our fears persisted in spite of the knowledge that no harm had be fallen. I made matters worse by foolishly telling my wife of the fright I had experienced on entering the apartment, and my vision of the murdered woman. You will remember particularly that the wounds were on the back of the head, and you tell me that is where they really were."

"That is where they were on the woman in the hospital, but she is not your wife?"

"No, thank heaven, but you know who she is?"

"Not I," said Caseau. "I got in too late to learn any details."

"She is Marie Gagnol, who occupied the apartment adjoining ours in No. 4, Rue Breda."

"My God!" exclaimed Caseau. Just then one of the other students came in from the hospital.

"She's dead," he said. "She never spoke. But they are going to try an important experiment on her. Dr. Rosseau thinks she closed her eyes with fright at the very moment when she saw the murderer, and never opened them since. He's going to test his new apparatus for getting the last image recorded on the retina. If he succeeds it will be a new triumph for the hospital and for science."

"Gentlemen," said the stranger impressively, "if the doctor's experiment succeeds I believe on my soul that it will also be a triumph for justice."

THAT afternoon Dr. Rosseau made the experiment, with brilliant success; it was one of the first demonstrations of the possibilities of colored photography. Registered in the sensitive film of the dead woman's eyes, was found the distinct image of a man of unusual size, who clutched in his hands an uplifted poker. The man's hair was red, his eyes a pale blue.

Two months later such a man died under the knife on the Place de la Roquette. He had been arrested, convicted and condemned on the sole evidence of a pair of lifeless eye-balls, supported by the testimony of a woman who had never seen him except in a vision. On the eve of his execution he made a full confession. He stated that the murder was a chance crime, prompted only by greed. He had reached the balcony running in front of Nos. 2 and 4 Rue Breda by using a rope hung from the roof. He declared that for about five minutes while he was standing outside he had hesitated whether to enter the apartment of No. 2 or No. 4. He had rested the decision on the turn of a coin.

___________________

16: The Demon of the Opal

W. B. Wallace
fl 1900s

The Ludgate Magazine, March 1900

Author of a dozen or so short stories, articles, poems and the like circa 1899-1905. Nothing else is known.

1: The Begum of Bhopal.

THE slaves had set down her palanquin beneath the grateful shade of the giant banyan and departed. The presence of the princess and her maidens had for the nonce converted the garden into a zenana, not to be polluted by the step of man, and the bearers had joined the royal guards, who kept watch just without its precincts.

The languorous heat of the afternoon had rapidly induced slumber, and the distant laughter of her attendants, who were disporting themselves in the refreshing waters of the great tank, and pelting each other emulously with nenuphars and roses, and even the sacred lotus, did not disturb the Begum of Bhopal. Her rest was tranquil and happy.

Why, indeed, should it be otherwise? Was she not young and beautiful, wealthy and powerful, and a queen? Nay, on the present occasion, it was, perhaps, even more blissful than its wont. Could you have peeped between the silken hangings of her palanquin, you would have seen a faint smile upon her face, and a slight roseate flush just tinging the pale olive of her rounded cheek.

She was dreaming. Of whom or what? Perchance of the gallant and handsome Mahratta warrior, Mohammed Khan, the trusted captain of her guard. As she slept, her right arm, which had slipped from its cushion, hung gracefully down from the carved ivory edge of her couch, and upon her finger scintillated the vivid fiery rays of a magnificent opal.

And so the peaceful moments glided on. Although she was a princess, they were perhaps the happiest of her life. Silvery ripples of girlish laughter from the bath, a faint breath of wind sighing through the banyan grove— these were the only sounds audible.

Stay, there was now assuredly a slight but constant rustle som ewhere other than that of the breeze in the fan-like leaves. Yes, between the massive roots and the spreading shadows of the banyan a man was crawling, wriggling like a snake, nearer and ever nearer to the palanquin and its slumbering occupant. The dress of the intruder was mean, his form slight, though lithe and sinewy, but there was the light of a terrible and demoniac hate in his yellow feline eyes, and held between his teeth there gleamed a formidable creese.

Orientals are always capricious, often cruel, and seldom just. Only the day before, the Begum had ordered the bastinado to be administered to her Malay servant Ibrahim for a trifling fault. Smarting under the indignity, which he felt far more than the physical torture, the man had registered an internal vow of vengeance. At first he had determined to run amok, to draw his creese, rush upon the guards, and slay and be slain.

Cooler reflection, however, suggested that it would be something worse than mere folly to sacrifice his own life and the lives of other innocent persons while the author of his disgrace remained unpunished.

And then it had suddenly flashed across his mind that the customary siesta of the princess in the comparative solitude of the banyan grove would afford him an opportunity of wreaking his revenge and probably effecting his escape as well. It had been an easy matter for the Malay to conceal himself in the garden, and now he was within measurable distance of the goal he coveted.

With infinite caution, and inch by inch, he raised himself and peered around. There was nobody in sight, but for all that he knew that not an instant was to be lost. The Begum might wake, or her maidens might return. There would be a struggle and cries for help, which would be speedily forthcoming. Slowly, stealthily, noiselessly, he drew aside the curtains of the palanquin, gloated for a moment on his prey, and then with one swift, sure blow, into which he put all his strength, clove the heart beating so tranquilly beneath the fine transparent gauze vest.

The usual savage passion for mutilation, and perhaps a desire for the glittering jewel, gave him brief pause while he severed the small, drooping hand at the wrist and thrust the bleeding member into a bag which he carried suspended from his waist

Successfully eluding the vigilance of the guards, he then made his way into the tangled depths of the adjoining Terai. Then he felt himself secure. A grim smile of satisfaction crossed his visage. Had he not done wisely and well? He had not run amok, according to the absurd fashion of his race; he had effectually avenged himself without loss of life or limb.

And yet death was tracking him; it was his fate, for all his precautions, to slay and be slain. As he passed through the jungle a hungry tiger that had been crouching in ambush, watching for a victim, leaped upon him, pinned him to the ground, and bore away the lacerated body in triumph to his lair. Next day some peasants found the bag, which had become detached in the fatal struggle, lying on the path.

A century later, and a few years after the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, the opal ring— which in the interim had often changed owners— became the property of Lieutenant Carruthers, of the 5th Gurkhas.

2: In Clubland.

ON ONE of those frightful nights of storm and tempest, sleet and slush, and general unpleasantness, which luckless Londoners had to endure last winter— 1898-99— three men, Vavasour, Fairfax, and Brandon, were enjoying their cigars, and a rather discursive chat in the luxurious smoking-room of the Hermaeum, which presented a sufficiently striking contrast to the state of affairs outside. Somehow or other the conversation turned upon opals, of all things in the world.

It was Arthur Fairfax who gave the ball its first impetus.

"By-the-bye, I saw you at the Savoy last night, Vavasour," he said. "Did you notice how very charming Lady Harringay, that smartest of smart women, was looking? She seemed to set superstition at defiance, for she was wearing a row of superb opals round her throat."

"I am afraid you are rather behind the times, my dear Arthur," cut in Brandon, maliciously. "Don't you know that opals, in obedience to the sovereign fiat of Fashion, the Queen of the World, have emerged from their temporary retirement, and are now all the rage with our Society dames?"

Fairfax looked abashed. There is nothing upsets a man so much as being thought not quite up to date, and Vavasour hastened to take up the parable, whether anxious to maintain his own reputation as the most interminable talker in the club, or to relieve the evident embarrassment of his friend.

"I confess," he began, "that I have always regarded these stones, with the fiery demon at their heart, as the Arabs will tell you, as particularly uncanny ever since, as a boy, I devoured a certain weird story about them, introduced by Sir Walter Scott in his Anne of Geierstein."

