PAST MASTERS 134

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

14 August 2023

Contents

1: Lighting Strikes Twice / Ethel Lina White

2: The Jigglesqueak / Paul Fitzgerald

3: The Skeleton of Paradise Island / Frank Reid

4: You'll Be Surprised / Ethel Lina White

5: The Secret of the Amulet / B. M. Croker

6: The Crime / Richard Marsh

7: A Priestess of Osiris / Edgar Wallace

8: The Bed by the Window / E. F. Benson

9: Over an Absinthe Bottle / William C Morrow

10: A Very Queer Inn / M. B. Archer

11: Our Mr. Smith / Oswald Crawfurd

12: Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff / Bret Harte

13: The Gylston Slander / Herbert Jenkins

14: The Demoiselle d'Ys / Robert W. Chambers

15: The Other Woman / Sherwood Anderson

16: A Spanish Ghost Story / Anon

17: An Insoluble Mystery / Alice O'Hanlon

_______________

1: Lighting Strikes Twice

Ethel Lina White

1876-1944

The Glacier County Chief, Montana, 11 and 18 Nov 1938.

My thanks to Roy Glashan's Library for the text.

Ethel Lina White

THE temperature was so high in the city that someone tried to fry an egg on the pavement. The baked air was stagnant and reeked of petrol. The traffic shrieked in competition with the din of a pneumatic road drill. Yet Hermione Heath, the young film actress, drew a breath of rapture as she gazed at the squalid street.

She had just left the Old Bailey where she had been on trial for murder.

"No," she protested, as her agent beckoned to a waiting taxi, "I want to walk. I want to feel free."

"And you want to escape the cameras, don't you?" he asked. "Directly the pressmen find out we've fooled them, they'll be swarming back through this alley."

Hermione— it was not her real name, but she had grown used to being called by it— leaped instantly into the cab.

"This seems all queer and wrong somehow," she said in a troubled voice, as her agent drew down the blinds. "You've always tried to get me publicity."

"Not this kind of publicity, my dear."

"You mean—?"

As he did not reply, she nerved herself to ask another question.

"Will this affect my career?"

"I'll tell you that later," he replied. "There's a clause in your contract which covers this— kind of thing. That will let them out, if they want to get rid of you."

"Why should they? I've been proved Innocent."

"Yes, you've been very lucky."

"Lucky?" Her voice broke. "I wouldn't wish my worst enemy my luck. But I mustn't talk about it. I must forget."

In spite of her determination, as she sat back in her corner, with closed eyes, her mind was flooded by unhappy memories. She had been a victim of the most damning circumstantial evidence that fate could contrive against an innocent person. Thoughtless words and unfortunate incidents had dovetailed together to lend ominous significance to her discovery of the body of the murdered financier.

She had gone gaily to his West-End flat, expecting to find a cocktail party. Instead, she found her host lying on the floor, shot through the heart.

The shock was so severe that she was instantly panic-stricken, when she incriminated herself with every possible indiscretion. After she had left her blood-stained fingerprints to testify against her and further advertised her identity by dropping some personal property, she ran away. Later, she was numbed to a state of menial collapse when her memory could not function properly... She had endured weeks of torturing suspense. She had lost all hope. She had gone through hell.

Today, she was free. And now— in the first flush of liberty— she faced a new threat, the ruin of her career.

Although she was only a starlet, she was rising steadily in her profession. It absorbed her to the exclusion of other interests, so that she could not contemplate life apart from the studio.

"If I'm going to be thrown out," she said, "they might as well hang me and call it a day."

"Keep your chin up," advised her agent.

Luckily, there was no further call on her fortitude. When they reached the offices of the film company, the personage who controlled Hermione's destiny received her with a smile and extended hands.

"This is splendid to see you again." he said. "Now don't begin to cry. I want to discuss your new picture."

After this promising beginning, he broke the news that, although she could not play lead, he might use her in a minor part, but her chance would come later, if she justified his confidence.

"Best to lot some of the mud settle." he said. "We must consider the susceptibilities of the public. That chap was such a stinking character."

Although the counsel for the defense had demonstrated the slight nature of Hermione's acquaintance with the murdered financier, she knew that it was impolitic to protest. She was forced to eat crow, while the chief laid down the law.

"In future, no wild parties, no car-offenses, no more shady friends. We may have to sell you again to the public. Remember, even the smell of a second scandal would finish you. And now, what about taking a real holiday out of the public lens?"

"Switzerland is quiet in the summer," suggested the agent.

"Fix it ... Goodby, my dear."

Although she was dismissed, Hermione lingered to ask a question.

"You do believe I'm innocent?"

"Of course... only don't do it again."

His words rang in her cars, making her unduly sensitive to the congratulations of her friends.

The next afternoon, when she boarded the Continental express at Victoria, she felt acutely self-conscious because her departure was so purposely Inconspicuous.

THE first week slipped quickly and happily away. After her long ordeal, she was grateful merely to be alive amid such beauty and peace. No one recognized her or asked for her autograph. Most of the guests at her hotel were drifters— stopping for only a night or two.

Wearing shorts and dark sun glasses, she spent her time alone— either climbing sleep, wooded heights to reach an "Aussicht," or mooning beside the jade-green river. Presently, the solitude which had been so healing to her shattered nerves, began to lose its benefit. With restored bodily health, her mind began to work again.

"Don't do it again."

The sentence rang in her ears as she went over and over the wretched business of her trial, until the injustice of her position seared her sense of rectitude. It seemed to her that, even on this holiday, she was still being penalized for a crime she had not committed.

It was as though she had been struck by lightning— unexpected, unmerited, unexplained.

"Why should it have happened to me?" she asked herself. "I've done nothing to deserve this."

She had grown so used to regard herself as invisible, that it came as a surprise when she realized that one person had guessed her identity. Their first meeting took place on a mountain railway. At first, she barely noticed the red-haired young man. with bare knobby Scotch knees, who sat on the opposite seat of her carriage.

She was gazing at the range of great snow mountains glittering against a deep blue sky, when the young man spoke to her.

"Aren't you Hermione Heath?"

She hesitated, as she did not wish to be pestered by a fan, but before she could reply, the young man went on.

"I was furious with you over your trial. You mucked up everything as though you were working in with the cops to give them a case in the bag. Surely you know the elementary rules on finding a corpse?"

"No!" gasped Hermione. "W-what are they?"

"First, touch nothing. Second, ring the police. Haven't you read any detective thrillers?"

"No."

"Then may heaven have mercy on your soul. You almost deserve all you got. I write them. And what's the good of me trying to educate the public when you deliberately work for a conviction?"

His abuse was incense to Hermione and exhilarated her more than the challenge of the snow mountains. Here, at least, was someone who recognized her for what she really was, a blundering fool, but innocent.

Hermione answered his questions with real relief. In spite of his blunt words, his hazel eyes held sympathy and understanding.

"What's your real name?"

"Amy Barker."

"Hermione wins with me. My name is Andrew Mackintosh. It ought to register— but it won't. I'm staying at your hotel, although you've not noticed me."

"I've noticed no one. I've kept thinking of—"

"I know. You kept thinking of poor little Hermione Heath. You've got to forget the little fool... Don't you hate your face?"

"Should I?" Her voice was startled. "What's wrong with it?"

"Definitely nothing. But I know I should get dead sick of mine splashed all over the screen."

"I don't. I'm clear on that point anyway. Film-acting is under my skin and it's also my big gamble. I spent my last shilling in dramatic training. It's mighty important for me to cash in on it."

"I understand. In fact, this holiday must put you together again. But it won't, unless you forget everything... Suppose we stick around together?"

During a week of perfect weather which followed their first meeting, they spent most of their time in the open air. With the object of giving her no time to think, Andrew ruthlessly took the pampered starlet for stiff mountain scrambles. He made her eat plain picnic lunches, perched on a boulder beside some boiling glacier-fed river.

"You get to know a person better in one day spent in the country than if you met her in drawing rooms for a year," he explained.

His exact word was "matey"— but he looked at her with the eyes of a lover.

He did not let her relax until his last afternoon, when they made a tour of the lake in the little steamer.

Hermione watched the shores with the sensation of being in a happy dream. There were fantastic houses and gardens where late crimson roses shed their petals and strangely remote people drank tea in the dense shade of chestnuts.

Châteaux with pointed towers and flights of stone steps leading down to deep peacock-blue water; cream-and-coral villas, spun about with delicately wrought-iron verandas and flights of filigree stairs which spiralled from balcony to balcony.

Presently the residences were spaced at longer distances as they reached a desolate area of reeds and bushes, where the river flowed swiftly into the lake. Near its outlet stood a small, white-shuttered villa, apparently encircled by a thick girdle of closely-clipped shrubs, which overhung the water.

"It's like a house built of toy bricks," exclaimed Hermione. "And the green stuff is like artificial moss. It fascinates me. I can't imagine anyone living there."

"I expect it's a weekend residence," exclaimed Andrew. "Most of these places arc shut."

On the second-class deck two women were also talking of the villa.

"That belongs to a rich business man," one informed her companion in rapid French. "He manufactures chocolate. Or it might be watches. That's his 'nid d'amour.' Always a lady. He is very attractive, you understand."

Although she could not hear, at that moment. Hermione suddenly shivered, as though a brain wave had touched her dormant memory of the murdered London financier.

"Don't look like that," said Andrew sharply.

"I can't help it," she confessed. "I'm afraid of the past. But I am more afraid of the future. That terrible thing happened to me in one second—just by opening a door. It can happen again."

"It can't. By the law of averages, it is impossible. Lightning never strikes the same place twice."

"That's not true. I remember reading about a woman who had just won a prize in a sweep and the account said that she had also held a winning ticket in the previous draw. When you consider the millions of tickets, that seems impossible. But it happened... Andrew, why did this happen to me?"

"Perhaps to test you." he replied. "If we had only soft pleasant experiences, we should degenerate to spiritual slugs. These tough breaks develop initiative, resource, courage."

"But all I did was to crash. I'm ashamed. I'm so used to being directed— told to do this or that... Oh, Andrew. I'm going to miss you."

That evening she went with him to the station. While they waited for the train, she looked so unhappy, that he tried to cheer her.

"I shall be at Victoria to meet you soon. We're not going to let this drop are we?"

"I shall count the days."

"Good." His face grew suddenly grave. "Hermione. I've been thinking about what you said this afternoon. I want you to promise me that if you are ever in a fix, like the last, you will fade away at once. Scram— disappear into the blue and leave no traces behind."

"I promise. But, of course, it won't happen again."

"No. You got me rattled by suggesting it. You see, you couldn't risk a second show-up."

"No. I should be finished in films."

"Much worse than that. A repetition of the first affair might be regarded as proof of homicidal mania. I'm frightening you, but you frightened me first. So remember this. You've brains inside your head, not pulp. Use them— and don't crash again."

SHE missed him even more than she feared. It was difficult to force enthusiasm for the beauty which surrounded her now that the human element was lacking. The mountains were beginning to assume the aspect of prison walls, when her holiday came to a premature end. The circumstances were exhilarating, for London came on the hotel telephone just as she was finishing her coffee on the veranda. "London" proved to be her agent, who told her that production was to begin immediately on the picture which had been shelved owing to her trial. The choice of lead lay between another promising young actress and herself.

"I must be frank." he warned her. "Clara's their best bet. No scandal about her. But give them all you've got and they're bound to admit it's your part. Come by tonight's express as you won't have to change. I'll meet you at Victoria and take you out to the studio for the test. Don't let me down, or it will be a walkover for Clara."

When he rang off, Hermione felt dizzy with excrement. She rushed about, making arrangements for her departure, but there was little to do. After every detail had been discussed, there stretched before her most of the morning and all the afternoon.

"I've got to walk, or I shall blow up," she thought.

She decided to take the steamer to the town at the end of the lake and then walk on to the first village, where she would await its arrival on its homeward trip.

When she reached the little medieval town, she loitered over her lunch, but, in her Impatience, the hands of her watch seemed to crawl. It was a relief to set off along the lake-promenade, lined with small chestnut trees, beginning to brown. She walked quickly and got to the village, to find the quay deserted. The steamer was not due for some time, so she began to explore.

It interested her to see the backs of the houses, or rather, their entrances. Many were impressive, with glass corridors or covered courtyards leading to the front door. Their gardens, too, were beautiful, with vivid emerald grass and brilliant flowers.

While she was admiring a border of dahlias in the garden of a villa, named "Mon Asile" an Alsatian dog watched her through the green-and-gilt railings. Having decided that she had no design on the family security, he butted the gate open with his head and made it plain to her that she might take him for a walk.

"No, my lad," she told him, shaking her head. "You're pedigree, by the look of you. I'm taking no chances. Some one might think I was enticing you away."

As he continued to plead, she weakly compromised by throwing her stick for him to retrieve. Apparently he could not get too much of this game, which lasted for several hectic minutes, but he behaved like a gentleman when, at last, she took her property from him and ordered him not to follow.

Leaving him sitting obediently inside his own garden, she swung along the deserted shore road. On one side was a 12-foot wall, topped with the trees of an estate— on the other, the sheet of sunlit water. Her objective was the river, which was boiling out in a greenish-white stream over the sapphire lake.

Presently she reached the unreal little villa, encircled with shrubs, which had impressed her with such a sense of artifice.

"It's either hollow inside and stuffed with shavings," she told herself, "or it's a block of solid plaster. No, I'm wrong. They've got a telephone there— and it's ringing like mad. Why doesn't someone answer it?"

The sound of the bell continued to whir in her ears as she picked her way down a path between willows and rank undergrowth, in order to reach the river. Soon, however, the track came to an end amid a stretch of reedy-swamp, with gaps of water, so that she was forced to turn back.

To her surprise, the telephone bell was still ringing when she came again to the white villa. It was obvious that no one was in the house and she marveled at the patience, or laxity, of the exchange. She lingered to gaze at the shuttered windows, when, suddenly, she heard the piteous wail of an animal.

"Oh. dear," she cried in dismay. "They've left a cat locked in and it's only Monday today. It'll be there for days... What on earth can I do? I can't break in. It's against the law."

Although the unanswered telephone stressed the fact that the villa was deserted, she rang the bell and knocked loudly upon the door. No one came, but she did not expect admission. Only the cat scented rescue, for its mewing sounded closer, while she could hear it scratching the panels.

It was against every humanitarian scruple to leave an animal to starve to death, yet the position seemed hopeless to Hermione. A glance at her watch told her that she had time, but little to spare.

At that moment to add to her worry, a further complication ensued. She felt a tug at her stick and turned to see the Alsatian dog waiting expectantly in the road. He had trailed her from "Mon Asile," and now— with insane optimism— had chosen this moment to ask her for another game.

"You keep out of this," she said, surrendering her stick to keep him quiet. "Oh, I wish I could get in."

IN desperation and without the faintest hope of forcing an entry, she turned the handle of the door. To her intense surprise it was neither bolted nor locked. While she was pushing it open, a small gray-and-white cat shot through the aperture and dashed into the road, evidently bound for his home in the village.

Hermione remained on the step gazing before her. Instead of a darkened interior, she saw a gleaming black-and-white marble hall, with glossy buttercup walls and yellow rugs. The light streamed in through the door of the salon, which was Just beyond. Only a section of it was visible, revealing the telephone on the floor.

She was compelled by strong curiosity to peep in at the salon. She reminded herself that not a soul was near. Closing the front door to keep the dog out she approached the salon.

It was full of sunshine, while the walls and ceiling were mottled with dancing water reflections from the lake. The unshuttered windows were hung with ice-blue satin curtains, patterned with white roses—the gilt Empire furniture was covered with royal blue-and-white striped brocade. Everything was gay and brilliant—with the exception of a man's body, lying outstretched on the carpet.

She stared at it with a feeling of terrible familiarity. This seemed a colored and almost cheerful version of her recent grim experience. A sunny room, instead of the dark stuffy flat— a debonair corpse in place of the other horror with his gross body and distorted face.

The dead man was slim and elegant with silver hair and black eye-brows. He wore a tussore suit with a brown silk shirt and socks. A tangerine carnation was in his buttonhole and a monocle had fallen from his eye. There were signs of a struggle, but on his mouth was the ghost of a smile— protesting and surprised— as though his visitor had gone rather too far beyond the limit of good taste.

Hermione stared— petrified by the sight of blood oozing from a wound in his heart. At that moment, her dominant sensation was incredulity, although— in itself— the happening was not altogether improbable. Any dissolute person, who plays also with souls, may run the risk of violent death, while it follows logically, that some one must discover his body. The amazing element centered In the fact that she— Hermione Heath— should be the victim of an extraordinary and almost impossible coincidence.

Lightning had struck the same place twice.

As she realized it, she felt about to be overwhelmed by an avalanche of terror which would sweep away her wits, as in the first catastrophe. But even while she trembled on the brink of panic, she remembered Andrew.

He had warned her that she must not risk a second scandal and he had told her what she must do. She must touch nothing and go away immediately.

Merely to think of him strengthened her with the knowledge of invisible comradeship. She lost the sense of being overwhelmed by Fate's betrayal as she regained mastery over her nerves. Checking an impulse to stop the maddening ringing of the telephone, she hurried from the room.

JUST as she reached the vestibule, she heard a ring, followed by a double knock upon the front door. The desperation of the crisis cleared her brain, so that she guessed what had happened. The bell had been ringing for some time and the exchange operator, when she realized that something was out of order, had rung up the police station.

The man who had been sent to investigate the mystery must not find her in the house. She glanced at the closed windows of the salon and decided that the official might enter while she was trying to open one of them. The white marble staircase was nearer, so she sped noiselessly over the thick black carpet up to the shuttered gloom of the landing.

Trembling violently, she waited for him to make the discovery... Then suddenly the shrilling of the bell was cut off as the official talked to the police station.

She strained her ears to listen. Fortunately, he did not speak in a patois, so that she was able to understand the drift of his statement.

"Herr Silbermann shot in his summer residence. The disorder indicates murder. Come at once to watch the house from the outside, so that no one can leave it. The miscreant may be hiding. No, I cannot search yet, lest some one should slip out, while I am upstairs. Here, I can guard the front door as well as the body. Stop anyone you meet on the road who is running, or hurrying, or agitated, or who is at all suspicious."

Hermione bit her lip and clenched her hands. She was caught in a trap. But there might be a way out. There must be one. She thought she remembered a spidery iron stair which spiralled from the top veranda down to the garden. If she could descend unseen, she might hide in the shrubbery until the relief police reached the villa— and then choose the psychological moment to make a dash for the quay.

Holding herself in dread lest a board should creak, she opened a door. Her heart sank at the darkness within. If the upper story were still closed, it would be difficult to unshutter a window without betraying her presence by a noise. But she had to go on. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she groped her way safely through a bathroom to the principal bedroom.

To her joy, the windows were open, so that it, too, swam with sunshine and water reflections. Drawing aside an orchid-pink satin curtain, she stole cautiously out.

In that moment of exposure, she felt certain that someone must see her from the lake. It was possible, too, that the spiral stairs were visible from a corner of the salon, where the policeman guarded the body. But although she knew that she was incriminating herself more deeply with every action, she crept down the steps and reached the ground.

WITHOUT giving herself time to falter, she dived underneath the nearest shrub. If she could crawl under its shelter to the left of the villa, she could reach the road without having to pass the open front door.

At first, however, the task seemed impossible. It was difficult to make any progress through the dense mass of interlacing twigs. She was stifled by heat and lack of air and almost choked by layers of dust and rubbish. To test her endurance still further was the additional fear of making any sound.

Inch by inch, foot by foot, she dragged herself through the hedge until she reached a shrub behind which she could crouch while she waited. It was then she glanced at her watch and realized that she could catch the steamer only by making a sprint.

It was the last boat back to the town where she was staying. If she lost it, she would also lose the express back to England and her chance of making a test for the new picture. Any attempt to hire a car in the village would attract attention to her presence as a stranger when the least publicity would be fatal. No one had seen her come— and no one must see her go, except in impeccable circumstances.

Even as the thoughts were whirling through her mind, she noticed that the dog was nosing among the bushes, as though he were on her trail. He was bound to find her, then he would give away the secret of her hiding place.

But his presence made no difference now except to precipitate the crisis. Circumstances forced her out into the open to make a dash for the steamer. On her way she was bound to be stopped and questioned by the police. The passport, which—in accordance with the regulations of her regional ticket—she carried always with her, would be examined and her identity revealed.

Unless she could think of some, expedient whereby she could run without attracting attention, it was indeed the end of Hermione Heath.

In that moment she knew that she was being tested. Her whole future depended on her own initiative and brains. No one could direct her now.

Andrew's phrase, "a spiritual slug," stung her memory as she wrestled with the psychological aspect of the situation.

Just as the dog leaped toward her in joyful welcome, the inspiration came.

"The dog. If I saw a man running in the street, I should turn and stare. But I should take no notice of a man running with a dog."

LEAPING over the low parapet of the garden, she snatched up her stick where the Alsatian had dropped it and held it out in invitation to him to follow. She had two bits of luck, she was still wearing shorts with a sleeveless jersey—and the road curved just beyond the villa, so that any one around the bend could not see the point where she began her run.

Shouting encouragement to the delighted dog, she raced at top speed, while snatches of "The Charge of the Light Brigade" floated through her mind. "Shot and Shell."

Two men, wearing dark caped uniforms and peaked caps, cycled toward her. "Boldly they rode." She was passing them. They did not stop her, but they might be following her. She dared not turn her head to find out, but dashed on. "Into the jaws of death."

Another policeman—this time, on foot—came around the next corner. He looked keenly at her and she heard him stop, as though to look after her. "Into the gates of hell... On... On..."

She had run herself nearly to the point of collapse. Her heart was leaping— her lungs felt punctured— when suddenly she saw below her the quay and the little steamer. The gangway was on the point of being hauled away, but she dashed across It just in time.

The paddles churned the water and the boat steamed away. Hot and panting, Hermione stood on deck and watched the shore glide past her. The Alsatian was trotting back to "Mon Asile" and his dinner. Under the trees, people drank afternoon tea.

A sense of deep relief enfolded. She knew that she was safe. It was as though she had presence of a day in the near future, when she was to read in her paper a Continental item which stated that the police had arrested the murderer of the late Herr Silbermann.

Even then, in the villa of the deceased, the policeman was questioning his colleagues.

"You met no one on the road?"

"No one," was the reply. "Only the priest on his bicycle and a kennel-maid exercising a hound."

_____________________

2: The Jigglesqueak

Paul Fitzgerald

(Gerald Beaumont, fl. 1910s-1930s)

Blue Book, Sept 1922

TOBE CHESSLEIGH, proprietor of the Santa Inez Garage, saw a ghost!

Tobe was writing a letter in his little office. He happened to glance through the glass door that led to the runway; and— there it was, plain as the rear axle on a cut-down Lizzie!

"H'm!" he commented.

Tobe averted his eyes, chewed nervously on the stump of a black cigar, and looked again. It was there all right— the figure of a man in mechanic's overalls, face upturned to a gaudy poster advertising the forthcoming Cup races at Warm Springs. There could be no mistaking the identity of the apparition. Tobe recognized the profile through a veil of twenty years. There was the same tawny curl drooping from under the black cap, the same bold sweep of nose and chin, the upward curve to the lips, the well-remembered poise of head, and above all, the indefinable expression by which one face is distinguished from all others. Yet this man was dead; Tobe Chessleigh had cried over his grave!

Fat and forty-five, the proprietor of the Santa Inez Garage laid aside his cigar and penholder. Slowly he got to his feet, left his office and approached within easy speaking distance of that motionless figure.

"Reynolds!" he quavered, "Reynolds, old pal!"

The ghost vanished, and Tobe found himself gazing into the startled face of Georgie Kingston, his apprentice mechanic.

"Reynolds is my name," said Georgie. "But how— how did you know?"

Tobe stood there blinking stupidly, eyes traveling from the face of young Kingston to the poster on the wall, and then back again. His mind tried vainly to fathom the phenomenon that had just occurred, and gave it up.

"Gosh!" he exclaimed. "Let's go in here and figure this thing out!"

ACROSS a littered table in Chessleigh's office they faced each other. Tobe fumbled among papers for the stump of his cigar, found it, puffed vigorously, and then tilted his chair against the wall. His eyes bored into those of his youthful mechanic.

"You sure gave me an awful start," he grunted. 'Don't know why, either, unless it was the light, and looking at you through the glass from a side view. Expression's one now; and yet—Georgie, are you really the son of old Doc' Kingston, down at Calora?"

Georgie Kingston drew from an inside pocket a yellow envelope containing a faded photograph, and a number of withered newspaper clippings. He spread the collection in front of his employer.

"That's the answer," he said. "The Doctor gave them to me the night of the big storm after I drove the Banana Special up Gray Mountain and saved those kids. He said it was my birthright. Until then I thought he was my father. You can read those clippings if you want. The Doctor saved them at the time. But you called me Reynolds— how did you know?"

"Wait," said Tobe, "and then maybe I'll tell you."

HE adjusted his spectacles, picked up the first clipping, read it line for line, and passed on to the next. Georgie watched him silently. Finally, Tobe Chessleigh concluded his reading, spat on the floor, and looked out the window.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he mused. "So you're Bill Reynolds' boy?"

Georgie's lips parted eagerly.

"You knew him?"

"I was his mechanic," said Tobe slowly. "We were pals."

"But the mechanic was killed with him—"

"A green man," said Tobe. "That was the trouble— a green man— wasn't watching the tires on his side. I was in the hospital with blood-poisoning. Bill wouldn't let me sit with him that day— 'fraid I might get hurt worse. I should have gone anyway, should have gone!" He banged the table with a fat fist, and repeated bitterly: "Should have gone!"

Georgie Kingston's blue eyes glittered electrically. Warm blood crimsoned his cheek-bones. He leaned across the table, and laid an impulsive hand on Tobe Chessleigh's sleeve.

"Think," he pleaded, "think what it would mean to you, if you had never seen your father, and he had never seen you, and some day you met a man who had known him! Boss, I want to know my Dad— I want to be able to love him!"

Tobe hoisted his rotund body erect. He waddled around the table and stretched an arm across the shoulders of his young mechanic.

"Son," he declared, "anything old Tobe can do for you, will be done. Shake on it

"THEY clasped hands, and thus Georgie Kingston formed his first alliance—a fusion with a retired racing mechanic in a country town, set in one of California's valleys, needing only publicity and population to make it a jewel in Eureka's crown. Thirty miles northeast, beyond the barrier of Gray Mountain, lay the little town of Calora in which Georgie Kingston had spent his boyhood, and which he still called home, since old Doctor Kingston and his wife Sophie, and pretty Marjie Taylor, all lived there. If it was mere chance that had guided the boy to a mechanic's job in Tobe Chessleigh's garage at Santa Inez, it was a more powerful agency that now held him there.

From the lips of his father's chum Georgie learned the things for which his heart hungered.

"I don't want to change my name," Georgie told his employer. "It was really the Doctor who brought me into this world, and no man could have been kinder, or as patient. But tell me more about my real father."

Tobe did his best in behalf of a lost pal, and as usual when memory paints the past, the story lost nothing in the telling. An idealized portrait of Bill Reynolds, pioneer racing driver, was painted for the benefit of the son he had never seen, and this portrait in turn became a shrine before which Georgie consecrated his life and burned the incense of ambition.

"Yes sir," Tobe used to say, "your Dad was a strange fellow, sure was! Make a violin talk, he could! Used to write poems to his wife, too! Never seen any prettier poetry! As near as I can understand it, your mother was studying music in Paris when she met Bill, who was just out of college. Each was living on a family allowance which stopped when they got married. Bill came home with a wife and an automobile, and he loved both, right up to the end."

IT wasn't long before Bill Reynolds' former mechanic realized what was in the heart of Georgie Kingston. The symptoms were too plain to be misread. Georgie's bible was a motor magazine that chronicled the exploits of Vargas, La Fontaine, Hildebrand and other speed kings. Figuratively, young Kingston slept on a tire-rack, and derived the sustenance of life from the exhaust-pipe of a motorcar. Night and day he worked and dreamed over a motley collection of automobiles. But it was in driving that he showed the skill that many men who drive for a livelihood never acquire.

"Handles a wheel pretty," commented his employer. "Never fights it; just gauges the leverage exactly right. He can take a curve easier than any other man I've ever seen. Born to the speedway, that boy! Yes sir, blood'll tell! Now, I wonder what I ought to do?

"How would you like to own a regular old go-fast, Georgie?" he asked one day.

Kingston's eyes sparkled. "You mean a racing-car?"

"Well, not exactly," confessed Tobe. "Can't afford the real thing yet, but we might make a pretty fair imitation. There's that Banana Special that you remodeled for Dr. Kingston. It's got a French engine that might turn the trick. We could rip off the body—"

Georgie's face clouded. "No," he interrupted, "that was the first car I ever handled. If you'd seen how proud the Doctor was when I showed him all the things I'd done with my own hands, and how I'd arranged the leg-space so that he could drive even though his knee caps are both broken; you'd understand that no other car will ever take its place. But do you want to do something for me, boss?"

"I do," said Tobe. "But quit calling me boss. What is it?"

"Sell me the service car. I can let you have about a hundred down, and—"

"Nothing doing," shouted Chessleigh. "The old jigglesqueak? I wouldn't sell it to my worst enemy! You crazy? Take that Carrollton Six. TIl let you have it five hundred under cost, and you can fix your own terms."

"No," said Georgie, "I'll buy the jigglesqueak or nothing. There's a frame over at the Central Garage that I can get, and I was figuring on lopping off about a foot and welding it together again. I can use the wheels from that old Bernard Flyer, drop the steering-wheel down and pull it back, shorten the drive shaft, and install a Miller transmission. Look here, I got it all figured out."

He produced a penciled sketch covered with notations, and went on excitedly:

"Call it a jigglesqueak if you want, but the engine was made in this country, and it's an underslung, with double ignition. Ill gear it up two for one, and get ninety miles out of her or better."

"How long you been thinking this out?" Tobe demanded.

"Not so long," Georgie answered. "I rèad in the paper the other day they were thinking of holding a meet this fall at Santa Flora."

He looked wistfully at his employer. The latter grinned, and was about to wax facetious when he changed his mind.

"Well, I'll tell you how it is," said Tobe. "You can't buy that old jigglesqueak, but you can have it. Take its guts out and stuff 'em in a lawn-mower or the kitchen stove; I don't care! When you're ready to take the road, come to me, and I'll tell you the only thing I learned in twelve years of racing."

KINGSTON went back to his work, radiant, and the corpulent proprietor of the Santa Inez Garage, left to his own reflections, burst into song. It was a simple ditty, dedicated to a hopeful individual who once, in the language of the librettist:

Took four spools and an old tin can,

Made him a car, and the damn thing ran!

The machine that Georgie Kingston evolved in the subsequent weeks had as many parents as a cat has lives, but it was as truly an American product as any child born in this great melting-pot of a country. Tobe tried to keep his hands off the job as much as possible, but the temptation was too strong. Night-time often found him in the pits with his mechanic, helping to apply the finishing touches to a freak of the road. Out of his own pocket the older man paid for a special tachometer and an oil hand-pump. Georgie fashioned . the body of the car, and painted it a brilliant orange with vertical black stripes, the class colors of Marjie Taylor. The crowning touch was a length of stovepipe for the exhaust, of such size and construction that the explosions from the four cylinders sounded like a machine-gun playing on a tin roof.

"Well," commented Georgie's patron saint, "that's one way of drowning out all the squeaks and rattles."

He smiled at Georgie and then went on:

"Let her rest now, and come on into the office."

"Now then," he continued, when they had seated themselves, "if I guess what's in your mind, you'd like to take the Jigglesqueak down to Santa Flora this fall and try her out in the Cup race, eh?"

"Gee!" breathed Georgie, "if I only could!"

Tobe chuckled. 'Well, boy, you've worked pretty hard for me, and you've got a vacation coming. Drive the old buss home and spend a few days with your folks. Don't forget your girl. Then go on to Santa Flora—"

"Now?"

"Now," affirmed his employer. '"You'll have about thirty days before the race, and I want you to go over the course repeatedly, studying just one thing."

"What's that?"

"Your right rear tire. On a speedway that's the one that gives out first, and it means either one of two things: delay or disaster. When a white streak begins to show, you can take your choice of going to the pits or the hospital, and in either case you're probably out of the money. Georgie, you're up against a hundred-and-fifty mile race on a five-mile macadam course with the curves banked. That means thirty laps, and a long way to the pits if you break down in the back-stretch.

"Most of the cars wont get there until a few days before the contest, and the drivers will do their experimenting during the race itself. Go there now, son, and learn just how fast you can cover that course without burning out a tire. I'm too fat and nervous to ride at your side, 'Georgie; but when the big day comes, TIl be in your pit, and TIl beat you to death if you come in for a tire. Drive a nonstop race, even if you average only ten miles an hour."

He paused, and tugged from his hip pocket a worn wallet.

"Here you are, Georgie: here's two hundred dollars that you may need, and may God be with you! Now get out of here!"

Georgie's eyes filled. He looked at the money, then at his corpulent patron.

"Tobe, if I win, you'll get half of the ten thousand."

"If you win," said Tobe, "all I want is the best heart-specialist in the country; I'll need him bad."

SO Georgie in his Jigglesqueak rode forth in search of gold and glory; and stopped en route at the little town of Calora, where there were three people who loved him. Of these three, two had reached the twilight of life, and were descending bravely into the shadows hand in hand. Dr. Kingston, country surgeon, philosopher, and a nobleman by nature, had found a final harborage from which he could look back upon a useful life, unmarred by a single regret. His wife Sophie— with her girlish face, her gray curls and her slim hands always patting the folds of her black silk dress into place, held the same joy for him as ever. They were a Darby and. Joan, each worshiping the other, and their love for the boy they had raised as their own was openly lavished and as openly reciprocated.

But when Georgie, on his last day at Calora, took Marjory Taylor out riding in the Jigglesqueak—that was something different, for Marjie was eighteen and had known him since they used to sit together as children on Doctor Kingston's lap, and listen open-mouthed to the story of how big Chief War Cloud, carrying the medicine that was to save his beloved Chinny-Chatty, rode three horses to death, and then ran all the rest of the way for twenty miles!

Georgie used to assure the Doctor that he would do the same thing for Marjie some day; but somehow or other the opportunity never came. Instead, when Marjie was ten years old and generally described as a 'fraid cat, she went to Georgie's assistance in the school yard one day when he was attacked by superior numbers, and she wielded two sturdy little brown fists with such astonishing rapidity as.to turn the tide of battle. Thereafter, Marjie was spanked by her mother, praised by Dr. Kingston, and— well, Georgie kissed her, which was probably how it all started.

Riding home at dusk, Georgie told her about Tobe Chessleigh and the history of the Jigglesqueak, and the story of his real parentage. Marjie listened in silence, but when he came to the part about Meredith Reynolds, who refused to be parted from her husband even by death, her hand sought his and held it firmly; that was all. Later, in the hallway of her home, when he was saying good-by, she asked:

"Georgie, suppose you were to win the race, what would you do then?"

"I don't know," he answered frankly, "but I feel that I would like to go out into the world and try to do big things before I— well, before I do anything else," he said, and looked at her wistfully.

Marjie pursed her lips thoughtfully, and nodded. She put the next question very simply:

"Georgie, do you love me?"

For answer he took her in his arms and kissed her.

"That's all I want to know," she said, freeing herself. "Go ahead, dear, and spread your wings. If you ever want me, I'll be here."

"I was going to ask you if you'd drive the folks down to the race?" he pleaded. "You could take them in the Banana Special."

And though he couldn't have suggested anything that would be quite as distressing to her as the prospect of watching him in his first gamble with Death, she answered lightly:

"Why, of course we'll go, and I'm going to make you a regular racing hood, with my initials embroidered on it, and I'll mail it down to you. Good-by, Georgie. Write to me, dear— and do be careful!"

"I will," he promised. 'You're a peach, Marjie. So long." He ran lightly down the stairs.

THE Chamber of Commerce at Santa Flora had called a meeting to decide whether or not plans for the proposed Cup race should be abandoned. Several hours before the conference, Editor Tollinger and Barney Goff, proprietor of the principal hotel, stood on a street-corner discussing the matter.

"I'm as game as anybody," said the hotel man, "but we've bit off more than we can chew. What with liability insurance, gate prizes, advertising appropriations, traveling expenses, and now appearance-money for some of these prima donnas, we need ten thousand more than we figured, and the money isn't in the town."

"Well," lamented Tollinger, "it will give Santa Flora a black eye if we throw up the sponge. There ought to be some way of boosting the subscriptions. I'd do my share, but the trouble is, the merchants can't visualize what a great race means. What we need is a little encouragement; we— holy smoke, what's that?"

The heavy-throated roar of a mechanical bull emanated from a spot hidden by the courthouse. It rumbled like distant artillery, faded, and bellowed again. It snorted, coughed and thundered. Pedestrians paused, and a crowd of boys began to run in that direction. Nearby stores disgorged curious patrons.

"Must be an airplane lit in the street," said Barney Goff. "Let's walk over."

But before they could carry out this suggestion, the mysterious visitor rolled into view, escorted by twenty eager youngsters on bicycles. It was a racing car, stripped for action, a huge figure "9" painted on the radiator, and a boyish pilot sitting at the wheel. On it came, picking its way through the traffic of Santa Flora Street, the unmuffled exhaust reverberating against the stone buildings on either side. The car stopped outside the Havens Garage, and in ten minutes hundreds of people who had never seen a racing-car before were getting an eyeful.

Tollinger and the hotel man struggled through the crush. The editor exercised the privileges of his office.

"Well, well, well!" he cried. '"Welcome to Santa Flora! What's the name, please— and what famous car is this?"

"Why," said the youthful driver, "my name is Kingston—Georgie Kingston; and I come from Santa Inez. The car's a sort of American Special, I guess; back home we call it the Jigglesqueak!"'

"Jigglesqueak?"' shouted Barney Goff. "Ha-ha! That's good; that's mighty good! 'Rah for the Jigglesqueak!"

He leaned over and whispered fiercely in the ear of the driver:

"Say, if you'll drive that car around this damn town for a couple of hours and make all the noise you can, Pll stake you to the best dinner you ever ate in your life! Oh, boy, I think you've saved the day!"

Editor Tollinger leaned over too.

"Come on into the office afterward," he urged. "I'Il give you a drink, and half of tomorrow's paper!"

SO for two hours the Jigglesqueak threaded the streets of Santa Flora, roaring a message from the Thunder Gods, and that night the Chamber of Commerce, instead of throwing up the sponge, dug into its pockets a little deeper and voted enthusiastically to go ahead.

Georgie made his headquarters at the Havens Garage, getting free space in return for the advertisement, and he had no trouble in securing a mechanic to ride with him.

"Anyone who can pump oil and look back," said Georgie to Tom Havens; and the proprietor of the garage loaned him Eddie Thorne, a cool-headed, quick-witted apprentice. Neither did Georgie experience any trouble in getting permission to warm up the Jigglesqueak on the new five-mile boulevard that encircled Santa Flora.