"Do tell, Vavasour," interposed Brandon, with a laughable assumption of the nasal Transatlantic twang. But Vavasour, much as he liked the sound of his own voice, was not to be drawn thus.

"No, thank you," he replied with dignity. "I perceive your education has been scandalously neglected, and as I have neither time nor inclination to supply its deficiencies, I must refer you to the romance in question."

Brandon had choked off his adversary, and promptly availed himself of the opportunity thus afforded for airing his own views. It is perhaps necessary to explain that he was the scientific man par excellence of the club, and that anthropology was his special hobby.

"It is extremely difficult," he said, "to account for the strange  circumstance that opals and peacocks' feathers are both universally considered unlucky. The thing is absurd on the face of it, but like many another absurdity it is a fact to be reckoned with. And the craze, moreover, is no new-fangled one; it is of hoary, nay, immemorial antiquity. Now I have only a theory to offer, but such as it is you are welcome to it.

"When the aesthetic sense first dawned in the benighted minds of our remote and respectable ancestors, the cave-dwellers, I fancy they went in as recklessly for personal adornment as the women nowadays do for new hats. Feathers and stones are amongst the earliest possessions of savages, and the gaudiest feathers and handsomest stones would naturally find the greatest favour in the eyes of our unsophisticated fore-fathers. Now can you imagine that any stone would be more popular than the milky opal, with fire, man's earliest friend— not a fiend, as Vavasour suggests— dwelling enshrined in its heart? And what plumage is more gloriously iridescent than that of the peacock, more calculated to appeal to the Troglodyte's love of colour? The feathers and the gems, then, would be universally prized. So far so good; but then you must next remember that the tenure of property in those primitive days was, for obvious reasons, rather precarious. The possessor of these coveted treasures would only hold them— as the priest of Nemi did his office— until a stronger man than he came along, slew him, and despoiled him of his goods. And now you see the drift of my argument. In course of time these gauds came to be thought unlucky, for their owners almost invariably came to grief in the long run."

"A very ingenious theory, indeed," remarked a grave voice at the speaker's elbow.

He started, turned round, and to his surprise beheld Colonel Carruthers, who had joined the little group unobserved. The Colonel was an old Anglo-Indian, of gentlemanly aspect, soldierly bearing, and unobtrusive, nay, almost taciturn manners. He was always faultlessly attired and perfectly groomed, but his thoughtful face wore the impress of some deep and abiding sorrow, and his only apparent relaxation was a quiet game of chess, at which scientific pastime he was an adept.

"Gentlemen," proceeded Colonel Carruthers, while his hearers were utterly astounded at his unwonted loquacity, "I have listened with deep interest to your conversation. I need hardly say that I should not have played eavesdropper had it been of a private nature. Will you now permit me to state that I know from personal experience, or rather"— instantly correcting himself — "from the experience of a friend, that in this case the voice of superstition, for once at least, is the voice of truth, and that opals are unlucky— bring misfortune to their owners, even in our present advanced stage of civilisation. I nave no theory; I do not attempt to account for the thing; I merely mention it as a fact."

He paused, but Brandon begged him to proceed.

"It all happened years ago," said the Colonel, witn a deep sigh. "My friend, a young officer, whom I will call Lieutenant Vintram, was home from India on sick leave. It was his fortune, or rather fate, to meet one night at a ball a beautiful girl, to whom his life became thenceforth devoted. Lucy Okeden was the daughter of a wealthy London alderman, who had purchased a magnificent place down in Cheshire, and her parents cherished vast ambitions on their only child's behalf. It was scarcely likely that they would encourage the pretensions of a young subaltern who had nothing but his pay and his expectations. Nor did they.

"One of you gentlemen mentioned Sir Walter Scott a few moments ago. Lucy Okeden resembled only too closely in her character, beauty, position, and untimely end, her hapless namesake, Lucy Ashton, the Bride of Lammermoor. Fair and simple, pure and innocent, fragile and yielding as the daisy of Burns' pathetic poem, she was fated to become the victim of the insane ambition of others, and to be crushed beneath a merciless ploughshare— the ploughshare ot destiny.

"Lucy Okeden, it is true, gave her heart unreservedly to the young officer, her first and her only love, but she was as wax in the hands of her vulgar and scheming parents, who barely tolerated Vintram. But the lovers lived only in the present, and saw not or recked not of the ominous clouds fast gathering on the horizon.

"In the midst of a joyous summer, wherein the enamoured pair frequently met at fetes and picnics, and in the houses of mutual friends, Lieutenant Vintram received a letter summoning him to the bedside of his father, who lay dangerously ill, dying, it was thought, in London. In their parting interview by the shores of a romantic lake in the alderman's extensive park, he gave his love, as a seal of their engagement, a magnificent opal ring, which he had purchased in India, and which— so the grim tradition went— had been taken a hundred years before from the dissevered hand of a beautiful Begum of Bhopal, who had been assassinated and mutilated by her Malay servant. And then he tore himself away from her embrace. Strange are the ways of fate! Little did he dream that he would never, never behold Lucy more.

"His father's illness was long and tedious. He was consequently a fixture in London; but he wrote frequently to Cheselden Manor. His letters remained unanswered. This amazed him; for a kind of informal sanction of their engagement had been wrung from Lucy's parents shortly before his departure. There came, however, one fatal morning, when he received a packet. It contained the opal ring and these words:

Farewell for ever. My parents have withdrawn their consent to our union. My heart is broken, but I must obey them—

Lucy.

"That very day he heard at his club that a marriage had been arranged, and was shortly about to take place, between Miss Okeden and the Earl of Altrincham. The latter was known to him by repute as a venerable and gouty peer, whose antecedents were not quite as satisfactory as his rent-roll. He hurried home in a state of frenzy, and lost not a moment in sending back the ring without comment to her whom he had so adored, but whom he now cursed in his heart as false and fickle. He at least would not be a party to her act of betrayal.

"But the next dawn brought sorrow and repentance in its train. He hurried down to Cheshire, and that evening reached the village, in whose outskirts Cheselden Manor stands. He entered the park and sought the border of the lake, the spot where they had parted. He scarcely knew why he did so. Perhaps he had some vague idea that he might meet Lucy there. He sat down on a rustic bench where they had often lingered on the sweet summer evenings. It was fine autumnal weather now, but for him all the beauty of nature had departed. He looked towards the house, and was surprised to note that, with the exception of a twinkling taper in one or two of the windows, all was enveloped in darkness.

"A man came up. It was Bill Adams, one of the keepers. On recognising Lieutenant Vintram in the moonlight, he touched his hat respectfully, and paused for a moment.

" 'No doubt you have heard the sad news, sir,' he said, with a touch of genuine feeling in his rough voice. 'No? Poor Miss Lucy is dead. You see, sir, she was never strong, and she did not take kindly, so it was thought, to the match with Lord Altrincham. Well, this morning she received a parcel. The lady's maid says that when she saw the writing her poor hand trembled so that she could scarcely open the packet. When she did so at last, an opal ring dropped out. Miss Lucy, pale as death, took it up, kissed it, and placed it on the table beside her. The very next moment she put her hand to her heart and fell to the ground fainting, as Mary thought, but when she raised her she was dead.' "

The Colonel's voice had long been faltering, and his story ended in something suspiciously like a sob. He turned aside his head and hastened away, acknowledging the thanks of his auditors with a silent bow.

"THE FRIEND was all a myth," said Brandon to Vavasour, as they parted that night beneath the lamp at the entrance to the chambers of the latter. " Colonel Carruthers has told us the story of his own life."