"Help yourself," said the sheriff, who was one of the heaviest subscribers to the guarantee fund.  "Take the road at six o'clock every morning, and I'll put a man at either end of the course with a flag. If anybody gets in your way, I'll arrest 'em!"

Those were great days for Tobe Chessleigh's protégé, and he made good use of them. The Jigglesqueak had a right-hand drive which enabled Georgie to follow out his employer's instructions, and keep one eye on the right rear tire that spun in a black streak just below him. Again and again he flashed into the banked turns at fifty, sixty, seventy miles an hour from every angle, studying the tire wear and the general strain on the car. He noticed also the varying effect of weather conditions on the road-bed, as reflected by the casings. At the end of the first week he received from Tobe Chessleigh six new racing tires by express, and the second week brought a half-dozen more. One after another they were sacrificed on the rough altar of experience, but by the end of the third week Georgie had learned the formula for a nonstop race, and he and his mechanic began going over the car in a final grooming.

Meanwhile temporary grandstands, pits, scoreboard and timer's stands had been constructed on the outskirts of the town. Representatives of the Contest Board of the A.A.A. arrived to inspect and measure the track, and to put the red seal of approval on the contestants. Newspapers began to arrange for special services; the hotels found their accommodations all reserved well in advance; Santa Flora grew feverish and expectant; and finally the first shipment of cars showed up in the advance of the drivers. They were unloaded by their mechanics, and from the moment these superb specimens of speedcraft rumbled into Santa Flora, Georgie Kingston and his Jigglesqueak passed into total eclipse.

It was a bitter disillusionment to the youthful owner of the American Special. He was among those who went over to the Keystone Garage to take a look at the cars of Louis La Fontaine and Laughing Joe Hildebrand. It was like the owner of a milk-wagon worshiping the chariots of the sun. The two blue and white Chevaliers exceeded Georgie Kingston's fondest dreams. Looking under the hood was like looking into the back of Dr. Kingston's jeweled watch. Each car was a two-thousand-pound synthetic gem unmarred by a single speck of visible dirt or oil. Georgie Kingston went back to his hotel room that night and cried.

"THEN came the gasoline gladiators themselves, the knights of the whirring wheel, men who laughed at Death and tweaked the beard of Father Time. They were soon surrounded by obsequious satellites. Newspaper photographers and motion-picture camera-men flocked into town and followed in the trail of the celebrities. They hovered around Tony Vargas, leading claimant for the Triple A crown; potshotted Louis La Fontaine and his team-mate Laughing Joe Hildebrand; hurried after Tommy Clifton, the Consistency Kid, and half a dozen others. But only as a matter of duty, bearing in mind the possibility of a tragedy, did they waste a negative on the Santa Inez contender and his Jigglesqueak.

There was to be a dinner for drivers and mechanics at the Riverbank Hotel. An hour before the scheduled time for the repast, the lobby was dotted with groups of laughing and joking men, exchanging anecdotes and confidences with members of the entertainment committee. Georgie Kingston found himself standing next to the great La Fontaine, a dapper Frenchman of magnetic personality, full of verve and charm. Louis was telling of an incident at the Crescent Boulevard races from which they had just come.

"Nevair again do I want to feel zat way," he told his hearers. "Zat man,"—  pointing to Hildebrand,— "he is my friend, and we drive ze cars zat look alike. On ze nineteenth lap, I am going one hundred miles an hour, and I see ahead of me by ze road, three trees cut off and a car that is bust to pieces. Mon Dieu— it look like a white car—and there is a man's head over here, and somezing else over there. Sacré bleu! Nineteen times I must pass zat place, and each time I say: 'Zat is Joe! Zat is my friend!' "

Hildebrand chimed in:

"And of course, when I went by, I thought it was Louie. My mechanic did too. He held up four fingers to me— the Frog's number— and I nodded. Gosh, it slowed me up for half a dozen rounds. Damn' near cost me the race!"

"It was ver' bad," acknowledged La Fontaine. "But when I draw into ze pits at ze end, I find ze man on ze road was Trykoff, ze Russian; and behold— there is Joe, my friend, alive and sound!"

He shrugged his shoulders, and concluded with a faint apologetic smile:

"So I fall on hees neck and keess heem!"

A MAN with a badge began herding the guests toward the dining-room, and Georgie followed, his brain dizzy from the momentary glimpse into the lives of these extraordinary mortals. Editor Tollinger was the toastmaster. One after another he called to their feet the honored guests of the occasion, and finally he remembered Georgie Kingston. Then he told of the time when Santa Flora's civic pride hung in the balance, and how the advent of the Jigglesqueak had saved the day.

"Mr. Kingston," he called, "who will drive an American Special!"

Georgie floundered to his feet. He tried to say the things that were in his heart, but he was stricken with stage-fright. Every preceding speaker had related some anecdote of the speedway; he had no experience from which to draw. And while he hesitated miserably, Louis La Fontaine leaned across the table and waved an encouraging napkin at the helpless youth.

"Bravo, ze Jigglesqueak!" he cried. "I sink I will beat everybody else but you. Tell them zat Napoleon was a little corporal, and La Fontaine once have bow legs and drink from ze milk-bottle. By gar, I pull for you!"

There was a general laugh and banging of knife-handles on the table. The son of Bill Reynolds' collected his faculties.

"Gentlemen," he stammered, "I'm just a busher, and I guess the Jigglesqueak is a joke; but"— he flung up his head bravely— "if I live, I hope to go faster than any man has ever gone, and it will be at the wheel of an American car!"

He sat down trembling, and again it was the gallant Frenchman who leaned over and exclaimed, amid the perfunctory applause:

"Zat's ze stuff, mon brave! I believe you will!"

BUT the qualification trials, held three days before the race itself, destroyed the last vestige of Georgie's confidence. Had it not been for La Fontaine, he would have retired. - The Frenchman came to Georgie's aid when the boy was frightened and heartsick as the result of an encounter with Tony Vargas, the South American speed king. Vargas was born in Bolivia, raised in England, and spoiled in the spotlight of success. He loved himself:and was cordially hated by everyone else. As soon as Vargas beheld the Jigglesqueak roll onto the track for a tryout, he hunted up the official starter.

"Who is that person with Number Nine car?" he demanded. "That's my number, you know. Have him take it off at once!"

The starter sent for Kingston.

"Mr. Vargas," he explained, "has been accustomed to having Number Nine. Inasmuch as you got here first and registered under that number, it is your privilege to use it, unless as a matter of courtesy you are willing to take another."

"I'm sorry," said Georgie, "but there's a reason for my wanting Number Nine. It means everything; I can't—"

Vargas cut in: "See here, don't be ridiculous, my boy. I'm not going to have that silly blunderbuss trailing around with my number on it. Take it off! Take it off!"

Georgie's eyes chilled to steel; he bit his lips and fought for self-control.

"I'm sorry," he repeated thickly, "but that number stays where it is. It was my father's; and by God, it's going to be mine!"

TURNING away, he climbed into the Jigglesqueak, and undertook to circle the course in the time demanded by the qualification trials. His nerves were upset by this unexpected clash, and he covered the five miles with only ten seconds to spare. He kept on, striving to steady himself and make a better showing while still keeping within the pace experience had taught him meant the preservation of his tires. Other cars swept by as though the Jigglesqueak was standing still. Hildebrand and La Fontaine, in blue and white torpedoes, thundered at a hundred miles an hour.

The audacity of that mad flight thrilled the boy until he almost forgot his own discomfiture. But in another minute he was startled into quick possession of all his faculties. Vargas, in a green Victoire, cut in ahead of him on a bend so closely as almost to force him off the road. He was smothered in dust from the safety lane, and almost blinded, but he retained control and took the curve by grace of memory alone. He heard his- mechanic shout a curse at Vargas. Thereafter he drove carefully, well on the inside of the track. Once more the Victoire came up from behind, bore in deliberately, and the hubcaps clicked. Georgie's mental photograph of the course helped him through the dust that flew from the dirt embankment on the curve.

As they approached the pits, Vargas was already out of his car, and talking to the referee. Georgie was waved down by the starter, and he complied instantly, turning off into a by-lane that brought him back to the stands. The referee approached, his face troubled.

"Mr. Vargas complains that you are endangering the other drivers," he said to Georgie. "I'm sorry, my boy, but we can't afford to risk an accident. You wouldn't want that yourself—"

"No," said Georgie, and his lips quivered. "If anyone else besides Mr. Vargas has any complaint to make, I'll withdraw."

He looked back, and saw a blue and white car drawing into the pits. He cast his fate into the hands of the man who had once before befriended him, and turned to the referee.

"Ask him," he urged. "Ask La Fontaine. He was right behind us when Vargas cut in. If he says it was my fault, you can tear up my card."

The referee walked in the Frenchman's direction, Vargas following, and redoubling his protests. La Fontaine listened quietly while the situation was explained. Then he spread both hands eloquently, and looked up at the vault of heaven.

"I know nozzing except zis," he sighed: "Ze boy is all right, and zat fellow over there, he is both one grand villain and ze damn' liar. Some day I pull hees nose!"

Immediately three special police were called on to stop the makings of a beautiful fight, and in the resulting confusion the original cause of it all was temporarily overshadowed. . But Georgie Kingston clipped a picture of La Fontaine from the evening paper and folded it away in his wallet with the faded portrait of his own father.

Twenty-four hours later Tobe Chessleigh showed up. He reacted to all the excitement and confusion like an old racehorse that once again hears the familiar bugle-call to the post.

"Gosh!" he grunted. "Takes me back to old times. How's the Jigglesqueak? How's the Village Blacksmith? Gonna make 'em eat your gas tomorrow, kid?"

Georgie told him of the encounter with Vargas.

"Humph!" said Tobe. "Well, that's the way it goes. Them foreigners are all fatheads—"

"I know one foreigner that I'd give up my life for!"

"La Fontaine?" said Tobe. "Oh, he's a nut too. The boys tell me he puts perfume in his gasoline. Saw Dr. Kingston and your girl in Calora. They're coming down to help us shove the Jigglesqueak off the track when you get enough of it. Go to sleep. I'll come in after a while."

But when Georgie woke up the next morning, the other bed in his room was undisturbed. Not until long afterward did he find out that Tobe had stretched his corpulent frame on the cold floor of the Havens show-room, and guarded the Jigglesqueak all night long. Tobe knew a thing or two about the racing game.

BLUE sky roofed a summer day in Southern California, and the little town of Santa Flora reaped the harvest of its enterprise. Near-by cities emptied motor flotillas into the highways that led to the scene. An army of deputy sheriffs, special police and Boy Scouts enforced the parking rules, and guided thousands of spectators into the roughly constructed stands that lined both sides of the start and finish. Concessionnaires cried their wares; the bands played lustily; airplanes circled overhead; and Death grinned from behind each of the thousand pepper trees that flanked the five-mile boulevard. In the foreground overalled figures tinkered with the ten entries in the inaugural Santa Flora Cup Race, while newspaper photographers and the camera-men of the movie weeklies battled as usual with beribboned officials for the freedom of the press.

It was all an old story to the majority of drivers, but to Georgie Kingston it was a period such as only the raw soldier experiences when he is told to lie quiet under fire for the first time. And just as the quivering recruit sees his whole life spread before him in a mental panorama, so the son of Bill Reynolds visualized all that had gone before. A scant hundred yards away, he could see the pink dress of Marjie Taylor, alongside the dignified figure of Dr. Kingston, in the front seat of a yellow car parked by the rail. A moment before, he had felt the cool, firm pressure of Marjie's fingers, heard her voice, and looked into frank brown eyes that held the flame of womanhood's appeal. And he knew that an hour before that, he had signed his "death warrant," the little slip of paper by which every driver relieves officials and promoters from all responsibility for what may happen. For the first time he realized the three great mysteries of the human race: Life, Love and Death. He held life; he wanted love; and he was courting death. In the turmoil of his conflicting emotions, some power deeper than anything he had yet experienced urged him forward. Tobe Chessleigh, nervous and perspiring, shouted in his ear:

"Mind the right rear rubber, boy. The car's a joke, but you've got just as good tires as any man in the race. Steady, my boy, steady. Watch for my signals in the pit, and God be with you!"

Georgie nodded. The band finished playing, "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here!" The cars were rolled into position, in tiers of three, with the pace-maker in front of the pole. Georgie tightened the chin-strap on the embroidered headpiece Marjie had given him. His mechanic hopped in by his side, and the boy gripped the wheel of the throbbing car.

The starter whirled to the timer's stand, and around at the battery of scorers. There was a responsive wave of hands, the crack of a pistol, and every car got into motion in the preliminary whirl that would bring them back in correct position for the actual start.

IN auto-racing, as in other sports, there is an all important moment for the participant. It comes to the jockey with the first spring of his horse from the barrier, to the ball-player as he sees the first ball approach him from the pitcher's box. His mental and muscular reaction to that supreme moment tells the story: either he is there, or he isn't!

But with the first response of the Jigglesqueak to his command, Georgie Kingston found himself. The fog of hysteria and nervousness cleared away; his hands caressed the wheel with the touch of a master, and his body automatically settled into the rushing swing of the striped car. The pace quickened, and he maneuvered for his assigned position, dropping gradually into seventh place and on the outside. The pace-maker was going a little too fast for some of the second-flight drivers, and it was another mile or so before this was rectified. Then the line of humming machines slowly bunched, maneuvered, and swung into the final turn. The flight grew faster; Darcy of Boston thundered into position, Vargas flashed up beside him; Hildebrand and La Fontaine formed the central bar in a figure A, their roaring torpedoes not four feet apart. On they came, flying like wild duck before the hunter, heading straight for a man with a red flag, and gathering speed as they came. Ninety— ninety-five, a hundred miles an hour, and with the roar of an unleashed Niagara! The starter edged into the path of the hurricane, swung a blood-red cloth in the face of the nearest driver, and leaped aside. The race was on!

There were thousands present who looked upon that race'as a Roman holiday. For thèm it was enough that these goggled figures who flashed by at a speed that stunned the senses were gambling with the most precious thing in the knowledge of man. Down in the mechanics' pits, or crouched over wheels of those Mercurial chariots, were men who had dedicated their lives and talents in the time-old struggle of human genius against the limitations of time and space. For them it was the most fundamental and fascinating game in the world. And still there were others—like old Doctor Kingston and Marjie Taylor, sitting pale and silent in the balcony of beholders, counting each lap in an agonized litany, and praying that Fate would be kind once more to those they loved.

For Georgie Kingston it was the fulfillment of a dream. His faculties answered to the fixed concentration of a somnambulist. The son of Bill Reynolds had but one idea: to keep going at the pace he had rehearsed. He was oblivious of the lithe mechanic seated at his side, blind to Tobe Chessleigh waving a blackboard at him as he swept by, heedless of the blackened stands, and the cars that one by one sought the pits as the dizzy pace told on the tires.

The Jigglesqueak dropped steadily behind until it was in last place, a tortoise plodding persistingly along in the trail of scurrying hares. Only the checkers in heir stands, Tobe Chessleigh in his pit, Doctor Kingston and Marjie Taylor at the rail, kept track of its progress, and knew that it alone had not yet stopped.

"THE fifty-mile mark was passed, and the drivers were still experimenting on those banked turns, going to the pits every third lap, and then flashing out again to join the whirlpool. Again and again Hildebrand, La Fontaine and Vargas swept by the American Special, and Georgie Kingston realized it dully. He lost all track of his position. His mechanic shouted repeated messages in his ear, but he could not distinguish the words. His eyes grew bloodshot, his fingers numb, and the leaking exhaust-pipe enveloped him in smothering fumes. He leaned out, filling his lungs, and then holding his breath for half a mile at a time. But as the race progressed, dimly he became aware that the cars were farther apart, and for some reason, there was more room.

Hildebrand had dropped out with motor trouble; Tommy Clifton had cracked a cylinder; the Anderson White Bulldog threw a smoke screen and was waved from the course. La Fontaine and Tony Vargas came into the pits for the sixth time, one behind the other, and the tire-crews got them away again in twelve seconds. The toiling Jigglesqueak thundered on, and the huge scoreboard showed that it was creeping gradually into contention. From eighth place, it had advanced to sixth, then fifth, then fourth. Tobe Chessleigh's judgment regarding tires was being vindicated.

At a hundred and twenty-five miles Tobe started an offensive of his own. All through the race he had been climbing up and down a stepladder, as the son of Bill Reynolds flew by. But never once had Georgie looked at the upraised slate. From the adjoining pits-the mechanics had been kidding the fat garage-man, and he had borne it silently.

"The kid can't read!" they yelled. "You're out of luck, Tobe! The line's busy!"

But in the twenty-seventh lap, with only three more to go, the proprietor of the Santa Inez Garage scrambled off his ladder and shook the slate in the faces of his tormentors.

"Read it yourselves, then!" he screamed. "Take a good look at it, damn you! What does it say? What does it say?"

They had no reply to make, for Tobe Chessleigh's slate held the figure "1." The Jigglesqueak was in the lead!

When the cars came flying past again, La Fontaine and Vargas looked at their pits, and each read the same mystic signal: "Go." They nodded and were gone. "Get 9"— that was the last injunction from the coaching-line.

Georgie's mechanic, pumping oil desperately, held a grimy forefinger in front of his driver.

"We're in front!" he shouted. "We're a lap to the good if we can hold it!"

Georgie nodded. He was aware of a green Victoire sweeping up alongside him, and the hooded face of Tony Vargas not a car-width away. Hitherto the emerald car had flashed past quickly; now it hovered on even terms. Georgie's mechanic looked back, and saw that La Fontaine was right behind. Vargas was teaming with the Jigglesqueak in order to block the Frenchman at the approaching curve. The blue and white Chevalier nosed up so close to that flying barrier that three men knew Death was merely the question of the turn of a wrist or the pressure of a shoe. For ten seconds the three cars held stubbornly to their course, and then the South American cracked under the strain: the Victoire swerved to the right, and La Fontaine hurtled forward, threading the two cars in a figure S that for sheer brilliancy was unsurpassable. The Frenchman was now driving to regain that lost lap—driving with all the superb recklessness that made him the idol of the course. Back of him raced Tony Vargas, with the same object in view. They hit the curve at terrific speed, La Fontaine on the inside, the Victoire behind him at the right.

Swift intuition froze the blood in the veins of Bill Reynolds' boy; his right hand left the wheel and clutched the emergency. Ahead of him there was a sharp report, a shower of rubber through the air, and the blue and white Chevalier skidded across the road, straightened itself, skidded in the opposite direction, and rolled over three times!

The green Victoire sped past unchecked; but behind it a striped absurdity, with forty thousand people waiting to cheer its winning driver, screeched under smoking brakes and came to a full stop. In another minute Louis La Fontaine, bleeding from a gash on his forehead and quivering from the shock of three fractured ribs, looked up to see Georgie Kingston bending over him.

"Nom de Dieu!" he sighed. "You too? What ze hell happened to ze Jigglesqueak?"

Georgie saw with relief that his idol was alive.

"Nothing," he gasped. "I saw you go over, and I stopped to help. Thank God, you're all right!"

La Fontaine wiped the blood from his eyes, looked over at the Jigglesqueak, and jerked himself upright.

"Mille tonnerres!" he wailed. "Imbecile! Get ze hell out of here! Go on and win!"

HE reached for a clod of dirt and aimed it feebly at the head of the startled youngster. Georgie's mechanic was shouting desperately, and the Jigglesqueak's driver stumbled back into his seat, threw off the brakes and looked back as he got under way. La Fontaine's mechanic was tearing up a red sweater in lieu of bandages, and the Frenchman was shouting at the top of his lungs:

"Vive le Jigglesqueak! Mon Dieu, go on!"