______________

17: The Mystery of Dave Regan

Henry Lawson

1867-1922

Worker (Wagga, NSW) 4 Nov 1893

"AND THEN there was Dave Regan," said the traveller. "Dave used to die oftener than any other bushman I knew. He was always being reported dead and turnin' up again. He seemed to like it— except once, when his brother drew his money and drank it all to drown his grief at what he called Dave's 'untimely end'. Well, Dave went up to Queensland once with cattle, and was away three years and reported dead, as usual. He was drowned in the Bogan this time while tryin' to swim his horse acrost a flood— and his sweetheart hurried up and got spliced to a worse man before Dave got back.

"Well, one day I was out in the bush lookin' for timber, when the biggest storm ever knowed in that place come on. There was hail in it, too, as big as bullets, and if I hadn't got behind a stump and crouched down in time I'd have been riddled like a— like a bushranger. As it was, I got soakin' wet. The storm was over in a few minutes, the water run off down the gullies, and the sun come out and the scrub steamed— and stunk like a new pair of moleskin trousers. I went on along the track, and presently I seen a long, lanky chap get on to a long, lanky horse and ride out of a bush yard at the edge of a clearin'. I knowed it was Dave d'reckly I set eyes on him.

"Dave used to ride a tall, holler-backed thoroughbred with a body and limbs like a kangaroo dog, and it would circle around you and sidle away as if it was frightened you was goin' to jab a knife into it.

" ' 'Ello! Dave!' said I, as he came spurrin' up. 'How are yer!'

" ' 'Ello, Jim!' says he. 'How are you?'

" 'All right!' says I. 'How are yer gettin' on?'

"But, before we could say any more, that horse shied away and broke off through the scrub to the right. I waited, because I knowed Dave would come back again if I waited long enough; and in about ten minutes he came sidlin' in from the scrub to the left.

" 'Oh, I'm all right,' says he, spurrin' up sideways; 'How are you?'

" 'Right!' says I. 'How's the old people?'

" 'Oh, I ain't been home yet,' says he, holdin' out his hand; but, afore I could grip it, the cussed horse sidled off to the south end of the clearin' and broke away again through the scrub.

"I heard Dave swearin' about the country for twenty minutes or so, and then he came spurrin' and cursin' in from the other end of the clearin'.

" 'Where have you been all this time?' I said, as the horse came curvin' up like a boomerang.

" 'Gulf country,' said Dave.

" 'That was a storm, Dave,' said I.

" 'My oath!' says Dave.

" 'Get caught in it?'

" 'Yes.'

" 'Got to shelter?'

" 'No.'

" 'But you're as dry's a bone, Dave!'

"Dave grinned. '—— and —— and —— the ———!' he yelled.

"He said that to the horse as it boomeranged off again and broke away through the scrub. I waited; but he didn't come back, and I reckoned he'd got so far away before he could pull up that he didn't think it worth while comin' back; so I went on. By-and-bye I got thinkin'. Dave was as dry as a bone, and I knowed that he hadn't had time to get to shelter, for there wasn't a shed within twelve miles. He wasn't only dry, but his coat was creased and dusty too— same as if he'd been sleepin' in a holler log; and when I come to think of it, his face seemed thinner and whiter than it used ter, and so did his hands and wrists, which always stuck a long way out of his coat-sleeves; and there was blood on his face— but I thought he'd got scratched with a twig. (Dave used to wear a coat three or four sizes too small for him, with sleeves that didn't come much below his elbows and a tail that scarcely reached his waist behind.) And his hair seemed dark and lank, instead of bein' sandy and stickin' out like an old fibre brush, as it used ter. And then I thought his voice sounded different, too. And, when I enquired next day, there was no one heard of Dave, and the chaps reckoned I must have been drunk, or seen his ghost.

"It didn't seem all right at all— it worried me a lot. I couldn't make out how Dave kept dry; and the horse and saddle and saddle-cloth was wet. I told the chaps how he talked to me and what he said, and how he swore at the horse; but they only said it was Dave's ghost and nobody else's. I told 'em about him bein' dry as a bone after gettin' caught in that storm; but they only laughed and said it was a dry place where Dave went to. I talked and argued about it until the chaps began to tap their foreheads and wink— then I left off talking. But I didn't leave off thinkin'— I always hated a mystery. Even Dave's father told me that Dave couldn't be alive or else his ghost wouldn't be round— he said he knew Dave better than that. One or two fellers did turn up afterwards that had seen Dave about the time that I did— and then the chaps said they was sure that Dave was dead.

"But one fine day, as a lot of us chaps was playin' pitch and toss at the shanty, one of the fellers yelled out:

" 'By Gee! Here comes Dave Regan!'

"And I looked up and saw Dave himself, sidlin' out of a cloud of dust on a long lanky horse. He rode into the stockyard, got down, hung his horse up to a post, put up the rails, and then come slopin' towards us with a half-acre grin on his face. Dave had long, thin bow-legs, and when he was on the ground he moved as if he was on roller skates.

" ' 'El-lo, Dave!' says I. 'How are yer?'

" ' 'Ello, Jim!' said he. 'How the blazes are you?'

" 'All right!' says I, shakin' hands. 'How are yer?'

" 'Oh! I'm all right!' he says. 'How are yer poppin' up!'

"Well, when we'd got all that settled, and the other chaps had asked how he was, he said: 'Ah, well! Let's have a drink.'

"And all the other chaps crawfished up and flung themselves round the corner and sidled into the bar after Dave. We had a lot of talk, and he told us that he'd been down before, but had gone away without seein' any of us, except me, because he'd suddenly heard of a mob of cattle at a station two hundred miles away; and after a while I took him aside and said:

" 'Look here, Dave! Do you remember the day I met you after the storm?'

"He scratched his head.

" 'Why, yes,' he says.

" 'Did you get under shelter that day?'

" 'Why — no.'

" 'Then how the blazes didn't yer get wet?'

"Dave grinned; then he says:

" 'Why, when I seen the storm coming I took off me clothes and stuck 'em in a holler log till the rain was over.'

" 'Yes,' he says, after the other coves had done laughin', but before I'd done thinking; 'I kept my clothes dry and got a good refreshin' shower-bath into the bargain.'

"Then he scratched the back of his neck with his little finger, and dropped his jaw, and thought a bit; then he rubbed the top of his head and his shoulder, reflective-like, and then he said:

" 'But I didn't reckon for them there blanky hailstuns.' "

___________________

18: The Dance of Life

H. Bedford-Jones

1887-1949

Blue Book Magazine, June 1940

KETTLEMAN took me home with him to see a suppressed film.

One of the great Hollywood directors, Kettleman is a queer genius, experimenting in queer directions. To all the accusations and criticisms hurled at the movies, he has one very true answer: "We make what we must; since ninety per cent of the public ignore intelligent pictures, as they ignore great symphonies, we give 'em what they demand."

"That answer," I told him, "is perfectly true; but it is not the truth at all."

He grinned faintly. "I guess so; it's a good excuse for making damfool pictures that are slipshod, historically incorrect and so forth. The one I'm going to show you is part of an educational program I dreamed of turning out."

"Why was it suppressed? Sex?"

"Heavens, no!" he rejoined. "It was to be a panorama of the theater in technicolor, but that fellow Donald, up in the studio, finally junked the idea. He claims people aren't interested in anything about the theater, that they want blood, romance, action! Funny thing is, this picture has all of these— and something more. It deals with the survival of acting and the stage in the darkest medieval ages. Donald saw only the opening, a vista of hilltops in Normandy, and turned thumbs down without seeing the rest."

"Nothing very dramatic about hilltops," I commented.

"The greatest drama in all history was played on a hilltop outside Jerusalem," he snapped. I told you the man was singular; his mental flashes were always at an angle, somehow.

Kettleman had a private projection-room in his big house. He took me in, supplied a drink and a cigar, and began to fuss with his projector. The room lights flicked off. On the screen facing us appeared a "still" in technicolor, a landscape aglow beneath a round silvern disk which, in another night, would be the fullest of full moons. A landscape, a hilltop interspersed with huge jagged bits of rock; in the distance a castle tower and the glint of water.