In that high-pitched cry from the injured La Fontaine, Georgie Kingston caught the spirit of the Thunder Gods. The Jigglesqueak lunged forward like a thing alive. There was a space of but two miles between it and the checkered flag, but the delay had been costly. The Victoire shot by again. Vargas was no longer a lap behind, but soaring into the lead with gold, glory and the Triple A crown beckoning him on.

But even as that lunging mechanical wolf rounded the last turn and straightened out for the dash for the checkered flag, the engine rebelled under the punishment, and a broken spark plug dulled its speed. The Victoire slackened. The Jigglesqueak gained.

Vargas' mechanic looked back, and then signaled to the man beside him. They were only a quarter-mile from the finish, but behind them came a roaring bulldog speeding stubbornly on their trail. Vargas swung to the outside and left a clear path to the stands along the inner edge. The inexperienced youth behind him took it, as the man ahead hoped he would. The Jigglesqueak drew up to within a car-length, and then the trap was sprung. The green Victoire began to cut across toward the finish in a diagonal line. Nearer and nearer the cars came, heading for the roaring stands, green comet shunting the American Special off the road. Down in Pit No. 9 the fat, perspiring pal of a driver long since gone, raised clenched hands impotently and cursed the soul of Tony Vargas. The multitude arose, eyes on those challenging meteors. They looked for this unknown Lochinvar to drop back and try to go around, to slow up in the face of certain death. But there was still one course to victory, and with the memory of La Fontaine's cry still ringing in his ears, Georgie took it.

The Jigglesqueak's full power, held hitherto in restraint, was suddenly kicked into liberty! It shot forward toward the closing gate formed by the rail and the veering Victoire, and hurled itself into the narrowing gap, true as an arrow, swift as a thunderbolt. There was a heart-halting moment of suspense, a click of hub-caps, a rush of wind, a great gasp from the crowd— and Georgie Kingston in a striped rocket shot past the checkered flag that says: "You win!"

THE American Special flashed on for another mile before the smoking wheels slowed down. Then Georgie turned the car into the safety lane, and came chugging back to receive the plaudits of the conqueror. The bands played, and photographers swarmed about him. Tobe Chessleigh was prying his fingers loose from the wheel, pounding him on the back, lifting him from the seat, shouting something about "ten thousand dollars! Buy a real car now. Show the whole damn' world something!"

But Georgie Kingston was now only a tired, dazed novice to whom a miracle had come that was still beyond belief. He reeled against Tobe on legs that bent under him like rubber, tried to laugh and couldn't. He searched vainly the faces that encircled him.

Tobe Chessleigh steadied the youngster with a protecting arm. Finally he diagnosed the symptoms of his protégé, for Tobe himself had once known—  love and the lust for glory.

"Out of the way!" he shouted. "Officer, help us get across the track. Right over there by that yellow car—that's where we want to go! The new Speed King wants to see his girl!"

_____________

3: The Skeleton of Paradise Island

Frank Reid

(Alexander Vindex Vennard, 1884-1947)

Sunraysia Daily (Mildura)  12 April 1921

Alexander Vindex Vennard

ONE OF THE SKELETONS we found in a mound on the island shore. The second we found on a mound in the centre of the island; there were green vines laced through and through the bleached white bones, and its fingers were lying pressed close to its down-turned eye-sockets. The third one we found buried a foot below the second, and between the ribs of the left side there was a rusted knife.

MY NAME is Thomas Clifford, and I am a lawyer. I was to Calthrop, best friend, chief counsellor, and manager of affairs. Calthrop was young, slender— almost fragile, and, as the only son of the late Phillip Calthrop, the Queensland cattle king, was a rich man. He had run the gamut of luxuries rapidly. First had come the passion for popular sports; after that had come a mania for motoring; then there followed in quick succession, racehorses, gambling and yachting.

I was just beginning to wonder what Calthrop would do next, when my office door opened, and in stepped Calthrop to answer for himself. He dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette before he spoke. Then he said to me boldly:

"Clifford, don't call me a fool. It won't do any good. I can't help it, any more than I can help my hair being black or my eyes brown. I'm tired of everything, Clifford. I've I got to have something new. I'm going back a thousand years, Clifford— I'm going to be a savage for five years."

"Delightful!" I sneered. I liked the boy, but my patience with him was well nigh exhausted.

"Yes," smiled Calthrop— "very. During my last tour of the South Seas I visited a small and uninhabited island, which is a paradise. I named it that— Paradise Island."

He rolled the words on his tongue as though they were a bit of honey. I stared, and he continued:

"I can't go alone— I should lose my mind in the silences. I offered the sum of five thousand pounds to one of my friends after another, in the effort to get a companion. There was nothing doing— until Elsie Kendall found out. She agreed to marry me, and go with me. It was a sacrifice "

"Elsie Kendall!" I broke in, amazed. I knew her— a slim, reed-like creature, with golden hair, and sea-blue eyes, and a sweet, pale, hyacinthine beauty. "Elsie Kendall a savage? Rot! She'd wilt like a violet. If you accept the sacrifice, you're—"

"Who asked for advice, Clifford?" He spoke almost angrily. "Now listen. Take good care of my affairs. You see, I trust you, Clifford. Five years from today, you must come for me. My yacht, the Ringdove, will take us down, and then be returned to you. Sell it, or keep it for you own use, as you like— I'm giving it to you."

He left a paper telling me of the location of his Paradise, forced from me my word that I would say nothing of the affair, shook hands with me warmly, and departed. The next day he was quietly married. The morning following that saw the Ringdove sail from the harbor, headed north.

A few weeks later the yacht returned. I sold it, and added the proceeds to Calfhrop's already magnificent fortune. Then I settled myself to wait five of the longest years of my life, for as I have said before, I liked Calthrop immensely.

When the time came, I gathered four of my friends, all of them trustworthy men, chartered a small steamer, and set sail for Paradise. We arrived in due time.

A mound on the beach caught my attention the moment I had put my feet on the shore, and I was afraid. But the person that had been buried there was certainly neither Calthrop nor his wife, for the skeleton was more than six feet in length. We left it, and made haste toward the centre of the island.

It was, in all truth, a Paradise, it was a place of flowers and palms, sweet odors and ripening fruits. Soon we came upon a hut built of cocoanut palms, and covered with rotting tarpaulin. Inside we found a pile of rotting boughs, a mildewed skirt, a ragged yachting coat, and a strip of white cloth of very fine texture, the last-named being covered with writing and dark-red spots. Then my friend Addison gave a startled cry, and dashed from the hut.

We followed him to a mound a few yards off, a mound that had at its head a crude wooden cross. Lying on this mound, with green vines twining about its bleached white bones, with its fingers pressed close to its down-turned eye-sockets, we found the second skeleton.

"She has died," said Addison, huskily, "and he has grieved himself to death here in the silence. There is no doubt that he came to love her. She was worth it."

"Yes," I agreed, "she was worth it."

When we disimerred the third skeleton, beneath the cross, we found a rusted knife between the ribs of its left side. It had been a thrust that had reached the heart. We viewed the thing with horror. Jack Winter voiced the sentiments of us all when he finally said:

"He has killed her. Indeed he did become a savage. The brute! He was my friend, but I say: 'damn the man that could do it.' "

Perhaps Addison had the best head of us all. He put forth a hand and took from me the strip of bloodstained cloth.

"Wait!" he protested. "Don't condemn Calthrop yet. There is a message here— and then the thing we found on the beach is to be reckoned with. Shall I read this, Clifford?"

"If you please," I answered. The message was addressed to me. It was as follows:

I'LL HAVE to hurry, Clifford, for I'm not to be blessed with much more or life. I'll begin with Sydney, as I rightly should. When the yacht was almost ready to sail, I had a little quarrel with my skipper, and he left the vessel. I found a good navigator at the last minute, however, in the person of a Swede named Swevson. He was a giant, this Swede— a big, broad man, with yellowish hair and up-turned moustache. I soon discovered that he was highly educated, and that he had in time past owned his own private yacht. He seemed a thorough gentleman. I explained to him that my wife and I were going to spend a few months on the island— a new thing in honeymoons, you know. We were put ashore late in the afternoon, Elsie and I. The yacht... (Here the message ran into one of the dark-red spots on the strip of cloth, and the writing became illegible. Addison took up the thread below the spot)... long night. We went to the highest point on the island to watch the sun rise. It was so very still. We were in a world of our own. It was a most beautiful, most peaceful world. I put an arm about my wife's waist. She seemed more fragile than ever, and I wanted to tell her that I really loved her.

Suddenly Elsie pointed a finger toward the scrub beIow. I looked, and saw Swevson making his way towards me! I looked for the yacht, but it was nowhere to be seen, and I felt, then, that a serpent had come  to my Garden of Eden.

"Why are you here?" I cried to the giant Swede. He did not speak until he had come up to where we stood. I saw him look into my wife's face, drinking in her frail beauty hungrily, and I thought I knew why he was there.

"I ran the yacht upon a reef, and she went down with all on board save me," smiled Swevson. "Surely you couldn't expect a man to drown when he could save himself!"

And I knew that it was a lie.

The three of us had not been on the inland a week before the Swede was making love to Elsie, in his violent, foreign way. Elsie seemed to fear that the man would harm me. She repulsed his advances as mildly as she could but that appeared to make Swevson the more determined. And soon I began to hate the Swede as I have never hated a man before. It was my slight build, my inferior strength, that kept me from attacking Swevson with my club— oh, yes. I had a club, and so did Swevson. One day, my whole body trembling with rage, I glared into the giant's eyes, and said to him insanely:

"You must leave the island immediately. You have no business here. We do not want you."

Swevson shrugged his massive shoulders, and threw out his hands. You know. Clifford, how those fellows do that. He twirled at his fierce moustache very calmly.

"How, I beg leave to ask," he said, with stinging courtesy, "am I to leave the island? We have no boat We have nothing of which to make a boat— nor have we lools, if we had the material. We are far from the tracks of ships. I will leave you if you will but show me the way."

There was no way. The serpent must remain in my Garden or Eden. I thought thought I should go mad. I had come to love my little wife very much. And she seemed to love me as well as I loved her. We... (Again did the message run into one of the dark red spots on the cloth. Addison passed over it nervously).... and weary days. I was madly in love with my frail, sweet wife now. I deplored the fact that I had accepted her sacrifice. She smiled, kissed me, and said there was nothing to forgive.

"There is but one thing that makes me unhappy, dear," she said to me. "It is Swevson. I am afraid. He may kill you. He has a knife— I saw it. What a pity you did not bring weapons!"

Late that night. Elsie stole from our hut. I was sleeping, and I didn't know that she was gone until she returned. She knelt beside me, kissed me,. and put the Swede's knife in my hands!

"Now, Fred," she whispered to me. "Swevson has no weapon at all. He has nothing save an awkward club."

"But to knife a man." I chattered, "is so brutal! If this were only a revolver, or—"

"My dear!" exlaimed Elsie, caressing my hair tenderly, "are you not now a savage, a primitive man. There is no law here to prevent it. I hate the idea, too. But you must do it to preserve your own life. I love you, Fred! Yes, or I could not tell you to do such a thing as this!"

I walked out into the bright moonlight, I turned the knife over and over, and watched it flash. I looked toward tbe little hut of cocoanut leaves in which Swevson slept. But I couldn't go down to kill him. I was not enough of a savage to kill a man in cold blood. I turned back to Elsie, and the knife fell from my hands. Elsie stooped and picked it up.

One fine evening, I was standing on the rocky beadland on the north shore, watching the sun set, when I saw my wife and Swevson walking along the smooth, sandy beach below. They were conversing in low tones, and I could not hear what they said. I became weak. I sank to the stones, gibbering foolishly. I resolved anew to kill the giant. I rose, and peered over the brink. Elsie and Swevson were standing still thirty feet below me. I took up a stone the size of a man's head and hurled it with all my might. It killed the Swede. Elsie turned her face upward, and it was very white.

"Thank heaven, Fred!" she cried.

For the time being I was a madman. I denounced her, cursed her. I told her, which of course was not true, that I had heard her making love to the Swede. I paused for lack of breath, and glared down at her. She smiled.

"Of course, Fred," she said sweetly, "I saw you standing there. I had to make love to him to keep him from seeing you while I led him here for you to kill him."

This made me very happy indeed.

I felt that I could never make amends for my vile accusation. I hurried down, seized my wife and kissed her passionately. Then we made a hole in tbe sand, and burled the big man. And now I felt that I was a savage.

Several months passed. They were the happiest months of my life. All that has happened and all that is to happen in my little, little, future, cannot. take away that fact. we had fruit to eat always, and fish whenever we wanted them, and the flowers never died. Elsie... (Here another blood spot interrupted)... looked at me with awful eyes.

"I won't deceive you any longer," she said harshly. "I loved Swevson! You are so puny. He was so big and strong, I begged you to attack Swevson, to give him a reason for killing you! Some day, Fred I shall kill you with this knife."

She placed the weapon back within her blouse. I know that she will keep her word. Of the two of us, it is she— sweet fragile Elsie— who is the savage. I still love her.

THUS ENDED the message. There was no bloodstain there. Addison looked up and spoke to me:

"She killed him while he was writing that he loved her! The spots on the cloth— she wiped her nands "

"I understand," I interrupted.

But did I understand? Can any man understand? I have wondered and wondered since about the bone fingers that were pressed close to the down-turned eye-sockets.

_______________

4: You'll Be Surprised

Ethel Lina White

Daytona Beach Morning Journal, Fl., 24 Dec 1943

My thanks to Roy Glashan's Library for the text

"SURPRISE," murmured Celia as she touched the latchkey in her coat pocket. The contact gave her a throb of delight because it anticipated the moment when she would go out of the wind and rain, into the warmth and light of home. She was rushing into her future, all unconscious of peril—a peril against which she had been duly warned....

This warning had been following her during her 10 months' theatrical tour of America, tracking her faithfully but doomed always to be one stage behind. Even at that moment it was drawing nearer to her and approaching its journey end— when it would be too late....

The railway terminus was not calculated to raise dim spirits. It was vast, ill-lit, and minus the bustle and excitement of travel which had animated it during the day. But if the platforms were deserted, the refreshment buffet was crowded with passengers surging to the counter to be served. Celia's arm was jolted, and her coffee slopped into her saucer, but she continued to smile at the young man beside her.

"Is this strange stuff English tea?" he asked.

"That old crack," groaned Celia "Typical of your mentality. You know jolly well it is coffee."

It was customary for the young American— Don Sherwood— and Celia to insult each other consistently.

It had cost Don an effort to ask his first personal question, for he knew nothing about Celia.

"Are you married?"

"Gosh, no. I share a flat with my twin sister—Cherry. You've got to be a twin yourself to know how close you are to each other. She's my other half. When she got married, even Jas couldn't maul up things between us...."

"Have you wired her you're coming?" asked Don.

"That would spoil everything. It's a tradition in our family never to write or phone.

"Sounds risky to me. How d'you know your sister will be home?"

"I know because Jas— her husband— has a government job in London."

"If I were fond of any one, I wouldn't like to go without news of her for ten months," said the young man.

"Actually, it's never been so long before," she said. "But I know Cherry is all right because we're identical twins. There's a current of sympathy between us and if she were ill or in trouble, I should feel miserable."

"I suppose we must say good-by."

"What a relief." The words were mechanical for Celia's voice trembled as she asked a question. "Will you miss me?"

Celia's hazel eyes were soft as she looked at Don's clear cut features— his firm lips and well-shaped head— as though to preserve a memory. In his turn, he gazed fondly at her— a ginger haired girl, hatless, and wearing her first fur coat.

A coat which within the next ninety minutes would be connected with in episode of unimagined horror.

"I have a reservation at a hotel," Don told her. "My first commission will be to see Madame safely home."

AS the taxi bore them through be curtain of rain, Celia realized bat they had reached a closer stage in their friendship.

"Rents are cheap because the neighborhood is going down, but it's very respectable.... We're a big family and Daddy is one of those doctors who never get paid. At home, we were always in a crowd."

"So the twins cut loose and went on the stage?" prompted Don.

"Nearly there," she told him. "This is our road."

"You girls seem to take every chance," he scolded.

He felt her shudder.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I don't know. Something terrible seemed to rush over me."

"Well, we'll soon find out about that," said Don.

Suddenly she stopped to thrust her latchkey into his hand.

"Open the door for me," she said, "and tell me exactly what you see. I'm afraid to look."

Filled with uneasy curiosity, Don unlocked the door and pushed it ajar while Celia closed her eyes. A private house had been converted into flats and the staircase which led to the upper stories had been boarded up, with a separate entrance. Only room was left for a minute vestibule and a narrow passage on to which the rooms opened. The nearest door was set corner-wise to the lobby, whose walls were hung with grimed gilded paper. Its floor was covered with a plaited mat whose pattern was nearly rubbed off; an enormous blue jar held peacock feathers, and a tarnished brass model of a dragon reared itself on top of a sham red-lacquer antique chest.

"It's our Chinese ante-chamber.... Everything's all right. Cherry is here, for the light is on."

"You were an angel to see me home," she whispered. "Good-by, darling."

Don knew that she had forgotten him in the rapture of her homecoming, so he closed and relocked the door, mechanically slipping the key into his coat pocket.

"SURPRISE."

Celia's lips shaped the word as she peeped around the open door of the lounge, expecting to see Cherry smoking upon the divan. She looked at the tawdry black and gilt brocade suite— the purple satin curtains and he large cushions of which the girls had been so proud.

Walking on tip-toe in the hope of surprising her sister, Celia opened the door of the next room, which was hers, only to find it in darkness. The bathroom and then the kitchenette were also unlit, so there remained only the big bedroom at the end of the passage.

Celia entered it confidently, expecting to see both Cherry and James. This time she met with a double disappointment as she gazed around her at the familiar old-rose carpet, the twin beds with dusty-pink satin coverlets and the veneered walnut toilet-table with its big triple mirrors. Then she picked up from be floor a sapphire-blue velvet robe, rimmed with white fur.

She had arrived at the flat without even a dressing-bag, sure of obtaining necessities for the night from her sister.

She was still wearing the fur coat she had bought in New York—recklessly spending all her surplus salary. She took it off and opened the door of her own little room.

The light from the passage showed her an uninviting interior— a stripped bed and a clutter of clothing thrown over every surface and piece of furniture. Too careful of her new property to add it to the communal lumber, she opened one-half of the wardrobe and hung it on an empty peg.

She was entering the lounge when she was startled by a dull thud— suggestive of the fall of some heavy object It was impossible to locate it, so she stood, listening for it to be repeated.

AS she sat and smoked her spirits began to droop from combined frustrated hope and fatigue. She was further depressed when she gazed around her with eyes which seemed to be newly-scaled. The room was more than untidy.

When she crossed over to the side table, she found evidence of further deterioration. There were too many bottles stacked amid a thick litter of cigarette-stubs, while every glass was dirty.

Too tired to wash up, she searched amid the empties in the sideboard cupboard until she found a few tiny glasses of continental origin which were reserved for best occasions.

After she had sipped a small gin and lime, she felt brighter.

Then she remembered the sudden thrill of expectation which invariably heralded their reunion and she smiled.

"Yes, at this moment Cherry is feeling very happy over me."

Even as the thought flashed across her mind. Cherry sat up in her bed at the nursing home and brushed shed her red hair back from her brow.

"Nurse," she cried, "I'm distracted about my sister."

The night nurse looked at her in surprise.

"I know she is in trouble." went Cherry. "We are identical twins and very close. It's like this. She went to America before I knew at my young gentleman was on the way. Directly after, my father-law died and left us his furnished house at Purley. Of course, I wrote her telling her our new address. But now I'm wondering if she got the letter."

"If she hasn't got it, she'll go to our old flat," she said.

"If she does, the hall porter can tell her where you live now," argued the nurse.

"There's no porter. The man who bought it made us an offer for our furniture as he was letting it out in furnished flats."

"Does your sister know about the baby?" she asked.

"No," replied Cherry— her habitual smile breaking through— "I left him out of the letter. When Celia comes to Purley, Jas is going to tell her I've broken my leg and send her on here. But now I'm afraid. I kept seeing her in a terrible tainted place— all alone and in danger."

AS though the twins had been actually talking over an invisible telephone, the word 'tainted' slipped into Celia's mind. It made her feel unclean and suggested the remedy of a bath.

"Go away at once." The warning seemed to ring in her ears. "Go before it is too late."

"Nerves," she told herself as she resolutely turned on the tap, while the dingy cell filled with steam, mercifully dimming her vision. She undressed as though she were racing against time while the sense of being an intruder grew stronger.

"I pay some of the rent, so it's my own flat," she argued.

As she soaked in the hot water, the teasing feeling that she might be surprised destroyed any sense of relaxation and further stimulated her brain to unpleasant activity.

"It doesn't add up," she decided. "Cherry is too thrifty to go out and leave lights burning. Besides, she's untidy but she's not dirty. This place is filthy.

"I'll wear Cherry's robe," she thought with a pleasing memory of the warmth of its quilted satin lining.

When she reached the big pink bedroom, she went first to the toilet--table and combed out her ginger curls.

"Cherry's changed her makeup," she reflected. "Why, what's this? Has she dyed her hair?"

Although it was possible that Cherry had become a temporary brunette, an unpleasant suspicion began to shape in her mind. Hoping to disprove it, she rushed to the wardrobe which was crammed with clothes.

The first frock she saw told her the truth.

"That's not Cherry's frock. She's terrified of green. Nothing would induce her to wear it.... This isn't her flat any longer. The furniture is ours but strangers are living here.... Horrible strangers.... I must get away at once."

Half sobbing from lack of breath, she wriggled into her frock and then looked around for her precious fur coat. Rushing down the passage in a fury of impatience to escape, she burst through the door and tugged at the wardrobe... The next second she stifled a scream at the sight of a stiff white shape which had toppled sideways from the enclosed half of the clothes closet and was now propped up against her coat. It looked wedged into position, but as the door swung open wider, lack of support caused it to fall outwards.

Its chill and rigidity told her that it was a dead body and for a ghastly second she feared it might be Cherry. Her relief was almost overpowering when she exposed the henna-tinted hair of a middle-aged woman whose congested face and protruding eyes proclaimed that she had been strangled.

"Murder," gasped Celia.

In spite of the waves of terror which rolled over her, her brain still functioned and she held on to one clear purpose— to escape. Only a few yards divided her from the front door but— before she could reach the corridor, she shrank back into the room, just as a man entered the flat.

HE was tall, bull-necked and broad-shouldered and he wore country clothes— baggy plus-fours and a belted tweed coat He turned into the lounge, but— to her dismay— he left its door open, so that he could see any one who entered or left the apartment.

Suddenly two persons— a woman and a young man— entered the flat.

"Where the hell have you been?" growled the big man.

"Chasing Ronnie round the locals," explained the woman, speaking with what Celia termed 'coal in her throat.'

Celia was beginning to conclude that they could know nothing of their ghastly tenant, when Ronnie spoke nonchalantly. "Who's the stiff?"

"Fricker's maid," replied the big man. "Came here all browned off and grumbling about not enough pie."

The big man turned to Ronnie. "Can you shift her? Got a car?"

"Can do," said the youth obligingly. "Pinched a Fiat yesterday. I'll run it round at two precisely, pick up the lady and shove it into the river from the first wharf. Tide should be about high."

Celia's knees shook as she listened, for the name of 'Fricker' had given her the clue to the identity of the people in the next room. During the homeward voyage, she had heard a brief radio announcement of the murder of Lady Fricker— a well known society hostess, notorious for her jewels. The pick of these had been stolen and their owner strangled, presumably to get the string of pearls she wore always, to preserve their virtue.

"They can't stay cooped up for hours on end," Celia reasoned. "The woman will go into her room and the men will wander."

As though to strengthen her hope, Ronnie spoke to his companions.

"Got a date. I'll be seeing you. Two sharp. Time for a quick one."

Biting her lip, Celia heard him cross over to the table where she had left her glass.

"It's only one more dirty one," she thought. "He won't notice it." The big man didn't.

Unfortunately its small size attracted the attention of the youth.

"What's the idea of thimbles?" he grumbled. "Holding back on your pals?"

"Well." The woman's thick voice choked in her surprise. "Where did that come from?"

"Search me." The youth sniffed noisily. "Some one's used it. Who's been here?"

"Only the Frenchy. We locked up when we went out to collect you."

SUDDENLY the front door-bell rang loudly. There was an urgency in its peal which filled Celia with hope.

"Don't answer it."

"Fool," said the big man contemptuously. "One might think you had something to hide."

Peeping through the crack, Celia watched him open the front door. The next second she felt electrified with joy at the sound of Don's voice.

"May I speak to Miss Steel?"

"Sorry," said the big man. "Afraid you've come to the wrong flat I'll ask my missus." He raised his voice. "My dear, do you know any one name of 'Steel' living in the building?"

"Yes," called the woman. "They had this flat before us. Two girls in the profession."

"Well, I guess she's moved since she gave me the address," he remarked, speaking with a stressed American accent "Like a dame. Sorry. So long."

"Don never spoke with that accent," Celia reasoned.

She realized that she was now in even graver danger when the big man returned to the lounge.

"I'm wondering about that dame he was chasing," he said. "Some one's been drinking out of that glass."

"I'll look 'round," said the woman.

"Bath's full of water and the light is on," she panted. "She's been here all right."

Stimulated by the urgency of her plight Celia's brain began to race. She knew that she must act swiftly and play 'Simple Sailor' with all the histrionic talent she possessed. But first of all it was vital for her to reach the big bedroom before the woman went on with her search. She must make them believe that she had fallen asleep and knew nothing about the murdered woman in the small room.

"If they know I've been here, I'm sunk," she told herself

TAKING a chance, she sped noiselessly down the passage to the big room and dashed to the nearest of the twin beds. After rucking up the silk spread and punching a hollow in the pillow, she dragged on the blue velvet robe over her frock, since there was no time to change. Then, with a feeling that she was going to enter a tiger's cage, she rushed into the lounge, shouting her sister's name.

"Cherry! Cherry!"

"Cheerio, people. I suppose you're pals of Cherry's. Where is the old girl? Tight as usual? I'm just back from the States and I've come straight from the railway station."

She got no response to her overture as they continued to stare at her with a cold impersonal gaze.

"My robe," the woman shouted. "Take it off, you— You've stolen my perfume, too. What are you doing in my flat?"

"Your flat?" asked Celia. "Do you mean my sister and her hubby aren't living here now? O, my godfather, it looks as if I'd made a mistake. Listen, people."

She told them the story of the actual facts, hoping desperately that its truth would make it convincing, even while she tried to pose as a hard-boiled gold digger.

"Ta for the lend," she said coolly. "Well, I must be toddling. My mother told me not to stay out late."

The men neither removed their eyes from her face nor moved from their positions, leaving it to the woman to protest.

"No, sister, it's not as simple as that. We got to know more about you. What else have you helped yourself to?"

"Frisk me and find out," said Celia, grateful for the education of the screen.

"You bet your life I will. But first you've got to tell me where you've been and what you've done here."

"Let's think." Celia puckered her brow. "Well, I had a drink or two— and a smoke or two— and a bath. Only one bath. Then I went to Cherry's room and had a lay down on her bed, and did a spot of shut-eye. I woke up when I heard my Yank ask for me at the front door."

Celia spoke casually, but she remembered Ronnie's argument that her silence was proof of ignorance and she felt that she was playing her trump card. She noticed the swift interchange of the men's glances although the woman appeared unimpressed.

"I'll check up on that," she said.

Left with the two men, Celia was conscious of a difference in their manner. She was sure that she had convinced them that she had blundered in by mistake and that her glaring indifference to discovery was proof of her lack of guilty knowledge.

"Didn't you want to see your Yank again?" asked the big man.

"You bet I'm going to see him." said Celia. "This is the lowdown. I'm aiming to marry the guy and I thought the robe would give him the wrong impression."

The big man nodded to Ronnie who gave her a playful slap.

"Clear out," he said. "Make it snappy."

Celia could hardly believe in her good fortune. In another minute she would be out of the terrible flat rushing to the shelter of the police station. Rushing down the passage, the woman gripped her arm and wrenched her away from the front door.

"Your mother wouldn't like you to get wet," she said with heavy sarcasm. "Where's your coat, dearie?"

"I— I haven't one," stammered Celia.

"Where's your coat?" persisted the woman. "You told us you came straight from the station. You couldn't make a journey with no coat."

"Of course not," Celia's brain whirled as she lied clumsily. "I must have left it in the taxi."

"Why did you take it off in the taxi?" asked the youth, with a leer. "Too hot in December?"

"Don't be a sap." Celia felt as though she were left to carry on the show in a blazing theater. "I told you I was going to marry the guy. I've sold him the yarn I'm a doctor's daughter and been to High school."

"And that's exactly what you are, dear," said the woman— poisoned honey in her voice. "You've been putting on an act. You know where your coat is. You know it is hanging in the wardrobe in the next room.... So you know what else is there...."

THE silence that followed was broken only by the beating of the rain against the window. Staring at the impassive faces, Celia found it difficult to believe In her fate.

"So what?" asked the woman.

"I must make the party for two," said the youth indifferently.

Celia had an agonized recollection of the purple face and bulging eyes of the murdered maid who was to be her fellow guest at the "party:" but even as the picture— which forecast her own end— flashed through her brain, the big man's arm shot out, cracking her on the jaw....

Darkness fell. She knew that she was dead, for she felt the wire biting into her throat: and then she saw stale river water bubbling up past a glass prison.... But instead of the peace of the grave, there was pandemonium all around her— shouts, blows, curses, and once, the sound of a shot Then— as she struggled back from annihilation to reality, she became aware of a whirling confusion. Gradually, as her brain cleared, she saw a wrecked room— men in uniform— and lastly, Don. She felt his arm around her as he pressed a glass to her lips.

"Throw it back," he invited.

She obeyed, although her jaw was swelling rapidly and a tooth felt loose.

"What happened?" she mumbled.

"I pocketed your latch-key by mistake," he told her. "When I found it, I thought I ought to bring it back at once. Didn't seem too safe to mail it, apart from the waste of time. Then the chap told me you were not at the flat, but I could see your bag lying behind the dragon on the chest.... Well, I knew if I started anything, they'd only plug both of us. So I put on a dishonest-to-goodness American accent hoping to fool you, in case you were listening, and I went off to collect reinforcements. We had the key so we were able to take them by surprise and that started the party. And what a party."

As he paused, a young constable— whose blackened eyes gave him an oddly glamorous appearance— crossed to the divan.

"Are you ready to tell us what happened, miss?" he asked.

Aware that she was about to present the C.I.D. with the Fricker murder gang on a platter, Celia spoke with stressed nonchalance— chiefly to keep herself from bursting into tears.

"Don't waste time on me. Just go into the next room and see what's inside the wardrobe.... You'll be surprised."

_______________

5: The Secret of the Amulet

B. M. Croker

1849-1920

In "To Let and other stories", 1893

Bithia Mary Croker

"Frailty, thy name is woman!" — Hamlet.

PEOPLE SAID they were from the north— even from beyond Peshawar— the two tall men, with fair skins and long brown hair, but no one had time to ascertain their name or business, for between the sunset and dawn both had fallen a prey to that horrible throat disease that seizes its victims by the gullet, and strangles them almost on the spot. Thus they died in the great serai at Hassanpur— leaving behind them three stout Cabuli ponies, two rolls of bedding, and one little boy; also, it was whispered in the bazaar, a considerable sum of money in excellent Government notes; but this, the policeman in charge of the serai swore by the soul of his father, was a black lie, and, with the sanction of the authorities, he made over the child and three ponies to the keeping of his maternal uncle, Ibrahim Khan (the same who lives at the corner of the road as you go to the sugar-works). Ibrahim sold the ponies to his satisfaction to officers in the cantonments, and suffered the child to share his roof, and also his extremely frugal fare. An Indian community is never slow to talk, and it was breathed from ear to ear, that the traders had been wealthy, and that Nubbi Bux, the policeman, and Ibrahim, his kinsman, had divided the spoil between them. One thing was manifest: nought had descended to Kareem, the rightful heir!

He was a fair-skinned little fellow, with dancing dark eyes, who ran about the roads almost naked, with an old flat copper amulet tied round his neck by a piece of string; he was about four years of age, as pretty as a bronze Cupid; the women petted him for his good looks, and he found many congenial playfellows among the narrow alleys and courtyards of the swarming burra bazar. Ibrahim, Kareem's adopted grandfather, was an avaricious old person, with a hooked nose, pendulous underlip, and frowsy turban, who sat all day long in a shop like a niche— it looked no bigger than a wardrobe— lined with empty jars, bottles, broken lamps, cracked cups and saucers, and battered odd volumes of worthless books. He did not sell much, but he served market people with pulls at a huka, at a fixed price; and he was reputed to lend money at enormous interest.

If you know the city of Hassanpur, where it lies between two capricious rivers, and surrounded by a vast grain country, you must be familiar with the long red bridge over the Kanat, on the parapet of which a mendicant sits, who rests not from dawn till dusk calling, "Blind man— blind man." Just at the foot of the bridge is the great serai, or wayside house, for travellers, with its lofty walls, spacious inclosure, and entrance gate worthy of a mosque— both it and the bridge were built by a rich native, who wished his name to go down to posterity; but to thousands who cross the one, and hundreds who halt at the other, it is unknown— no doubt they imagine both to be the work of the all-powerful and ever-active Sircar (Government).

Kareem's tastes did not lean to trade; far from it! he had no aptitude in bargaining for kid skins, empty bottles, and kerosine oil tins. On the other hand, he had an uncontrollable passion for horses, and when he grew too old to build houses in the dust, and play baby games, he used to hang about the serai and haunt the society of camel-drivers and horse-dealers. He soon became acquainted with the manners and customs of the divers kinds of beasts that crowded the inclosure; camels, ekka ponies, buffaloes, mules, elephants, and squealing country-breds. He knew all their peculiarities, and was not afraid of one of them. Many and many a time, he played truant from the munshi and his lessons, and many a time his angry grandfather sought him with a stick, and drove him forth with blows and curses; but now— Kareem was a smart lad of eighteen, and useful to traders and travellers. Moreover he earned money, and Ibrahim viewed his visits to the serai with extreme complacency. Within the last ten years he had become a well-known and popular character. New arrivals and regular habitués immediately shouted for "Kareem, Kareem." He was a person of far more importance than the sleepy policeman in charge— not his original patron, who had picked him up from between two dead men, and placed him out in the world!

One hot April evening, as Kareem squatted idly at the serai entrance, enjoying a huka and a "bukk" with a lad of his own age, he noticed a cloud of white dust whirling down the bridge. No— it was not driven by the wind, but caused by a wild runaway. In a second he had recognized the collector's little boy, on his chestnut pony, racing towards him at break-neck pace— a huge lumbering camel carriage had frightened the overfed, pampered Tattoo, and he was making for home at a mad gallop. Kareem stood up, and dashed into the road; he was lithe and active as a hunting leopard. As the pony passed, he sprang at it, like a starving beast of prey, clung to its neck, and ran alongside until he had effectually checked its career, but only just in time— only just before it turned the sharp corner into the bazaar. The collector now rode up; his face grey with fear. He knew too well what would have been the child's fate, had the fiery little animal bolted through those narrow streets, impassable with ekkas and bullock carts, and he shuddered as he wiped the perspiration from his face, and tendered Kareem his tremulous thanks. But empty thanks were not to be his sole portion. As he attached a leading rein from the pony's bridle to the collector's shaking hand, that gentleman said, "Let me see you to-morrow morning at nine o'clock," and then the pair trotted soberly away.

Mr. Colebrook, the collector, lived in a fine square flat-roofed bungalow, about two miles from the city, in the civil lines. It stood in a spacious compound studded with fine trees, and was approached by a winding gravelled avenue. Kareem went up this avenue, slowly and doubtfully; he was not in the habit of frequenting such grand dwellings, and presently he came to a dead halt, and sat down at a respectful distance, under a cork tree; and here the collector saw him, and beckoned him from his office verandah.

"Yes," said Mr. Colebrook to himself, "a fine frank face, and surely not a native of these parts."

In answer to a question, Kareem replied—

"No, your worship, I am from the north— so they say."

"They say?" echoed the gentleman. "What do you mean?"

"My father died in the serai fifteen years ago, your honour; no one knew his name or country; and old Ibrahim took me; he says I am a Cabuli or a Cashmeri. God knows."

"And what is your occupation?"

"By your honour's favour, I work in the serai, and earn from one rupee to four rupees a month, according to the season."

"Then you understand horses."

"Oh!"— his face lighting up— "by your favour, yes; and I can ride."

"Then, I will take you on as syce for my son's pony— the one you caught yesterday."

Kareem salaamed to the very matting.

"Your pay will be seven rupees a month and clothes."

Now, six rupees is a man's pay, and Kareem was but eighteen. Kareem's heart was too full for words; he was almost overcome, and on the very verge of tears. All his comrades knew that he was an odd, excitable boy, and laughed and cried like a woman! His feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground; he sped along as if they had wings, and he was a second Mercury carrying home the great news— first over the wide white roads, then across the railway, and finally he plunged into the bazaar.

Kareem ran along at a sling trot, hustling and thrusting his slim body through the densely-packed thoroughfares; at last he arrived at home and panted out his marvellous tidings to old Ibrahim. That patriarch received the intelligence with so many exclamations of "Oh, ye fathers!" and so much clawing of his beard, that Kareem felt assured that he had been handsomely launched in life, and was indeed a man of considerable importance; he lost no time, that same evening, in hurrying to the bridge (a kind of local Rialto) and there expounding his success to a curious and envious crowd of listening friends. Among the crowd was Pera, Ibrahim's grand-niece, Kareem's former playmate— and present idol. She was four years younger than him by months and days, but thirty years his senior in experience, in worldly wisdom, and in wickedness. Undoubtedly she was extremely pretty, with wondrously-traced arched brows, red lips, and eloquent black eyes. Nevertheless her grand-uncle detested her, and most of her own sex bore her unconcealed animosity; they declared, "She was as false as the devil, deep as the pit, and as dangerous as a snake with a head at both ends." People hinted that Abdool, her father, was in debt to his uncle Ibrahim; and also that Pera was promised in marriage to Mindoo, her cousin, a handsome hawk-eyed man, with a scar on his cheek and minus one finger. There was some mystery about Mindoo. Once, he had been absent for three whole years, and it was an unexplained absence; for it was mere foolishness for his brothers to say that he had joined a horse-dealer and had gone down to Allahabad. Does it take three years to sell a dozen ponies?

Mindoo was a stalwart, taciturn man, and somewhat feared; therefore no one called him a budmash to his face, or even in the ears of his kindred. He worked with a carpenter who mended ekkas and gharries, and was clever with the chisel and the saw. Nevertheless, people whispered that he had never learnt this trade at Hassanpur in his youth— but in Allahabad jail khana.