"Hang it! The projector's stuck— have it fixed in a minute," said Kettleman. "A curious fact; the earliest French mystery plays went by the name of puy. Why? Because the word signified a hilltop. It was a reminiscence of earlier dramas back in pagan ages. Here you see a hilltop in Brittany, by the sea, in feudal days of blood and fire and universal war, when the drama was preserved in the hearts of common folk as a joyous relief from the horrors of an intolerable existence."

"I didn't know there was any drama then," was my comment.

"The Dance of Life, the most ancient of all pageants, that of fertility, the earth-mother, an old pagan survival! Then, remember, the people were oppressed and ground down and trodden underfoot like weeds, by their lords and masters. The people of the earth were like wild beasts, in that period."

"That same period," I objected, "gave us the most glorious of romances—look at the story of Tristan and Yseult."

"Bah! Look at the story of Jehan and Elaine!" he barked. The machine began to click; the film moved; the scene moved. Needless to say, it was a sound-film.

Yet for a space there was no sound. The figure of a woman, a girl, appeared like a wood-nymph girt with fluttering moon-glints and garlanded with pearls. Her figure grew more clear. She was actually clad in rags and tatters; twined in her flowing red-gold hair were flowers. She moved with such symmetry, such utter grace, as apparently to mount upon the very moonbeams.

Dancing about those jagged ancient stones, approaching the flat central rock, she came to sudden frightened halt. She stood at gaze, transfixed. The high white moon etched her lissome shape, her masses of flower-starred hair, her profile of purest beauty and nobility. Behind her evident terror was a nervous strength; one sensed in her a singular desperate courage, as though she were faced by some unavoidable terror, and yet fronted it with heart unquailing.

"No, no!" A gasp broke from her. "You are dead—it cannot be you—"

From the central mass of rock, a shadow detached itself, stood out clearly, and came toward her. The girl's fright died. An incredulous cry of joy broke upon her lips, and her arms lifted eagerly.

"Jehan! Dear Jehan— you're real, alive, flesh and blood!"

"And can prove it. Elaine!" said he, as his arms went about her. They clung together, wordless, lip to lip and heart to heart.

"They said you were dead," she murmured. "All the village thinks you dead. Your poor mother died last month. And I— I have had no heart left."

He was a young man, but shaggily bearded, clad in ragged garments, marked by hard travel and privation. Unlike the average peasant, there was no cringing in his manner; he held his head high, and the harsh lines of his features held a resolute, indomitable expression rarely found among the people of the earth. As they stood together, he turned the girl and pointed to the distant mass of the castle.

"And they think me dead also," he said, a bitter menace in his voice. "The noble Lord of Fécamp, his slender voluptuous ladies, his knights and men-at-arms— aye, they think me dead. Here, little heart, sit down and rest, while I tell you about it."

He drew her down on the great flat rock, where in olden days the Druids had performed their mystic rites. She nestled beside him, tremulous, still incredulous of his reality.

"You know how my sister was taken to the castle yonder, and how she killed herself after the Lord of Fécamp had finished with her and gave her to his soldiers," he said. "You know how I cursed them, how they came and seized me and took me to the castle; there they whipped me and loaded chains on me and made me a beast of burden."

The girl shivered, and touched his cheek with pitying finger. Yet there was nothing unusual in all this; the serfs of chivalry were born to such a destiny.

"AN ENGLISH knight visited the castle two months ago," he went on. "He won me at dice from the Lord of Fécamp, and took me when he left for England. The ship was wrecked on the coast below here, for a storm seized us. Most of those on board were drowned; only a few escaped to tell of it. So I was accounted dead with the rest."

"We heard," murmured Elaine. "They mourned for the English knight."

Jehan laughed harshly. "He did not drown; I killed him, took his money and clothes, and got ashore. Elaine, it's wealth! Money, real money of silver and gold, clothes, arms! All hidden and waiting for us. I came to take you away from this horror, to the country of Eldigonde the sorceress."

The girl lifted herself and drew back, horrified.

"Jehan! Are you mad? Poor Jehan— you have suffered—"

HE BROKE into a swift, joyous laugh, and kissed her strong fingers.

"No, no, I'm quite sane, my dear! Far below here on the Breton coast, is a land of safety for you and me. The country is wild, densely wooded, a tangle of rocks and trees; no feudal lords own it. Instead, it's inhabited by free people of the earth who have fled there. In that wild land they live safely, freely, joyously! And the wise old woman, the sorceress Eldigonde, is the only ruler, for her wisdom is great. All the wealth for which I paid in blood and flesh and tears, is waiting there. I came to take you back with me. A boat is hidden here at the shore, below the castle. You'll go?"

"Yes, yes! It seems like some dream, Jehan— yes, of course I'll go!" she exclaimed in stammering haste. "I can't believe it's real.... But, Jehan! I can't leave until after tomorrow night. It is the festival, you know; the dance of life."

He nodded. "Aye. The dance of life, that we celebrate in secret to the moon! And God help us all if they find out about it, there at the castle. You remember how the Sieur de Courcelles burned eleven of his people alive, three years ago, for celebrating the festival?"

"There's no danger here, Jehan," said the girl. "Everybody at the castle will be drunk tomorrow night; the Lord of Fécamp is to celebrate his birthday, and has invited a crowd of gentry in. Besides, Felipe Brieux will be ready to touch off a signal-flare if there's any riding from the castle. No, it's safe."

"And you, my dear?" Jehan stroked her glossy hair. "Do you still wear the hump on your back and the scar on your face that Nanny Dubois taught you to paint on?"

She shivered slightly. "Yes, of course. Marie Lianceau was married last week to Pierre, and he had to take her to the castle for— the droit de seigneur. Oh, Jehan, it was terrible! She was out of her senses for two days afterward. Two of the castle officers were riding by the field where I was working, and saw me, and came over for a closer look; luckily they saw the scar and the humped back, and went away. But I was frightened."

"May heaven blast all these rulers of earth!" cried out Jehan passionately. He launched a torrent of curses, in a blaze of shaking wrath. "These lords and seigneurs who oppress and torture us, who own us body and soul—some day they'll be swept away! Their castles will be razed, they and their brood drowned in their own blood— you'll see!"

"Hush, Jehan! They'd hang you for saying such words!"

He laughed bitterly. "I'll say worse before I'm dead. But now, little heart, I must get away and find hiding over tomorrow; I dare not let another soul know I'm back. I did hope to see my old mother; but you say she's dead, so let it pass. She's resting at last, poor soul! I'll meet you here tomorrow night, after the festival. Then we'll go quickly."

"With all my heart, Jehan," she replied. One last embrace, one clinging, eager kiss of rapture, and he was gone, melting into the shadows whence he had come.

And high time. As the girl stood staring after him, a scuffle of sabots and the murmur of voices reached her; a dozen other girls of the village and district around had arrived to join her in a rehearsal of the dance.

They greeted her joyously, half fearfully, all in a tumult between terror and excited anticipation; there was one screw-backed old hag from down the shore, who hobbled along importantly. It was her place to see that the ancient ritual was followed, the dances and the songs rightly given, for thus they had been handed down from forgotten days.

So, laying off the wooden sabots, the girls circled and sang, postured and tripped among the rocks that the forgotten Druids had left behind. All was done blindly, in passive obedience to the croaked directions of the old hag; she herself did not know the meaning of the words uttered, for to her they were only sounds, just as the gestures and actions were meaningless things, relics of the dim past.

But luck followed upon the festival. When it was neglected, pestilence and bad crops came, and war. The old gods were forgot, their very names blown nowhere with the dust of centuries, their fanes all crumbled and their memories grown black beneath the stars; but racial instinct still preserved the rites of ancient days. To these poor folk, crushed under such oppression as the world has seldom seen, this yearly festival was a symbol of hope and beauty, an escape from the horrors of daily life, a prayer, half-realized, to the primal earth-gods and the forces of nature.