Pera was among Kareem's audience, and listened, with unaffected interest, to the particulars of his rise in life. He had been her slave ever since she could speak, and now most of his scanty earnings went to gratify her taste for cocoanut-sweets and coloured glass bangles. "You will not scorn me now, Pera," he pleaded, as they loitered together near the tamarind tree. "Behold, I am in the collector sahib's service. I am to have seven rupees and clothes. I have as much wages as Mindoo!" But Pera only peeped coquettishly round the corner of her orange saree, laughed saucily, and ran away.

Kareem was soon installed in his new post, and wearing a smart blue suit and gorgeous red turban, felt the sense of personal importance accruing from new garments, when he encountered his old friends. His duties proved to be trifling in comparison to his drudgery in the serai, though, now and then, he had enjoyed the fierce, mad delight of mounting some unbroken colt, and galloping it bare-backed over the bridge, away along the Lucknow road, between the waving elephant grass, past little brown houses with pumpkins on the roof, past pools half filled with hideous blue buffaloes, scattering children, pariah dogs, and goats, as if he was mounted on a whirlwind, and riding on the storm.

Here, he had merely to groom and feed an irritable little chestnut pony, no bigger than a calf; to lead out the "lal Tattoo," as Harry Sahib called it, with its master on its back, of a morning over the dewy maidans and along the shady roads. He ran with it as it cantered, and even galloped, though once or twice he was suddenly obliged to stop, and lean against a tree, his face grey and drawn, and groan aloud with agony (he had, though he knew it not, advanced disease of the heart); he would earnestly beseech Harry Sahib not to tell the collector, and, as a bribe, would hold Harry Sahib in the saddle, whilst he piloted him over tiny nullahs, to that young gentleman's huge delight. The little boy spoke Hindustani as his native tongue, and soon he and his syce became sworn and intimate friends. Harry Sahib had no mother, only a lazy, elderly European nurse, who liked her beer, her slumbers, and her ease, and was secretly thankful to Kareem for taking the brat off her hands. Otherwise, Harry Sahib might not have spent so many happy hours about the stables, whilst his unsuspecting papa was absent at Cutcherry. One day, whilst he was romping with his playmate, and rolling over and over with him in piles of "bedding straw," he suddenly snatched at a cord round his neck, and a copper amulet came off in his hand. They fought for it for fully five minutes. Harry held it tight in his little fist, and screamed and kicked and even bit, but refused to release it; in the struggle the amulet was broken, and a small piece of parchment fell out, which Kareem instantly pounced on. It was about two inches long by one wide, and was covered on both sides with closely-written quaint characters. Kareem, with much abuse and slippering, had learned to read the Koran and part of the Gulistan of Sadi, but never such letters as these!

"What is it?" inquired Harry Sahib, impatiently.

"I cannot say, Hazoor. I never knew it opened."

"Oh, I'll get it mended, the brass thing; but can you read the chit inside?"

"No, not this writing."

"Let me show it to father; he can read anything!"

"Yes, his honour is a learned pundit, but I will not trouble him," said Kareem, independently.

He thought he would rather take it, and have it explained by a Moulvi in a bazaar, nearer home. But in all the city quarter, was not found one man who could translate it, though passed from hand to hand, and learned patriarchs in horn spectacles pored over it, peered into it, turned it backwards and forwards, and upside down, and decided that it was in some dead tongue, and doubtless was a charm against Jadoo (Magic) or the Evil Eye! Finally, Kareem fell back on his young master's advice, and, with much salaaming and many apologies, submitted the little scrap to the collector. Mr. Colebrook examined it carefully through his glasses, and then by means of a microscope, and asked Kareem "how he came by it?"

"Protector of the Poor, it is all I possess, and was round my throat as an infant."

The collector was very busy just at this time and said, "As soon as I have any leisure, Kareem, I will see what I can make of this," and Kareem withdrew with profuse thanks. For so long did his master ponder over the parchment, that Kareem's hopes faded away, and he had almost forgotten the amulet, and believed its contents to be a myth. But one day, at the end of the rains, he was summoned into the collector's office. That gentleman was alone, and, rising, closed the door, and beckoning to Kareem to come near, said rather mysteriously, "I have had great difficulty in making it out"— showing the writing. "Indeed I had nearly given it up; but at last I got a clue, and I have read it!"

"Yes, your highness."

"You must keep what I am going to read to you a secret"— Kareem's eyes sparkled. "It is for your own good, and now listen," lowering his voice to a whisper. "This"— displaying the scrap— "is in ancient Persian characters, and relates to a treasure that has been buried for more than three hundred years." Kareem endeavoured to speak, but failed to articulate. "Yes— apparently some of the spoils of Mahommed of Guznee, who took and conquered the Punjab, and made twelve raiding expeditions into Hindustan. Doubtless this is some loot that the victors failed to carry off and concealed— possibly they were hotly pursued.

"It says"— now taking off his glasses and applying a microscope to his eye and reading very slowly— "'Eighty koss north from Hassanpur, on the edge of the Goomptee river, that is within fifty paces, near the great bridge and between milestone and saal tree, I, Fateh Din, bury a rich store of jewels and gold, by reason of one camel being sorely wounded and the enemy pressing on fast. May Allah preserve it for me and mine!'"

The syce's eyes seemed double their usual size, his face worked with emotion, he could not speak; he could only gasp and sob as the collector went on—

"This is the catalogue, only a partial one apparently," turning and reading the reverse of the parchment.

"'Two khantas (necklaces) of rubies and pearls, very large. Four sirpech (forehead ornaments) of diamonds. Twelve bazabands (armlets) of choice emeralds. Five turals (plumes) of great brilliants. One coat embroidered in seed pearls, five gold stirrups.'

"You must keep silent as the grave, Kareem," said his master, laying down the microscope. "It is possible that there is a quantity of gold coin as well as jewels. The list seems broken off suddenly; it remains entirely with yourself to be a rich man, and if you would be wealthy, be silent. I am going into that part of the district this cold weather. Can you hold your tongue for two months?"

"I can, sahib," faltered Kareem, who was trembling all over.

"I think I know the place— the bridge was destroyed forty years ago, but its piers are still standing; the old road, too, has fallen into disuse since we have the railway and canal, but I believe I can put my hand on the very spot, between the saal tree and the milestone."

"And will all this treasure be mine?" whispered Kareem.

"Yes, since you claim it by the writing, which has doubtless been in your family for many generations. Possibly your father was in search of this treasure when he died."

"Yes, most true, your highness."

"Only for this paper in your possession, it would be claimed and recovered by Government."

"May I tell my grandfather, Ibrahim Khan?"

"I suppose you may— that is, if he is a cautious man; but mind this, Kareem, to no one else; above all, to no woman."

"No fear, your honour; I know that a slip of the tongue is worse than a slip of the foot."

"You are young to have learnt that lesson; bear it well in mind. And now you can go."

Old Ibrahim heard the splendid news that same night, as he and his adopted grandson sat on the rug in the middle of the shop, with the oil-lamp swinging between them; heard it with puckered face, twitching claw-like fingers, and glittering eyes. What was the store he had buried beneath the floor in comparison to this? Two camel-loads of gold and jewels! Oh! if he had only taken the worthless-looking amulet when he appropriated the ponies and the money; it was the richest prize of all; but alas! he was ever unfortunate.

"Let us go forth and seek it now," he panted; "we will arise and take two ekkas with strong ponies, and spades, and sacks, and start. I will aver that we are gone to a marriage at Aligarh."

"You would not be believed," returned Kareem scornfully; "and how would you get the ekkas, or buy spades, without raising suspicion? The place is full of robbers and budmashes, and the distance is too long for an old man like you; we would both be murdered. No, I will wait and go with the collector sahib; he will lend carts, and we need have no fear— we shall have the protection of the Sircar."

"Oh yes, but you are a young man," whined Ibrahim, twisting his hands convulsively, "and in two months I may be dead! Oh! and I know so well where to sell gold and precious stones; where we shall get a great price quietly, and without question or dispute."

"You will surely live two months," rejoined Kareem. "At any rate, I have given my word to the sahib, and it must be as he wills."

From this time forward, a great change came over Kareem; he no longer laughed and gesticulated and showed his teeth— white as the slit of a cocoanut; he no longer gossiped in the serai, or gambled below the bridge; he found his secret very burdensome, and his veins seemed filled with a burning fever of restlessness; his eyes looked large and his cheeks hollow; his song was no longer on his lips.

As for old Ibrahim, he now cared nought for his trade; and what, asked the neighbours, had he and Kareem in common that they were so often together, conferring earnestly in low whispers?

Kareem was much at home, too, and people began to marvel; he seemed preoccupied and strange and proud; he refused to gamble; he took no interest in kite-flying; instead of which, he was constantly muttering into the ear of his grandfather. "Why? What were they talking about? What was their secret?"

Kareem was recounting the list of spoil for the hundredth time, and Ibrahim was bestowing much sage advice on his protégé.

"My son, above all keep the secret from a woman— from Pera; do not let her mischievous eyes draw you into her snare. She is bad, she is insolent to you; may her hair take fire!"

"But you know the proverb, a blow in the mouth from the hand of her we love is sweeter than raisins," argued the youth.

"And you love her?" shrieked the old man.

Kareem nodded his head.

"Oh, ye fathers!" exclaimed Ibrahim; "but she will marry that budmash Mindoo."

"She cares not for him, and I shall be rich."

"Yes; and who has money in the scales, has strength in his arms. He who has no money is destitute of friends. Hearken, my son; Pera will spend your riches like flowing water."

"Time enough to talk of spending when I possess them," rejoined the lad, prudently.

"Fair son of my old age, give me your promise to keep the news from her; swear it by the beard of the Prophet."

"I swear by the soul of my father; am I a child or a fool?" he demanded angrily.

"Alas! in her hands you are both."

Kareem's altered manner was not lost on Pera, and she smilingly promised her immediate circle to probe his secret, and that they should all speedily learn why he gave himself airs like a Nawab.

She drew him on, and encouraged the infatuated boy, and gained her old ascendency over him in less than two days. He entirely forgot Ibrahim's solemn warnings, and what chance has a wrinkled ugly old man against the charms and the mocking words, and bright glances, of a Circe of sixteen? She asked Kareem many searching questions, and flouted him, ridiculed him, flattered him. One evening, as they leant over the bridge together, she inquired—

"Why had he given away his kite? Why was he not at Buldoo's wedding feast? Why did he mope like a sick fowl? What secret was in his mind?"

His tardy answers were vague and confused, and all at once the truth broke upon Pera with one lightning flash.

The scroll had been deciphered.

"Kareem, I see you no longer care for me," she whimpered tearfully.

"I do," he rejoined; "but to what avail? You are to marry Mindoo, the dacoit."

"He is no dacoit; neither am I to marry him. If you say so, I will strike you on the mouth with my shoe," rejoined this fiery lady.

"Nevertheless, both my words are true," persisted Kareem, doggedly.

"They are not; Mindoo is old. Ah bah! thirty years old! he lacks one finger; he has a hideous mark on his cheek, whilst you— — " she paused and smiled in his face expressively and said, "Oh, Kareem, what an owl you are! And now shall I tell you what ails you?"

"Yes, if you can," he answered with an incredulous laugh.

"You have found out what was written in the little scroll."

Kareem started perceptibly.

"Yes, I see it is true," and here she made a wild shot. "I'll wager my gold nose-ring, that it relates to money."

Kareem grew very pale, and cast down his eyes.

"To a treasure: look at me, Kareem."

He looked, impelled by the influence of her eyes, looked and was lost— his face told everything.

"Pera," he exclaimed tremulously, "you are a witch."

"Kareem," she rejoined, leaning her cool smooth cheek against his (truly she was a bold, forward minx), "you are an owl; you always were an owl. Once you had no secrets from me.— Now begin and tell me all about it."

"I can tell you nothing," withdrawing his eyes from those dazzling black orbs, and gazing fixedly into the river.

"Oh, Kareem, alas! my first word was true, you no longer care for me;" and her eyes filled with pure crocodile's tears.

"I do, I do, beyond any treasure in the world," he protested eagerly.

"Yes" (so there was a treasure), "but you only pretend to love me; it is all from the mouth, like idle words."

"No, it is from my heart and soul; but you in your heart care not for me, you care for Mindoo. You laughed the day I came home in my syce's clothes— you laughed when Hiram's white Arab nearly killed me."

"Pooh"— snapping her fingers playfully— "what is a laugh? I always laugh! See, I still wear your blue glass bangles. I love finery; I love laughing— and I love you. Oh, foolish Kareem, how shall I prove it to you, since you doubt my word? Speak!"

"Marry me in two moons' time," was his prompt answer.

"Yes," after a long pause, "but I must also prove you; I swear by Allah to marry you, but first you must tell me your secret."

And she looked up into his face and smiled, and he, gazing at her parted red lips and glistening, eager eyes, wavered. She saw her advantage, and instantly pressed it home.

Oh! miserable youth! why did you not attend to that cry of warning in your ears— "Blind man, blind man, blind man"?

The sun hung low in a crimson sky, everything was defined and glorified as in a golden light, from the curves of the shining river, to where the flat horizon touched the glowing heavens. The couple on the bridge, fair as another Paul and Virginia, stood out in black relief against the yellow haze; as they leant upon the stone parapet, talking in whispers, passers-by laughed and said, "Behold, Pera makes a fool of Kareem again." When at length they raised themselves up, and came slowly homewards, there was a new, ecstatic, and triumphant expression in Pera's eyes— she KNEW. Nevertheless she had sworn by a most solemn oath, never to reveal the secret of the amulet. It was already arranged that she was to have a palki-gharri and two horses— just like a mem-sahib— and a string of large pearls, and gold necklets, such as would make the Bunnia's wife poison herself from envy; for she and Kareem were to be married by the first moon in December— and to live happy ever after.

A month later, the collector's camp was pitched within two miles of the banks of the Goomptee. He had arrived there by slow marches, and was within easy reach of the spot indicated in the parchment. Mr. Colebrook set out on foot in the afternoon, with Kareem to carry his fishing-rod, and to disarm suspicion. They walked for some distance along the edge of the river in single file, till round a sharp bend the old broken bridge appeared in view; the setting sun was shining between the massive piers, as the Goomptee came swirling between them. A pair of paddy-birds were having a mortal combat in the rushes, a serious-looking blue kingfisher was perched on a stone, following his avocation. Enormous fish (rohu) splashed about like porpoises; no wonder they were so thriving! the Goomptee is a sacred river; on the sand on the far bank lay a bleached white skeleton, and here, among the tangled water-plants, was an old charpoy, legs upward, on which some corpse had once been committed to the holy stream.

But naturally Kareem had no interest in these things; though his master, a man of dreamy moods, paused for a moment, and in his mind's eye surveyed the great bridge as it once had been, covered with a multitude of horsemen and camel-drivers— a predatory horde— flying northward, with their spoils, and their streaming horse-tail standards.

He was sharply aroused from his reverie by a piercing cry, and turning, he saw that Kareem had already made his way to the great milestone (shaped like a gigantic thimble); there, too, was an ancient saal tree; and his treasure-seeking syce was standing on the verge of an enormous, recently dug, and perfectly empty hole. Miserable Kareem, the world seemed to swim before his eyes; the tree, the milestone, and the sky went round and round, as he turned a ghastly face and pair of wild eyes on his master, and pointed to the cavity at his feet; it was all that he could do.

"Yes," cried Mr. Colebrook, "it is gone, no doubt of that, and gone within a week; see the freshly-turned earth, the wheel-tracks. Oh, you young fool! How many have you taken into your confidence besides old Ibrahim? You see they have robbed you. Whom have you told?"

"But one," stammered Kareem, in a hoarse voice.

"Look," continued the collector, "they were in a great hurry"— poking the earth with his stick as he spoke. "See, they left the spade; here are bits of iron clamps; here are two gold coins, the boss of a silver bit, and— yes, a trace of the thieves— and of course there was a woman in it," as, stooping, he picked up something, and held it towards Kareem. "Here is half of a blue glass bangle."

Kareem stared, with great distended eyes; as he stood, he became of a dull greyish colour, his lips were livid, and his face twisted out of all recognition, with some spasm of horrible agony.

"It is Pera's," he shouted, with a wild, despairing scream, and flung himself full-length on the ground, digging his hands into the sandy soil.

"They have a whole week's start, I am afraid," said Mr. Colebrook, who was still turning over the earth, "and will make forced marches; but we may catch them. I shall send you off at once, on the young bay horse, with a note to the joint magistrate; he will telegraph, and I believe we will get them yet; they have too heavy a load to travel rapidly. Kareem, don't be a woman! Get up and listen to me, Kareem! Do you hear me?" and he shook him gently. But Kareem would never hear anything again in this world— Kareem was dead.

At first Mr. Colebrook could not, and would not, realize the truth; he put his hand across the cold mouth; he laid his ear against the still heart; it was no faint. Alas! no.

The shock had proved fatal to Kareem. To lose his fortune and his beloved, in one and the same moment, was too crushing a blow for his frail organization. Pera's treachery had broken his heart.

When the collector had at last grasped the tragic fact, that the active, bright-faced boy, who had started from the camp hardly an hour ago, full of life and hope, was really dead, he was deeply concerned, and he felt an unusual dimness in his eyes, as he stood gazing at this unhappy heir of long-buried riches.

Then seeing a chuprassi in the distance, who had followed (unbidden) afar off, he shouted to him to approach. The chuprassi came and looked, and was amazed out of his usual impassive demeanour; and in an extraordinarily short time a little crowd had assembled— what mystic force is it that draws people to a tragedy, whether in a London street, or an Indian jungle? Here were lean brown fishermen from the river-banks; here were turtle-spearers, and half a dozen ryots, who had abandoned their herds of gaunt white cattle— all come to look at a dead lad.

The distance made it impossible to carry Kareem back to Hassanpur, and bury him formally in the Mohammedan cemetery. "In the place where the tree falleth there shall it be," and he must find a resting-place in the forest. Mr. Colebrook left two men to watch the body, whilst he hurried to camp to make arrangements for the interment, and to break the heavy tidings to Harry Sahib. The funeral obsequies were solemnly conducted by Kareem's fellow Mohammedan servants, and early next day the collector was surprised to hear that Kareem had already been laid to rest. The great hole, which for three centuries had contained his lost family treasure, of gold and rubies, pearls and emeralds, now received instead, their unfortunate and defrauded heir,— and proved his convenient grave. Harry Sahib shed many hot tears upon it, and even brought the "lal Tattoo" to see the place where poor Kareem was buried.

The collector instituted an immediate search for Pera, daughter of Abdool, but she and Mindoo, the dacoit, had suddenly disappeared— "the very day that his honour himself had gone into the district; no one could tell what had become of them." After a long and wholly useless investigation, the following facts were elicited: Pera and Mindoo had had accomplices in their flight; they had gone south; but few beyond Mr. Colebrook were in possession of the third and most important detail, viz. that with them, they had carried the secret of the amulet.

_________________

6: The Crime

Richard Marsh

Richard Bernard Heldmann, 1857-1915

In: The Maker of Moons (1896)

Richard Bernard Heldmann

Heark! Oh, heark! you guilty trees,

In whose gloomy galleries

Was the cruellest murder done

That e're yet eclipst the sunne.

NOW it happened one day in the early Springtime when the sky was china blue and filmy clouds trailed like lace across the disk of a pale sun, that I, Henry Stenhouse, nineteen years of age, well and sound in mind and body, decided to commit a crime.