None the less, it constituted a fearful risk. In the eyes of chivalry, they had no right to happiness; woe betide them if they were caught at it! Then would rise the cry of "Sorcery!" with tortures and burnings and mutilation to follow. The Black Death and other fearful plagues had not yet come to sweep away nine-tenths of all people, rich and poor alike, and make human chattels valuable; the land was crowded; serfs were thick in field and village, to be mauled or killed or hunted down like wild beasts in drunken riot.

LATE UNDER the moon, Elaine stole home to the thatched cottage, still in a fervent riot of thought, and tucked herself away. Weary as she was, sleep came hard. Jehan alive, here, within reach and touch! This in itself was a miracle; but what lay beyond seemed utterly incredible. That there should be any place beyond the reach of tyranny and cruelty was to her a fantastic vision, beyond the power of the brain to comprehend; yet Jehan had come to take her there!

If, indeed, it were all real and not a dream.... She awakened in the morning, suddenly to clasp hands to bursting heart. True or real? She could not credit it, until she found on her finger the circlet of gold Jehan had put there at parting. A gold ring! She stared at it, then hurriedly tore it off and hid it from sight. There was no such treasure as that anywhere in the district; only a knight might hope to possess a gold ring, or one of the pretty beauties at the castle.

"UP, SLUT, up!" came the voice of her bent and twisted father, roaring angrily. "Our lord's overseer has commanded that the entire upper field be finished today—up and out!"

Elaine had scant love for her father, who viewed her innate delicacy with sneering derision. He was a brute like most of his kind, warped by hard labor and torments. Perhaps there was truth in the story that she sprang not from him, but from that night when her mother, a bride, was handed over to the lord of Fécamp. This "right" had instilled new blood in many a peasant family; and amid the cringing, tortured serfs was to be seen many a head held proudly, such as that of Elaine or of her lover Jehan.

She dressed swiftly. Her father looked on with an evil grin while she donned the false hump she had invented for safety's sake, tying the straps ever her shoulders and below the budding round of her breasts. Over this, her ragged robe. Then, while he taunted her about the good price he should get for betrayal of her ruse, she swiftly applied the magical paint Nanny Dubois had given her, making a red ugly scar that drew her cheek and lips askew. A kindly soul, old Nanny, with a heart in her shriveled deathly corpse for the poor maids who were sport for soldier and noble!

A swallow of thick soup, a rush for the field, and the work was forward, with clump of wooden shoe and drip of sweat, and many a groan for aching back and loins.

Today, however, aches and pains were forgotten, in the glorious vista that spelled an end to barbarous oppression. Freedom and safety! It seemed too good to be true, in this nightmare of a life.

Afternoon brought guttural cries of warning flitting across the fields, from hovel to hovel. Armed men were riding from the castle! They came—the Seigneur himself, a band of visiting knights and lords, ladies on their palfreys, men-at-arms in helm and chain-coat, pennons flashing and gay laughter ringing as the dun deer fled before, and the horns sounded high. A stag broke from covert and fled across the field of springing grain; with shout and horn, the riders plunged after, hounds baying wildly. It was the natal day of the Lord of Fécamp, with a stag of ten hurtling to the kill!

ELAINE RAN with the others, all scurrying like frightened quail as the rout headed for them. She saw her father trip and fall. The dogs went over him in a rush, but one of them turned to spring at him; struggling up, he fought the beast frantically. With a torrent of oaths the Seigneur himself rode down the panic-stricken man, lashed him with a whip, and sent the men-at-arms to finish him. A lance went through him, and another. The twisted body relaxed, and the laughing ladies kneaded it into the mud as they galloped over the poor clay.

Two of the castle riders wheeled their horses as Elaine ran, screaming, to the side of the dead man. They reined in, laughing, but as they sighted her scarred face and the hump between her shoulders, they put in spurs and went on at a gallop, with a coarse exchange of jests. The other folk crept out from hiding and bore the spattered corpse home.

"Lucky they didn't take a notion to ride all of us down!" said somebody.

Grief? Elaine felt none, pretended none. This father of hers had been her chief potential enemy, in fact. Now she was alone, but not for long; tonight would end all of that, forever. So her father was laid under the earth. Before the grave was filled, the castle overseer arrived and gave orders that she was to marry a widower of the district, on the morrow. Hump or no hump, she could breed new serfs to labor in the fields.

"And," he added with a laugh, as he departed, "when the ceremony's done, you'll go up to the castle for the usual entertainment. You're no proper quarry for the Seigneur, my lass, but the men-at-arms are not over-particular."

Elaine assented humbly, and repressed a shudder. What if Jehan had not come back last night? Fate would have been hard at her heels.

THE LONG afternoon dwindled into sunset, and she ate a lone supper and thought of Jehan, hiding somewhere along the rocky shore. Her father's death would make no difference to the celebration of the festival; the dance of life was something that rose above mortality and human chance.

With darkness, there was a hush and a stir over the whole countryside. From near and far, shadowy figures were stealing along the winding roads and across the fields, toward the hilltop where the ancient rocks thrust up toward the stars.

In the vague starlight, they wended toward their goal, slipping from bosque and covert to converge on the one point, silently enough, like animals. Only, now and again, a clucking of tongues sounded as crones and wise women from scattered points came together; old outcast hags like Nanny Dubois, who practiced wizardry of nights, and brewed herbs to make the sick well, and afforded the poor folk shrewd but subtle advice in all problems of their wretched lives.

On the hilltop, along the hill flanks, dim serried ranks of half-seen figures gathered. They waited tense, expectant; they had stolen away for this one night of freedom and joyous celebration in secret. Grouped beside one of the great rocks, Elaine and her companions bided motionless the moment of their appearance, for other things came first.

The first orange light of the rising moon trembled up the eastern sky. From all that assemblage came a murmurous gasp of greeting, a breath that passed along the hillside and died into silence. Shapes appeared in the dim, slowly growing glow, capering amid the high rocks; grotesque shapes, clad in the guise of wild beasts.

The Dance of Life had begun.

It was an eerie, uncanny thing; for as yet the golden round of the moon was not up. Monstrous shapes disported themselves, masques of wicker and fur which had been long weeks preparing in hidden places. All was done in silence, save for hoarse breaths and pantings of effort. Closer to the great central stone worked the rhythmic movement until, as the circle of the moon lifted gradually, all that wild company stood revealed for one moment, full-etched in horn and hoof and claw and bestial ecstasy.

The shrill note of a reed pipe sounded. Suddenly and completely, the strange figures separated, leaped away, and scurried into cover. They vanished, and in among the rocks came men clad in skins, to the thin tremulous music of many reed pipes, dancing and weaving in upon the flat central stone.

They carried burdens, images of animals; in olden days, no doubt, these had been real animals for sacrifice, but now the creatures of earth and sea were too hard to come by, too utterly valuable, for such offering. Upon the flat rock were laid the simulated fish and beasts, while the dancers went through the olden ritual of oblation and festival. It was a strangely wild and vivacious thing to see, and mightily stirred the hearts of the watchers, so that ejaculations and eager voices began to rise on all sides.

EVERYWHERE the grain was springing in the sown fields, life was stirring anew in leaf and beast; and here beneath the moon was the festival of fertile earth and joy. The men drew back; the thin pipings changed to a different air. Elaine sped a quick word at her companions, and the tattered gowns were flung aside. She leaped forth, and they after her, clad in little besides the flowing disarray of floating hair and twisted ropes of flowers.

What a dance this was, beneath the flooding golden light of the risen moon! The slim figures swept among the old monoliths in steps of wild abandon; murmurs of amazement sounded as Elaine was recognized, now without hump or scar, slender and perfect and lovely. "A miracle, a miracle!" swept the murmured words, but she heard them not, nor cared. For, somewhere in the outer darkness, she knew that Jehan watched, hidden, and she flung herself into the jocund exhilaration of the piping music and the floating steps.

The steps quickened; the music quickened, as the dancers neared the central stone, their lissome shapes transfigured by the moonlight and lifted afar from everyday semblance. Never had those drear-eyed watchers beheld such grace and beauty, except at this annual festival; as the reedy pipings struck into swifter rhythm, as the voices of the dancing girls took up the ritual of strange unknown words, the men dancers joined in.

AND SUDDENLY all was a wild ecstatic rapture, the dancers bursting into evasion and pursuit among the jutting rocks, the watching throngs swept by a contagious frenzy into hoarse cries and panting exclamations—until, without warning, a fearful frozen silence struck them all.

One wild and terrible scream, from the moonlit spaces beyond the hilltop, wailed across the night, and was followed by the blare of a hunting horn.

The awful realization smote one and all, as a rushing clatter of hooves sounded. The watcher had failed, the castle folk had surprised the festival! Shrill and despairing shrieks flared up, to be drowned in a roar of shouts and clarion cries. The phantom watching figures melted like mist, as knights and men-at-arms came charging, with glint of mail and flutter of pennon and thrust of red-tipped lance.

"Kill!" rose the shout. "Kill! Sorcery— kill!"

There was killing enough, without mercy, amid frantic fleeing and mad pursuit. Old Nanny Dubois was plucked up bodily by a spear and hurled atop one of the jagged rocks, to shriek away her life. Swords glinted; horses trampled.

But the little group of girls, shimmering golden in the moonlight, could not flee, for the circle of armed men had ringed in the hilltop and came plunging at them, with wild fierce laughter and eager hands. Hither and yon they drove in terrified flight, to be run down or pulled down by knight or squire among the Druidic stones.

Elaine, crouching in blank panic, was aware of a wild ringing voice above her, a man stooping from the saddle, his arm circling her body. She was lifted, scooped up, held in an iron grip despite all struggles; while the rider, with a voice triumphant, thrust in his spurs and sent the powerful destrier plunging down the hillside and away, through the silvery blood-smeared moonlit night.

The stark cries lessened; the roaring laughter died away upon distance; the great steed slowed his pace and halted. The rider, holding her in his arms, leaned forward and kissed her, and looked laughingly into her face, and then looked again, his hot mirth dying out.

And she, staring up helplessly, saw that he was a stranger, a young knight handsome as a god, no doubt one of the Seigneur's guests. There was no cruelty in his face, no barbaric fury. Instead, he seemed gentle and bright with youth.

"What!" he exclaimed. "Here's a prize if ever was one, but not what I thought. You're no peasant lass, nor any sorceress neither! That is, unless I'm bewitched myself."

"Have mercy, have mercy!" Her voice fluttered at him wildly. "I've done no wrong— let me go, I pray!"

He caught sight of the golden ring which she had put on her finger. The soft moonlight concealed her work-hardened hands and feet; she lay in his arms, her flower-starred hair flowing about him, her heart palpitating against his own, her warm fresh loveliness all real and glowing.

"Maiden, who are you?" he demanded curiously. "Some sweet naiad from the land of Prester John? Some nymph crept out of the sea to dazzle men with her beauty? Perhaps the Lady Morgana herself, come from the morning star to find a lover among men? Quick! Your name!"

"Elaine," she gasped out, her eyes wide upon his smiling features and glorious youth. She had never dreamed a man could be so nobly handsome.

"Elaine! A name of poesy, of old romance!" he said, and suddenly gripped her hard, and kissed her lips. They were not brutal kisses, but most sweet and lingering, so that the terrified heart within her melted, and a silver fire like moonlight coursed through her veins. Then his head lifted.

"COME, sweet lady, your promise!" he said, breathing hard as he looked into her eyes. "I am Pierre de Louhac, your very humble servitor and liege knight; for my sins, I am a poet, with a lute at my saddle-bow where a helm should ride. Promise me that you'll not fly away upon the moonbeams, or glide into the water, or vanish in the thicket— swear it, by the True Cross! Then I'll set you down, and if we kiss again, it shall be of your own free will."

"I swear it, I swear it!" she panted desperately.

He gently let her slide to earth, and dismounting, took the cloak from his shoulders and fastened it about her throat, so that it enfolded her slim body. And he sighed a little as he stooped and kissed her hand.

"Now for my lute, and you shall tell me whence you came, Lady Elaine. For I wot well you are no mortal creature, but some lovely lady come from the bounds of fairyland. Even though you be some fair sorceress— but that cannot be, since you swore by the Cross. Therefore you must be all gentle and lovely as you look, since it is impossible that so rare an ornament of heaven itself could have sprung from earthly stock."

She stood trembling, knowing too well, alas, that she was no fine lady at all, but a poor humble peasant girl with a fate worse than death awaiting her in the Seigneur's castle.

They were in a craggy desolate spot above the shore, a lonely place with the world shut out and only the silvern meadows of the sea sparkling away below. She watched with eyes of wonder as Pierre de Louhac loosed a lute from his saddle bow, and the great horse arched its heavy neck and muzzled him lovingly. She did not know that man and beast could feel love and friendship; she had not known that any belted knight, born to oppress and rule and kill, could be so gentle as this man before her.

"Be seated, sweet lady!" he exclaimed, smiling at her as he strummed upon the lute. "How beautiful you are, with flowers in your hair, and your eyes like two stars! Come, sit on this high rock looking toward the sea!"

She complied, not certain whether he were a bit insane, or playing some cruel jest, or just what he seemed. Soon, however, she perceived that there was no guile in him, and no cruelty at all.

"I HAVE come from the south, Lady Elaine," he said, "where the wine and the heart is sunny, where people of the earth are not slaves but free. I rode with the Lord of Fécamp tonight to the hunt, little dreaming that the hunting was of poor folk making merry! No blood is on my hands this night; but when I saw you, destiny came upon me; and I knew that I, Pierre de Louhac, had been fated to capture some sweet queen from the land of the fays, and so I took you."

She comprehended his compassion, his youthful fervent ardor, his imagination; and she held forth her hands to him, smiling faintly. The music of his voice was wondrous to hear, and there was naught to fear from him.

"I— I am only a peasant, Messire Pierre," she said; "I am no lovely lady."

He laughed aloud.

"Nonsense! When did a peasant lass wear a golden ring? When did ever a peasant have such beauty beyond the world as yours?" He swung a hand toward the far-glinting sea. "Look out yonder, Lady Elaine, and tell me whence you came! From some far land of Lyonesse, it may be, or from a palace glorious, on some far mountain crest; or did the dancing moonbeams bring you from heaven itself to delight the hearts of men?"

Under his glowing words, something of the rapt ecstasy of that hilltop dance, so terribly checked, crept back into her heart. She laughed, and shook back her hair; when a flower fell, he caught it up and crushed it against his lips.

"A song for a flower, then; and perchance another kiss, to make you mortal maid!" said he gayly, and fingering the lute, struck into song.

What he sang, she knew not, for the words were strange; but she nestled in the warm cloak and gave herself up to enchantment and dream as his voice rose in golden glory.

Dream? Enchantment? She knew it could not last, and abandoned herself to the moment with a surge of venture audacious. The frightful vision of Nanny Dubois writhing and dying upon the high rock died away. To her lips came all the old stories of elves and sprites, of mermaids from the sea and the gently-caressing nymphs in forest depths; as she murmured of these things, Pierre de Louhac listened, entranced.