The crime which I contemplated was murder. For three years past I had watched the object of my pursuit; I had peered at him at night as he lay sleeping, I had crept stealthily to his home, evening after evening, waiting for a chance to kill him. I had seen him moving about on his daily business, growing fatter and sleeker, serene, sly, self-centered, absorbed in his own affairs, yet keeping a keen, shrewd eye upon strangers. For he mistrusted strangers; those who passed by him, not even noticing him, he mistrusted less than he did others who came to him with smiles and out-stretched hands.

He never accepted anything from anybody. A strange step or the sound of a strange voice made him shy and suspicious. But he was cold and selfish, cold-blooded as a fish— in fact he— but I had better tell you a little more about him first. He was my enemy; I determined to kill him, and perhaps he read it in my drawn face and sparkling eyes, for, as I stepped toward him, the first time, he turned and fled fled straight across the Clovermead River.

And although I searched the river banks up and down and up and down again, I saw no more of him that day.

When I went home, excited, furious, I made passionate preparations to kill him. All night long I tossed feverishly in my tumbled bed, longing, aching for the morning. When the morning came I stole out of the house and bent my steps towards the river, for I had reason to believe that he lived somewhere in that neighborhood. As I crept along, the early morning sun glittered on something that I clutched with nervous fingers. It was a weapon.

This happened three years ago; I did not find him that morning, although I searched until the shadows fell over meadow and thicket. That night too found me on his trail, but the calm Spring moon rose over Clovermead village and its pale light fell on no scene of blood.

So for three years I trailed him and stalked him, always awaiting the moment to strike, praying for an opportunity to slay; but he never gave me one. He was fierce and shifty, swift as lightning when aroused, but the battle that I offered he declined. Oh, he was deep— deep and crafty, cold-blooded as a fish— in fact, he was a fish— Mine Enemy, the Trout.

Do you imagine that the killing of Mine Enemy was a crime? No, my friend— that, properly done, was what is known as sport; improperly done, it is murder; there— the murder's out! I was going to catch the trout with bait!

You, dear brethren of the angle, brave fly-fishermen, all, wet or dry, turn not from me with loathing! Hear my confession, the confession of one who was tempted, listened, fell, and fished for a trout with a worm!

Anyway, it's your own fault if you throw down this book and beat your breasts with cruel violence. I told you that my story was to be the story of a crime, and if you don't like to read about crimes, you had no business to begin this tale. There are worse crimes too— some people habitually fish with bait; some net fish, and there exist a few degraded objects in human shape who snare trout with a wicked wire loop on the end of a sapling.

Now I don't propose to tell you about these things, I am no depraved realist, so thank your stars that the crime I contemplated was no worse than it was, and listen to the story of an erring brother. Mea culpa!

I was only nineteen, a student at the State School of Engineering, and in my senior year. What I did in engineering was barely sufficient to carry me through my examination; what I did in shooting and trout fishing might have furnished material for a sporting library. I had no particular aversion to my profession; my father before me had been a mining engineer. I was not entirely ignorant either; I knew mica-chist from malachite, and I could— but that's of no consequence now. It is true, however, that instead of applying myself to the studies of my profession I spent a great deal of time contributing to a New York sporting journal called the Trigger. I produced a couple of columns a week on such subjects as "German Trout versus Natives," "Do Automatic Reels Pay?" and "Experiments with the Amherst Pheasant." But my article entitled "The Enemies of the Spawning-Beds," won me recognition, and I became a regular contributor to the Trigger.

How I ever passed my examinations is one of those mysteries that had better remain uninvestigated. I don't remember that I studied or attended many lectures. I was too busy, shooting or fishing, or writing for the Trigger.

Also there existed a girls' boarding-school a mile away.

This school was run by two old maids, the Misses Timmins. It was the Timmins sisters' aim in life to prevent the members of their school from coming into contact with the engineers from Clovermead; therefore we knew them all.

The means of communication were varied and ingenious, for the little maidens at the boarding-school were quite as enthusiastic as we were. We never went through the formality of an introduction— it was not expected; we spoke when we had the chance, and thanked fortune for the chance.

There was, however, one weird custom laid down by the boarding-school maidens, a tradition which had existed as long as the school; and this was well understood by the Clovermead Engineers. It was this: no youth could expect to spoon with any Timmins maiden unless he first declared his intentions by serenading her.

We were not all blessed with a high order of musical ability— I played a harmonica— but we were willing to try. I had tried several times. The results were very sweet— I don't mean in a musical way.

So between the boarding-school and the Trigger I found little leisure, and the less leisure I had the less I felt inclined to occupy it with engineering problems. Besides, there was the big trout to think of, Mine Enemy, whom I had sworn to drag from the depths of that most delicious of streams, the Clovermead River.

During these three years while I persistently fished for Mine Enemy (and goodness knows I had never before beheld so lusty a trout!) every fly known to anglers, and many flies unknown to anybody but myself, I tried on that impassive fish.

And he grew fatter and fatter.

I remember well the day of the temptation. I was sitting at the foot of the big oak tree that spreads above the pool where Mine Enemy lurked. Wearied with casting, I had sought the shadow of the oak and had lighted a cigarette to change my luck. And as I sat on the cool turf, I was aware of an angleworm, traveling along at my feet on business of its own. Scarcely conscious of what I did, I picked up a twig and tossed the little worm over the bank.

Then, in a moment, I was sorry, for I never willingly bother little things. I watched the worm sinking slowly into the crystalline depths of the pool.

When at last the little worm struck the bottom I suppose it was both astonished and indignant, for it began to twist and turn and shoot out like a telescope over the gravelly bottom.

I was sorry, as I say, and I hoped it might make its way to the bank again and bore into it.

Several inquisitive minnows, half as long as the angleworm, gathered around it staring and opening their diminutive mouths. Then, all at once, the minnows darted away, scattering in every direction, and a huge shadow fell upon the gravel— a trout, monstrous, lazy, slowly gliding out from the dark bank to where the worm wriggled, pushing its pink head among the pebbles.

Very deliberately the great fish opened his mouth— not very wide— and the little worm was gone. For five minutes the trout lay there, and I watched him, scarcely daring to breathe. After a while I cautiously reached for my rod, freed the line and leader, bent a little forward, and cast over the fish. Lightly as snowflakes falling on windowpanes, the flies drifted onto the placid surface of the pool. The trout did not stir.

It was at this moment that temptation overtook me; my sinful eyes roved over the turf where the angleworm had been, and, brethren, forgive me! I lusted after bait!!

"It will be so easy," whispered the tempter, "no one will ever know!"

"Get behind me, Satan," said I.

"But it's so easy— and the big trout will never touch artificial flies!"

"Avaunt Apollyon!" I groaned while the sweat stood in beads on my eyebrows.

So I overcame the devil, and went away to avoid further contention. And Heaven rewarded me with the sight of a pretty girl playing a guitar at her window.

She was so pretty that the fact alone was reward enough, but Heaven never does things by halves, Madame, and when for an instant I paused by the brier hedge to listen, the pretty girl gave me one of those swift, provoking sidelong glances, and then, touching her guitar, looked innocently up into the sky.

And this is what she sang:

Young am I, and yet unskilled

How to make a lover yield;

How to keep and how to gain,

When to love and when to feign!

Take me, take me some of you

While I yet am young and true;

He that has me first is blest,

For I may deceive the rest.

And the guitar went strum! tum-tum! strum! tum-tum! tinkle-tinkle-tinkle-strum! tum-tum!

"The little innocent thing," I thought, and looked at her through the hedge.

She was not so very young; she might have been my own age. She was sitting in one of the windows of the dormitory which belonged to the Misses Timmins' Select Boarding-school for Young Ladies!

Evidently the Misses Timmins were not in the immediate neighborhood.

"Dear little innocent thing," I repeated to myself.

I moved slightly. She looked at me with that dreamy confiding look that stirs the pulses of some people. I am one of those people.

"She is lonely," said I to myself, "it is the duty— nay, the precious privilege of the happy to sympathize with the lonely."

There was a bud of sweet-brier beside my cheek. I picked it, sniffed it pensively, and looked at the girl in the window.

She looked at me, glanced down at her guitar, thrummed a little, sighed a little, and ate a bonbon.

Ah, that sigh! gentle, troubling, irresistible.

"She," thought I to myself, "shall be my goddess, this humble dormitory shall be my temple, this window my shrine! Hither will I come to worship and bring burnt offerings, almonds and bonbons. This village will not be so dull after all," I thought to myself.

"What time," said I, speaking very gently, for I did not wish to disturb the Misses Timmins with my rude voice, "what time, Mademoiselle, would it be advisable for an enamored lover to serenade the delicious object of his adoration?"

"We retire at half-past nine, fair sir," said the maiden innocently.

I knew I was not mistaken. The poor child was lonely.

"Heavens! " said I, "driven to retire at half past nine! Are— er— the Misses Timmins— er— fierce?"

"They are deaf," said the maiden, with a childlike smile.

"Ah— unhappy ladies This is a fine old building, a noble façade. Are you fond of architecture?"

"My window is the one I am sitting in," said the maid with simple confidence, "I could let down a string in case you had matters of grave import or state despatches to communicate."

"Ahem!" said I, "have you a string there now?"

"Yes, fair sir."

So I slid through the hedge and stood under her window holding up my creel.

"I have," said I, "a few small brook trout here— nothing to boast of— but if you would accept—"

"Indeed you are too kind—"

"They may vary the monotony of prunes and weak tea for supper—"

"Fair sir, I see you have known other boarding-school maidens!"

"Foi de gentilhomme!" I protested.

"Which is not pronounced the way we pronounce French here," she said, "let me see the trout."

I opened the creel.

"I will accept," said the girl graciously, and let down a string, to which I fastened my creel.

"You are very daring— how do you know that the whole school are not watching?"

"Because," said I, "this is the afternoon when the whole school takes a solemn ramble into the country."

"I am not rambling," she said.

"All do not ramble on days of recreation," I replied significantly.

"You know a great deal about this boarding-school, fair sir. I suppose you also know I am confined to my room as a disciplinary precaution."

"Monstrous!" I cried, suppressing my satisfaction.

"I only made a cider cocktail," she said.

"Monstrous!" I repeated, "cider cocktails are no good."

By this time she had lowered the creel to me again and I slung it on my shoulders and picked up my rod from the lawn.

"I will bring offerings," I said, "do you like bonbons, gentle maiden?"

"Yes, and pickles," she said gravely.

"And music?"

"Sometimes— not too classical—"

"I will serenade you!" I cried enthusiastically, "you say the Misses Timmins are deaf?"

"Shame on you! you know they are. What do you play? I am not sure that I will accept a serenade."

"The banjo and the harmonica— not both at once. I play the harmonica best, but I can't sing to it at the same time, you know. Shall I come?"

"Y— es. Are you fond of pickled peaches? I can let some down to you."

I was on the point of accepting a pickled peach— I would have accepted a pickled turnip from her— when, out of the tail of my eye, I saw the tops of multi-colored sunshades appearing above the crest of the hill, and I knew that the Misses Timmins were returning with their flock.

"You must go!" she whispered hurriedly, "go quickly!"

"Good-bye— good-night," I said, "you are the loveliest, sweetest—"

"Quick— what?"

"Angel— divine, glorious,— er—"

"Oh, hasten! What?"

"And I love you!"

"You mustn't say that; must you? Oh, hurry and say it again if you must—"

"Oh, I must!" I cried, heedless of all the Timminses on earth, "I really must—"

"My name is May Thorne— go quickly now."

"Mine is Harry Stenhouse— the deuce! they're at the gate!"

They were.

Scarcely had I slipped around the building before I heard the chatter and laughter of girls and the patter of feet on the gravel walk. I had heard it before under similar circumstances. But there was a back gate; and I went. Now see how virtue is its own reward! I had resisted the devil and he gave me another chance.

ii

"YES," said I to myself, remembering how I had piously ascribed my reward to Heaven, "yes, I was mistaken. I should have said: The devil, Madame, never does things by halves."

I looked back at the dormitory door. One of the Misses Timmins was snipping roses from the porch trellis.

"To eke out the meagre evening meal," I thought; "poor little maid— poor little May! Only nanny-goats eat roses, and an empty stomach rejoiceth not in perfumes."

This sounded to me like an Eastern proverb. It smacked well, and I repeated it to myself luxuriously.

"Some day," thought I, "when I am famous, and people begin to write books to prove that I'm not, I'll marry May— if I like her as well as I do now— and she likes me— ahem!" I'd forgotten that part.

"There is something about this little maid," I mused, "that touches my better nature; something too subtle to analyze, and anyway, I'm not good at that sort of analysis. She is fond of eating trout, I'm fond of catching them. Clearly we were designed for each other— if only for an hour or so."

By this time I had reached my own gate, and stood pensively regarding a pair of tiny chipping birds that were absorbed in the excitement of a violent Spring courtship.

"Certainly," said I to myself, "I am infatuated, and I'm proud of it. Any man would be— any man whose mind was not all mouse-colored and neutral."

In the mellow evening light the pools of rain water glimmered like sheets of gold. Two swallows sat on a telegraph wire twittering to each other of the coming summer, two migrating blue-jays stopped in the apple tree by the porch to chatter scandal. A pair of belated white butterflies fluttered sleepily about the lower branches of the lilac bushes.

"They're probably married also," thought I, "and now they're going home to bed. Everything that runs or flies or hops seems to be mated— except me. True, I don't fly— unless from the Misses Timmins."

I opened my creel and looked moodily into it. Fishing, after all, was cold comfort compared to stealing an interview with a winsome maid who ate bonbons to guitar accompaniment.

"May," said I to myself, softly, "May— might, May makes might and might makes right— pshaw! I'll not go bothering my conscience with every little incident that comes up." I had some consideration for my conscience; I knew how tired it was.

The rain water in the long road ruts glimmered with a deeper orange light. A bat fluttered around the darkening foliage of the maples; a cricket creaked from door-sill.

"The bat," thought I, "is looking for a little lady-bat; the cricket is serenading; I think that I'll follow their example. I wish I could play on my harmonica and sing at the same time."

About ten o'clock that night, the moon being well up, I went out onto the porch and looked at it until I felt sufficiently sentimental to sit on the damp grass under May's window and make music as I understood it. So I took my banjo under my arm, dropped my harmonica into my coat pocket, and tip-toed off down the road, as many a better man had done before me, and would continue to do as long as that boarding-school existed.

O delicious night in early Spring! Inured by the balm in the soft night winds, all the little field creatures had come out of their holes in meadow and pasture, in orchard and thicket, and were scraping away on monotonous shrill melodies, accentuated by the treble of hundreds of tree toads.

In every shadowy orchard katydids performed countless encores to the bass "bravos!" of the great bull-frogs along the mill-brook's reedy banks. All living things did their part to celebrate the coming Summer, even a distant skunk added his mite to the spicy night. Personally I preferred the roadside lilacs, but it's all a matter of taste, and George the Fourth liked his oysters over-ripe.

"If these bull-frogs," thought I, "keep up their sonorous tom-toms, it will ruin my serenade— I know it, from experience."

By this time I had reached the dormitory hedge.

"A brassy cornet would be lost in this hubbub," I mused bitterly, looking up at the third window on the second floor.

I thumbed the bass string of my banjo doubtfully, paused, cleared my throat, included frogs, toads, katydids, and crickets in one general and comprehensive anathema, and sang this rehashed song:

Ye little loves that round her wait

To bring me tidings of my fate,

As May upon her pillow lies,

Ah! gently whisper Harry dies.

If this will not her pity move,

And the proud fair disdains to love,

Smile and say't is all a lie,

And haughty Henry scorns to die!

"Bother take it," I muttered, "I shouldn't have sung that last verse— it may offend her. That's the trouble about those old songs; you never can tell what you're singing until you've put your foot in it."

This mixed metaphor was probably due to the confusion in my mind, for what with the frogs and a lurking fear of the Misses Timmins, I was not as cool as I might have been.

While I was singing, two or three windows were softly raised, and now more were being raised, and I caught glimpses of shadowy white-draped figures leaning from sills or dodging be hind curtains.

And now her window opened softly; I saw a shape between the curtains and the sweet notes of a guitar came throbbing out into the night.

"Miss Thorne," I whispered, "ask those young ladies to go in, please. They always come and bother."

Some of them took the hint. I did not care for the rest, for time was precious, and I feared the Timmins! So I told Miss Thorne in a hollow, passionate whisper that it was out of the question for me to try to live without her, and a few other facts calculated to melt solid rocks into tears. But when I desired to be informed concerning her constancy, she interrupted me.

"What was that last verse you sang?" she asked.

"Oh, that was only one of those old songs, you know; I didn't intend—"

"One of those old songs? Very well. Listen to this one then, and be assured of my constancy."

The time that is to come, is not;

How then can it be mine?

The present moment's all my lot,

And that, as fast as it is got,

Harry, is only thine!

Then talk not of inconstancy,

False hearts and broken vows;

If I, by miracle, can be

This live-long minute true to thee,

'Tis all that Heaven allows.

It was a pretty revenge for my parrot-like repetition of a verse that was out of place, but when, from a neighboring window, another voice cried "Brava May! serves him right!" I was annoyed and protested in hoarse whispers.

Then all those little maids began to make fun of me. I thought I could distinguish May's silvery mocking laughter, and, hurt and angry, I shook the dew of the lawn from my shoes, and went away, nursing my wrath and my hurt pride.

"That's what one gets," I mused, "that's what a man gets by meddling with things that don't concern him! I was an ass to make eyes at her. I was doubly an ass to think that she would care for good music— I was a triple ass to sing that idiotic old song. It was a too-cock-sure-independent— well don't-if-you-don't-want-to! sort of song, and women don't like that. Women are all alike— it is only circumstances that change them. I wish I had sense enough to let 'em alone! The confounded song hurt her vanity— that's what's the matter!"

I sat down on a flat rock by the roadside and blew a dismal strain from my harmonica. It comforted me a little, so I played "Sir Daniel O'Donnel" and "Casey's Lament."

The weird strains of the latter wrung howls from a dog in a stable near by, so I changed to a pleasanter air to save his feelings. But my heart was heavy; I eyed the moon furtively and moped.

"Those feather-headed girls always come and listen every time a fellow tries to do a little wooing on his own account," I muttered; "Barclay had the same experience, so did Kendall and Gordon. I'll be hanged if I repeat this fiasco— it's cursedly silly, anyway, and I don't care whether it's customary and traditional. I'll not play circus for any woman on earth!"

I wiped my harmonica on my handkerchief and played "Bannigan's Barracks" in a minor key. The dog in the stable howled intermittently.

I could see the dark mass of the dormitory out of the corner of my eye. A candle flickered behind one of the windows, I could not tell which, from where I was sitting.

And, as I eyed it askance, tooting resignedly the while, I saw somebody appear at the great gate, open it, and move swiftly out and up the moonlit road toward me.

"Some of those girls have told a Timmins, and she's coming to do me!" I thought. "I don't care. Miss Thorne made me ridiculous, and I'll not see her again, and I'm on the public highway! Let the Misses Timmins advance!"

So I struck up a lively quickstep on my harmonica, and blinked innocently at the moon. The figure was close to me now, I saw it, but I tootled away, regardless.

"Mr. Stenhouse!"

I turned slowly.

"Oh, I know it is terribly imprudent, and if I'm caught I'll be sent home, but I heard your harmonica— oh, such dismal strains!— and I thought if only I could see you for a second to tell you that it was not I that laughed, for I think your serenade was— was perfectly charming— there!"

We were standing face to face in the moonlight.

At last I said: "I was a fool to sing that song; I'm sorry, Miss Thorne."