"It is like the tale of Tristan, who died so happily for fair Yseult!" he exclaimed. "You came to me tonight, sweet Elaine, like a benison to heal inward hurts. All this land is adrift with evil and dark cruel things, and the only sure kind touch from any hand is that of Death. Look: tonight I was in sorrow and wonder that such things could be, and you have made all life bright for me! What was the dance we interrupted?"

"The dance of life," she said. "I know not what it means, for it has come down from olden times, but that is the name given to it. The dance of joyous life and hope and springing leaves and fertile fields."

"Kiss me," he said, looking up at her, a glow in his face. "Kiss me, and then dance for me alone— just a step or two! Throw aside the cloak, and dance."

She leaned forward. Her white arms found him, and her lips. Again that wondrous singing fire coursed through her veins; and springing suddenly upright, she let fall the cloak and danced with a burst of heedless happy rejoicing. She danced as never before, in glorious abandon— and suddenly caught up the cloak, laughing, and whirled it around her body.

"Ah, to die upon such loveliness!" sighed Pierre de Louhac, with the look of one rapt in dream. "You are my captive, fair Elaine, but I am yours a thousandfold! Will you ride with me?"

"Ride with you?" She stood staring, brought back to earth. "Whither?"

"Across the world!" Laughing, he flung out a hand. "Mount and ride! You shall be my lady fair, clothed in silks and satins and jewels; I will ever be your true and loyal knight, singing your praises under every roof we reach! We'll go to the Lord of Fécamp's castle here and now, and I'll uphold you as queen of beauty!"

"No, no!" She shrank; that name abruptly broke the charm, the thought of that castled keep of terror and doom. "Oh, you are mad! And I'm mad to let you bewitch me!"

She crumpled, in a flood of tears.

HE, not knowing all that lay in her heart, was bewildered and all astray. He could not know that she was in tears for her friends and companions, the girls who had danced, now taken to the castle. And Jehan, far-wandering in the night, lost and desolate, or perchance dead!

Perplexed, he touched his lute, and sang a plaintive, tender little song that went straight into her heart. Her sobs quieted; presently her head lifted, and she spoke to the youth, very sweetly and sadly.

"Dear Messire Pierre, I must tell you the whole truth: I am no lovely lady from sea or moonbeam land; I am just Elaine, a serf of the Lord of Fécamp, a laborer in his fields, a chattel of his hand. Tonight was the festival, and we who danced were his serfs. You saved me from those wolves, and I am grateful; but now mount your horse and ride away. You know the truth. It is a sad and sordid truth, and all your dreams are nothing. I am a peasant, and you are a knight, and the little play is ended. Ride away, and scorn me."

Pierre de Louhac stood up, and smote his lute joyously.

"Not so, by the loving wounds of God!" he said, with earnest impetuous words. "Gentle lady, that man is lonely and desolate and old, who looks upon life with bitter disillusioned eyes, and sees things at their worst. May the blessed saints preserve me from being such! Your loveliness is the most rare and beautiful thing I have found in this life of evil. You are Elaine from across the sea, and I shall hold you so until I die."

"Will you not listen to reason?" she exclaimed. "I can never be one of your fine ladies—"

"No, for you are above them all!" he broke in hotly. "Reason? It's the curse of all mankind. As you danced tonight the dance of life, so we two shall go through the world, joyous and triumphant, not looking with gloomy dark eyes upon things as they are, but touching them with poesy, lifting them into what they should be! When you touch my cheek with your hand, it is an angel from heaven who comes down to inspire me to song; when you ride behind me, it is all the beauty and mirth of the world perched at my shoulder."

"But you are a poet, dear Pierre," she said, smiling.

"And you shall be one too, if you love me a little," he replied.

"You are like a dream," she answered. "You are not like other men I have seen."

He fell to laughing. "Why, that's love, no less! Ho! Sweet Elaine, you've hit upon the very truth of life and youth and love! A kiss upon it!"

She leaned to him, and he caught her in his arms, his finger-tips caressing her fair body as his lips caressed hers. She clung to him, yielding and abandoning all reason, in this embrace that blotted out the whole world.

But the great horse, forgotten, whinnied shrilly in the moonlight, and shook himself with a clank of gear. Pierre de Louhac leaped up, and caught at his lute, laughing.

"Thus," he cried, sweeping the strings, "and thus! A salute to life! A salute to life and love and ecstasy! There shall be no grief and evil in the world; the sunlight shall shimmer upon every heart. You and I, fair Elaine, shall go down to the golden ways of romance hand in hand. Hark, how good gray Ramon summons us!"

Indeed, hearing his name, the powerful destrier shook himself again, and turned his head, looking upon his master. Elaine came to her feet, and drawing the cloak more closely about her, shivered. From afar came a riotous blast of horns, a shrill distant sound of savage voices. A harsh, clanging bell rang thinly.

"Something has happened!" she exclaimed in quick alarm. "Listen! It's the tocsin from the castle— something has happened!"

PIERRE de Louhac laughed aloud.

"Aye, this has happened; you and I have met!" he cried, while his fingers touched the lute at his breast. "All the world shall ring wild peals, but they have naught to do with us. Ours is the dance of life, sweet Elaine; let the whole dreary earth reëcho to the dance of death, and we shall behold it not. For ours is the springing tender blade of green, the song in the morn, the smile of the sun on the budding earth, love in the heart and a brave salute, a salute to life—"

His words ended upon a jerk, that shook his whole body.

The lute was riven asunder with a splintering, rending crack. Out of the dark dusky wood close by, came the ringing twang of a bowstring. Pierre de Louhac spun around, and clutched once at the feathered shaft which stood out of his heart, and out of the riven lute; he looked at Elaine, and tried to speak, but no words came. Then he fell, and she stood in palsied, stricken horror.

From the dark covert sprang a swift lithe figure.

"So you're safe, Elaine!" It was Jehan, strong and resolute, in his hand a long English bow of yew, longer than himself. "I've had the devil's own time tracking you here. I put a shaft into that hound of hell— aye, through the Lord of Fécamp himself! Hear the tocsin and the horns? They're riding and killing this night, to make up for it."

The girl's lips were loosened. She broke in upon him with a long and wailing shriek that was echoed from the rocks and smothered by the trees and the moonlight.

"You've killed him! Jehan, Jehan, you've killed him! And he was so kind, so gentle— Oh, it can't be true. Not you, Jehan, not you!"

"FAITH, you seem sorry to see me!" said he, with his quick, harsh laugh.

From her lips came another cry, wild and incoherent. She collapsed, all of a sudden, and lay quiet in the moonlight; her bare arm protruded from the cloak, and her hand touched the dead hand of Pierre de Louhac as he smiled at the moonlight.

"Now, here's a queer business for you!"

And wagging his shaggy unshorn head, Jehan came forward, unstrung his bow, and stood looking down at the silent, senseless girl. Gradually his face softened.

"Poor child!" he murmured. "Poor frighted, hunted lass! It's just as well, and saves a power of trouble. The boat's close by, and ere dawn we'll be far down the Breton coast. Poor lass! The devil's paid out; and this fine noble lord is another heartless tyrant gone to hell— two in one night. Lucky I came along just in time to save her from him!"

With which, he went to Pierre de Louhac and took everything of value from the body. Then, shouldering the senseless figure of Elaine with scarcely an effort, he strode across to the shadows and plunged out of sight. For a little, the crashing of brush could be heard as he made descent to the shore and his hidden boat; then silence.

Across the silvern moonlit stage a slow figure moved. It was the massive shape of the horse, coming to the man who lay on his back in the streaming light, a feathered shaft pinning the broken lute to his breast. Upon this stage the moving figure ceased. The horse stood with head drooping, its questing muzzle nudging the white still hand that would finger the lute no more.

THE FILM had run to its end. A snap, and the room lights whipped on. Kettleman turned to me.

"Like it?"

"Of course. But where does it link up with the theater?"

He waved his hands excitedly.

"Confound it, everywhere! This pageant or instinct from pagan days, was essentially theater. It kept the stage alive; upon this pantomime, mimicry and ancient ritual was based the sense of drama that later flowered into being. From a naked hilltop came a naked stage, which in course of time evolved painted scenery!"

"But why make a tragedy of it and kill off the poet and dreamer?"

"They're always killed in real life," he said testily. "You dullard, couldn't you see any symbolism in the thing?"

"Well, all I could see was that the girl lost her vision and was carried off to fulfill a barbarous destiny of motherhood to a lot of starveling brats."

"Isn't that the fate of every woman?" he cried triumphantly. "And like every woman, she retained the most precious, the rarest, the most beautiful thing in life—a secret memory!"

"Hm! Well, maybe," I admitted. "All the same, perhaps it's just as well that the picture was never released. Ideas, they say, are dangerous unless explained fully."

Kettleman has not spoken to me since that day.

______________________

19: On The Tucker Track

Henry Lawson

Daily News (Perth, WA) 17 Sep 1902

Steelman and Smith, wandering New Zealand con-men in Australia's outback.

STEELMAN AND SMITH, professional wanderers from New Zealand, took a run over to Australia one year to have a look at the country, and drifted out-back, and played cards and 'heading 'em' at the shearing sheds (while pretending to be strangers to each other), and sold eyewater and unpatented medicine, and worked the tucker tracks.

They struck a streak of bad luck at West-o'-Sunday station, where they were advised (by the boss and about fifty excited shearers) to go east, and not to stop till they reached the sea.

They were tramping along the track towards Bourke; they were very hard up, and had to 'battle' for tucker; and tobacco along the track. They came to a lonely shanty about two camps west of Bourke.

'We'll turn off into the scrub and strike the track the other side of the shanty, and come back to it,' said Steelman. 'You see, if they see us coming into Bourke they'll say to themselves, 'Oh, we're never likely to see these chaps again,' and they won't give us anything, or perhaps only a pinch of tea or sugar in a big lump of paper. There's some women that can never see a tucker-bag, even if you hold it right under their noses. But if they see us going out back they'll reckon that we'll get a shed likely as not, and we'll be sure to call them with our cheques coming back. I hope the ould man's got the lumbago or sciatica, or something.'

'Why?' asked Smith.

'Because, whenever I see an old man poking round the place on a stick I always make for him straight, and inquire about his trouble; and no matter what complaint he's got, my old man suffered from it for years. It's pretty hard graft, listening to an old man with a pet leg, but I find it pays; and I always finish up by advising him to try St. Jacob's oil. Perhaps, he's been trying it for years, but that doesn't matter; the consultation works out all fight all the same, and there's never been a remedy tried yet but I've got another.

'I've got a lot of Maori blackfellow remedies in my mind, and when they fail I can fall back on the Chinese; and if that isn't enough, I've got a list of my grandmother's remedies that she wrote down for me when I was leaving home, and I kept it for a curiosity. It took her three days to write them, and I reckon they'll fill the bill.

'You don't want a shave. You look better with that stubble on. You needn't say anything; just stand by and wear your usual expression, and if they ask me what's the matter with my mate, I'll fix up a disease for you to have, and get something extra on your account, poor beggar.

'I wish we had a chap with us that could sing a bit, and run the gamut on a fiddle or something. With a sickly-looking fish like you to stand by and look interesting, and die slowly of consumption all the time, and me to do the talking, we'd be able to travel from one end of the bush to the other, and live on the fat of the land. I would'nt cure you for a hundred pounds.'

They reached the shanty, and there, sure enough, was an old man, pottering round with a list to starboard. He was working with a hoe inside a low paling fence, round a sort of garden. Steelman and Smith stopped outside the fence. 'Good-day, Boss.'

'Day.'

'It's hot.'

'It's hot.'

So far it was satisfactory.

He was a little man with a wiry red beard. He might have been a Scandinavian.

'You seem 'to be a bit lame,' said Steelman. 'Hurt your foot?'

'Naw,' said the old man. 'It's an old thing.'

'Ah,' said Steelman. 'Lumbago, I suppose. My father suffered cruel from it for years.'

'Naw,' said the old man, moving closer to the fence. 'It ain't in me back, the trouble's with me leg.'

'Oh!' said Steehnan! 'One a bit shorter than the other.'

'Well, yes. It seems to be wearin' a bit shorter. I must see to it.'

'Hip disease, perhaps,' said Steelman. 'A brother o' mine had—'

'Naw, it's not in the hip,' said the old man. 'My leg's gone at the knee.'

'Oh! stiff, joint; I know what that is. Had a touch of it once myself. An uncle of mine was nearly crippled with it. He used to use St. Jacob's oil. Ever try St. Jacob's oil?'

'Naw,' said the old man, 'not that I know of. I've used linseed oil, though.'

'Linseed oil!' said Steelman. 'I never heard of that for stiff-knee. How do you use it?'

'Use it raw,' said the old man. 'Raw linseed oil; I've rubbed it in, and I've soaked me leg in it.'

'Soaked your leg in it!' said Steelman— 'and did it do it any good?'

'Well, it seemed to preserve it, keeps it from warping, and it wears better— and it makes it heavier. It seemed a bit too light before.'

Steelman nudged Smith, under cover of the palings. The old man was evidently a bit ratty.

'Well, I hope your leg will soon be all right, Boss,' said Steelman.

'Thank you,' said the old man, 'but I don't think there's much hope. I suppose you want some tucker?'

'Well, yes,' said Steelman, rather taken back by the old man's sudden way of putting it. 'We're hard up.'

'Well, come along to the bouse, and I'll see if I can get yer something,' said the old man; andthey walked along outside the fence, and he ; bobbed along inside till, he came to a little gate at the-corner. He opened the gate and stumped out.

He had a wooden leg. He wore his trousers leg down over it, and the paling had hidden the bottom from Steelman. He wanted them to stay to dinner, but Steelman didn't feel comfortable, and thanked him, and said they'd rather be getting on (Steelman always spoke for Smith); so the old man gave them some cooked meat, bread, and a supply of tea and sugar.

Steelman watched his face very close, but he never moved a muscle, but when they looked back he was leaning on his hoe, and seemed to be shaking.

'Took you back a bit, Steely, didn't it?' suggested Smith.

'How do you make that out?' snorted Steelman, turning on him suddenly. 'I knew a carpenter who used to soak his planes in raw linseed oil, to preserve them, and give them weight. There's nothing funny about that.'

Smith rubbed his head.

______________

Table of Contents

- 1: The Djinnee of El Sheyb / G. G. Pendarves

- 2: Alicia goes a-Burgling / Arthur Somers Roche

- 3: The Little Affair of the Eiffel Tower / Arthur Morris Crosby

- 4: Mirage / Ernest M. Poate

- 5: The Compass of Fortune / Eugene Shade Bisbee

- 6: A Hundred Thousand Dollar Trance / Eugene Shade Bisbee

- 7: Mr. Barling's Income / W. Pett Ridge

- 8: The Red and Black Death / H. Havelock Ettrick

- 9: Young Magic / Helen Simpson

- 10: The Ordeal By Fire / C. Ranger Gull

- 11: Why Mrs. Wetherton Went Home / Carlton Dawe

- 12: Spy! / Max Brand
- 13: The Mother / C. J. Dennis
- 14: The Ghost City / Fred MacIsaac

- 15: On the Turn of a Coin / Cleveland Moffett

- 16: The Demon of the Opal / W. B. Wallace

- 17: The Mystery of Dave Regan / Henry Lawson

- 18: The Dance of Life / H. Bedford-Jones

- 19: On The Tucker Track / Henry Lawson