"Oh, it was not the song as much as it was that you said— you gave me to understand quite frankly that you had— had been to the school before. You said the girls always bothered—"

"Did I say that?."

"Yes— it was most humiliating for— for me."

"Oh, I'm a perfect idiot," I admitted.

She looked down at her slippers— they had been hurriedly and carelessly tied and I noticed it and knelt to repair the oversight.

"I was in such haste," she said. "Is it true that you have serenaded the dormitory before?"

"Not the dormitory—"

"You know what I mean; have you?"

"All the fellows do," I said, vaguely.

She tapped her foot on the gravel.

"Those strings are sufficiently tied," she said, "tell me whom you serenaded?"

"I can't do that, Miss Thorne."

"Why? Then tell me when it was."

When? Oh, last year, before I ever imagined such a girl as you existed. It's a silly custom, anyway—"

"It isn't, it's charming when the man has any tact. It's the tradition of the school that no girl shall spoon with a man who hasn't serenaded her, and I do not expect to break the traditions of my school—"

"Only the rules, Miss Thorne?"

"Only the rules— and a heart or two!"

"Or two!"

Faith, sir, she said maliciously, did you think you were the only one?

"Yes," said I, "I did."

"And you tell me deliberately that you had serenaded other girls there before I came— I don't know how many, perhaps a dozen, twenty, fifty, the whole school!"

"What!" I cried, bewildered.

"Oh, I don't care," she said, "I only wished to show you what men are and what their selfishness requires of women— to sacrifice everything while they sacrifice nothing."

"And you don't care?" I asked.

"No, Mr. Stenhouse."

"Then why did you risk everything to come and tell me?"

"W— what?" she stammered.

"Miss Thorne," said I, very gravely, "your school is noted for its escapades. It is known in the village, not as the Misses Timmins's Select Boarding-School for Young Ladies, but as The Devil's Own. We engineer students are a reckless lot, also. We are, to put it plainly, a godless crew, but this— this is somehow different. I am beginning to believe that our thoughtless folly— yours and mine, may leave one of us miserable for life."

"Me?"

"Who knows? I can only speak for myself— I— I have changed already— yes, in these few moments that we stood here face to face—"

"What do you mean?" she said mockingly.

"I mean that in another minute I shall love you— in another second!"

"Are you serious?" she demanded incredulously. Then, "Oh, I thought you jolly and clever, and you prove to be soft and silly! Master Harry, you bore me!"

"Do I?" I answered angrily. "Well, I'll never do it again, and I was a fool to believe you would understand anything but chocolate-creams and dormitory flirting!"

"Not only soft and silly, but a boor," she said. "Good-night. No, you need not walk to the gate with me— I never wish to set eyes on you again."

iii

ON THE first day of June I passed my final examinations at the great Engineering School at Clovermead, and was then ready to let myself loose on the mining regions of a deluded world.

The commencement exercises bored me; I went fishing most of the time, or else stayed in my rooms writing "Dry Fly Casting as a Fine Art" for the Trigger. In the long fragrant evenings I took lonely walks by the river or sat under the oak playing minor airs on my harmonica.

At the end of the first week in June the commencement exercises were over, the visiting hordes from New York and Boston had flitted away to Newport or Bar Harbor, the Government officers went back to Washington and West Point, and the little village of Clovermead lay in the sunshine, white, sweet-scented, deserted.

The Misses Timmins's Select Boarding-School for Young Indies had its commencement— a rainbow affair— and dissolved, leaving, as residue, an empty school-house and a dormitory dedicated to silence.

I didn't go to their commencement, not because I was not invited, for most of the fellows went anyway. No, since my last serenade, I had shunned the school and all its works.

It was true that I lingered in the village of Clovermead after my fellow-students had departed, not, as I frequently explained to myself, to catch a last glimpse of Miss Thorne, but to catch that veteran trout in the Clovermead River. "I shall never see Miss Thorne again," I said to myself, "and I'm glad of it."

So on the day of her commencement I went fishing, very far off and I passed a miserable day. It rained, among other things.

The next morning the sun shone in at my window and I looked out into the village with a strange weight at my heart. I did not feel hungry, but went to breakfast, determined to let nothing disturb me or my appetite. As I touched the sugar-tongs to the sugar, a faint whistle came on the June wind from the distant railroad station.

"There go the young ladies from the boarding-school," said my landlady; "do take one of these shirred eggs, Mr. Stenhouse."

"Thank you," said I, with a queer sensation in my throat.

"May has gone," I was thinking. After a while I said aloud: "what of it!"

"I beg your pardon," said my landlady, smiling.

"I beg yours it was nothing; I was only thinking that I was alone in the village."

"I hope you will stay," she said, fingering the black-edged handkerchief in her lap.

"You are very good," I replied; "I shall stay until I catch that big trout in the river."

"Then poor luck to you!" smiled the kindly old lady, "what time will you have your dinner, Mr. Stenhouse?"

I went back to my room and sat down by the window. A flowering branch of late apple blossoms scraped across the sash as I threw it open and leaned out.

For a long while I listened to the droning of bees among the half-opened buds, thinking that the warmth had fled from the sunshine and the scent was gone from mead and sedge.

"And why?" I repeated to myself again and again, until a sullen anger seized me and I tramped up and down my room, my hands buried in the canvas pockets of my shooting coat.

"Now," said I to myself, "this is damned foolishness. I'll just go and try for that trout, and I'll catch him too," I added, gritting my teeth to dull the pain in my heart, "I'll catch him by fair means or foul, yes, by jingo! I'll use a worm!" No, I felt no horror for the deed I was about to commit. All that was base and depraved in my nature had risen with my better feelings to combat a depression, a sorrow, that was so sudden, so deep, that I hardly understood it.

Under such circumstances the truly good come out strong— in novels; others do something wrong to occupy their minds. Wallowing dulls the capability of suffering, for a time. It is much practiced by weak and strong, contemporary fiction to the contrary.

So it happened one day in early June, when the sky was china blue and filmy clouds trailed like lace across the disk of a pale sun, that I, Henry Stenhouse, well and sound in mind and body, decided to commit a crime.

I started down the road, swinging my creel over my shoulder and whistling, buoyed up by that false exhilaration which always took possession of me when I felt myself on good terms with the devil. In my pocket nestled my luncheon, a small flask of Bordeaux, fly-book, harmonica, reel, and a tin bait box.

Imagine what it costs me to write this!

Well it's written,— and on I went, whistling "Sir Daniel O'Donnel," as though I had not a care in the world and love was but an old wive's tale.

Yet, whistle as I would, I could not close my eyes to the caustic criticism of the sunny world on my solitary condition. Robins hopped about the pastures in pairs, blue-birds flew from sapling to fence, in pairs, yellow butterflies whirled over the clover in dozens and dozens of pairs, and the very trees, the silver birches, the maples and elms, all seemed to grow in pairs. Two by two I counted oak and beach, nestling in each others shadows, two by two the twinkling silver aspens seemed to wink at me with every leaf.

I alone was alone.

"Because," said I to myself, "I've got brains"; but the boast fell only on the idle unbelieving ears of the corn, too young to understand or sympathize.

A great tenderness was in my heart, but I crushed it out, and turned into the fields, treading my way through rustling corn where June breezes lingered, whispering.

When I struck the hazel patch I felt better, and I whistled "Sir Daniel O'Donnel" again.

A wood-thrush, striving to imitate me, produced an unconscious masterpiece; a cat-bird mewed unceasingly from the deeper growth. Both had mates.

I took the hidden path through the beech-woods until I came to a big pine. Here, following a trail, known to myself, I entered the denser woods, crossed the two spring brooks that feed the river, and after a few minutes rapid walking came to the oak which spreads above the limpid silvery pool, the abode of Mine Enemy.

"As long as I have sunk to the level of a pot hunter," said I, treading softly over the moss, "I might as well do the thing thoroughly."

Very cautiously I produced an angleworm from my box, baited my hook, cast the infernal machine into the pool, and then, placing my rod on the bank, put a flat stone on the butt and sat down to smoke. When I had finished my cigarette I lay down, stretching out on the moss under the oak tree.

And as I sprawled on my back looking skyward, I was aware of a pair of stockings— black stockings— hanging from a limb directly over my head.

Astonished and indignant I lay perfectly still, staring at the stockings. They had been wet but now were rapidly drying, swinging gently in the warm June wind.

"This is pleasant!" I thought; "some credulous country wench has taken my pool for a foot bath. I'll not put up with it, by jingo! Have fishermen no rights? Is this a picnic ground? Is that river a resort for barefooted giggling girls?"

If there were any people splashing and paddling about among the stones down the river, I knew that every trout within range would be paralyzed with fright. I sat up and tried to see through the foliage which bordered the shallow river where it curved into the woods.

"They're down there," I muttered, "and I bet they've done the business for every trout between here and the falls. Idiots!"

I looked up at the stockings. They were certainly silk, I could see that. The sun bronzed the pointed toes, now almost dry. And while I looked there came a faint sound of splashing close by, just where the river narrows to curve into the woods. Something bright was glistening down there between the branches, something white that moved slowly up stream, nearer and nearer, now plainly in view through the leaves.

It was a young woman in a light summer gown with a big straw hat on her head, and she was slowly and deliberately wading through the shallow water toward my pool.

She seemed to be enjoying it; the swift water rippled around her ankles dashing her skirts with spray, as she lifted her wet pink feet carefully over the sharp rocks and deeper channels. Her skirt, gathered naively in both hands, fluttered perhaps a trifle higher than it might have done under other circumstances. It was a pretty innocent picture, but it was out of place in my trout pool, and I stood up, determined to expostulate. After a second I sat down again, somewhat suddenly. The black stockings waved triumphantly above my head. I looked at them, bewildered, utterly upset. The young lady in the water was Miss Thorne.

Before I could decide what to do, she came in sight around the trees, stepping daintily over the sandy shallows. I dared not move. She did not look up.

"What the mischief shall I do?" I thought, keeping very still so that no movement should attract her eyes to the oak on the bank above. I could not retreat and leave my rod, I dared not creep to the pool to recover it. Besides, I didn't want to go away.

She had sat down on a sunny rock, just below me, and was stirring the sandy bottom with her little toes. It was, as I said, a pretty picture, sweet and innocent, but utterly fatal to my peace of mind. I wondered what she'd do next, and lay silent, scarcely breathing.

"If she turns her back," I thought, "I'll get up and go. I'm no eavesdropper, and I'll go— only I hope she won't give me the chance."

She had drawn a book from the folds of her skirt, and, as I lay there without sound or motion, she began to read, repeating aloud to herself the passages that pleased her.

"I am the magic waterfall

Whose waters leap from fathomless and living springs,

Far in the mist-hung silence of the Past."

She paused, turning the leaves with languid capriciousness, then:

"I fill the woods with songs; the trees,

Through whose twigs flow prophecies,

I deck with vestments green."

And again she read:

"The shower has freshened the song of the bird

And budded the bushes

And gilded the maple and tasselled the linden and willow,

Staining with green the forest-fringed path."

She sat silent, idly touching the fluttering pages. Then she raised her head, singing softly odd bits of songs to herself to the thrushes around her.

A great belted kingfisher flashed past, a blur of blue and white against the trees. His loud harsh rattle startled her for an instant.

And, as she turned to watch his flight along the winding stream, I rose and slipped noiselessly into the forest. Before I had taken a dozen steps, however, I remembered my rod, and halted irresolutely. Looking back through the thicket fringe, I saw that she had turned my way again, and it was out of the question to recover it without being seen.

"If she only had her stockings on," I sighed.

Should I wait, taking discreet observations occasionally? Should I go and let the rod take care of itself? Suppose the big trout should seize hold and drag it into the river? Suppose Miss Thorne should step on the barbed hook with her bare little feet! At the thought I turned hastily back in my own tracks, halted again, started on, wavered, took one irresolute step, and stopped.

I could see her now quite plainly without being seen. She had tossed her book up on the moss, and was picking her way along the ascending bank, holding on to branch and root.

"She's coming for her stockings, that's what she's doing," I thought.

Until she had safely passed the pool where the hook lay, I kept my eyes on her. After that I waited until I saw her reach up to the oak-limb for the stockings; then I looked the other way.

I gave her ten minutes to complete her toilet, holding my watch in my hand.

Once she sang pensively that puzzling but pathetic old ballad:

"Mother, may I go out to swim?

Yes, my darling daughter,

Hang your hose on a hickory limb,

But don't go near the water."

The ten minutes were up at last. "Now," said I to myself, "shall I look? No— yes— no indeed!— I don't know— I'll just see whether—"

I turned around.

She had left the shelter of the oak and was hurrying down the bank toward my rod, with every appearance of excitement.

"I'll bet there's a fish on it," said I to my self; "by jingo! there is!— and it's bending and tugging as if a porpoise had the line! It'll be into the river in a moment! There! It's gone!"

But I was mistaken, for Miss Thorne grasped it just as it slid over the edge of the bank.

"She'll break it! I'll bet it's my big fish! There! She's pulling the fish out— she's trying to drag the fish up! I can't stand this! It's no use— I've got to go."

When she saw me hastening down the slope she did not cry out, neither did she drop the rod, but her blue eyes grew very large and round. And as I hurried up she gave one last convulsive tug and hauled up, over, and on to the bank an enormous trout, flapping and bouncing among the leaves.

In a second I had seized the fish— it took all the strength of my arm to hold him— and the rest was soon over. There he lay, a monarch among trout, glistening, dappled, crimson-flecked. I walked down to the water's edge, washed my hands mechanically, and slowly climbed back again.

"I didn't know it was your rod," she said. "I only saw a big fish on it, and I pulled it out."

"I— I thought you had left Clovermead," I stammered.

"I thought you had also," she said; "all the others have gone. Tomorrow I go; my guardian is coming."

"Tomorrow?"

"Yes; at eight o'clock in the morning."

There was an awkward pause. I glanced askance at the fish, already ashamed of my work, dreading to know what she thought of a man who fished with bait.

"It is a large trout," she said timidly; "it is a wonder that I didn't break your rod and line. You see I never before caught a trout."

"And— and you would not— you don't think less of a man because he fishes with bait?" I asked, red with shame.

"I? Why, no. What else would you use?"

"Flies," I said, desperately. "You know it."

"Flies? Can you catch enough?"

"I mean artificial flies," I said. "You don't understand, you can't conceive the depth of depravity that leads a man to catch a trout as I've caught this, can you? It's simple murder."

"But," said Miss Thorne, with a puzzled glance at the fish, "I thought that I caught him."

"I— I baited the hook," I faltered.

"Then," said she, "it's a clear case of collusion, and we're both responsible."

We looked at each other for an instant. She sighed, almost imperceptibly.

"I am very sorry for what I said that night," I began. "You can't think how it has troubled me ever since. I have suffered a great deal— er— and I'm deucedly miserable, Miss Thorne."

"I forgive you," she said sweetly. "Why did you not ask me before?"

"Because," said I, "being an idiot I didn't dare."

"It made me very unhappy," she said. "I should not have spoken so—"

"Oh, you were quite right!" I cried; "it was my fault entirely."

"No indeed!"

"It was, really."

"And to think I should have spoken so after the trout you gave me and the serenade—"

"If the music had been as good as the trout—"

"It was— it was charming; and you said some things that first afternoon under my window—"

"I meant them! I mean them now— a thousand-fold!"

The crimson stained her cheeks. She half turned toward the river.

"I think," she said, "that I am late for luncheon."

Very humbly I produced my flask of Bordeaux, my cold chicken, bread, and hot-house pears. She looked at them, her head on one side.

"It is not very much," I ventured, "for two."

"I think it will do," she said reflectively; "there are some cresses by the brook. I am fond of cresses. Have you pepper and salt?"

I rummaged in my pockets, produced the harmonica, a package of tobacco, a spare reel, a knife, a steel hunting watch, a cigarette case, a box of dry flies, a match-case, a box of leaders, and finally a neat little parcel of pepper and salt.

She watched me with perfect gravity.

"If you please," she said, "you may go and play on your harmonica under that oak tree while I arrange the table. Will you?"

"Can't I help you?" I murmured, giddy with happiness.

"No. Go and play 'Sir Daniel O'Donnell.'"

I watched her, tooting fitfully the while, and presently she called to me that luncheon was ready, and asked me to lend her my handkerchief to dry her hands.

We drank in turn from the flask, gravely begging pardon for the goutte sans façon.

But the luncheon! There never was such a luncheon served in the palaces of Stamboul! I ate ambrosia— some name it chicken— and I drank nectar— foolish people would have called it Bordeaux— and I sat opposite to and looked in the blue eyes of the sweetest maid in the world.

And so we sat and chatted on, I knowing little of what was said save that it was her voice, always her voice in my ears and every word was melody. The swift droop of the long lashes on the pure curved cheeks, the gentle caress in every movement, the light glinting on tawny hair, on stray curling strands blown across her eyes— these I remember.

The shadows came and laid their long shapes on the sands of the shore, the trees darkened where the massed foliage swept in one unbroken sheet above the moss; the red west blazed.

Once a fish splashed among the weeds; a wood-duck steered fearlessly past, peering and turning, sousing its gorgeous neck in the shallow stream.

At last she sprang up, touching her hair with light swift fingers, and shaking her skirts full breadth.

"I must go."

"So soon?"

"Yes. Shall I say good-bye now for tomorrow?"

"Say it."

"Good-bye, then."

"Is that all?"

"Good-bye—"

"Nothing more?"

"Oh, what— what else?" she murmured; "I can say no more."

"I can," said I.

"You must not— ah, do you mean it?"

"Yes. I love you."

Then we will go back— together, she said, innocently, and came close up to me, laying her white hands in mine.

"AH," said I, as we entered the road by the dormitory, "the trout is a noble one, but, May, it was murder that was done on Clovermead water."

"And theft," she said, with a faint smile, "where is my heart, if you please?"

And we looked long, smiling into each other's eyes.

IT ALL happened years ago. I have never touched bait to hook since, but I confess that I do still, at times, play "Sir Daniel O'Donnell" on the harmonica. May permits it, especially when the children beg me; and, as they are teasing me now, I shall probably play it tonight.

_________________

7: A Priestess of Osiris

Edgar Wallace

1875-1932

In: For Information Received, 1929

Edgar Wallace

BETWEEN Camden Town and the Gates of Damascus is a gulf which may not be stated in terms of geographical miles. The East and the West are largely incompatibles. The commonplace of either cannot meet and produce by their admixture a third commonplace, as this story proves, if proof is needed.

El Durr, the Carpenter, said his prayers hurriedly— this being the hour of Asr— and finished as soon as was decent, glancing, as was the custom, to right and to left with quick jerks of his head, a reverence due to the two invisible angels who stand at a man's side, marking off his pious performances.

El Durr, some men said, was of the heretical Melawitch, who live up against Beth-Labon— others that he was an Ismailian. This much all knew, that he was a pock-marked young man, who was master of a carpenter's shop in El Kuds, that he was a traveller, and that he invariably bolted his prayers at an enormous rate. Now he came out of the Mosque of Sidna Omar, looking across the Murista a little fearfully, as though he were apprehensive of meeting some one, shuffled hastily across the broad space and went quickly down the Street of Dabbaghin as one pursued.

In course of time, and by a circuitous route, he came to the Gate of Sion, and, halting irresolutely before the forbidding door of a large house by the gate, he passed through, crossed a courtyard, and, coming to another door, he knocked.

"Min?" asked a voice sharply.

"It is I, Durr," he answered, and was bidden to enter.

He waited the conventional minute to allow the women to withdraw, if so be they were in the Mandira, then he went in.

The great reception-room, divaned on three sides, was empty save for the tall man who rose and came to meet him.

"Peace on this house," said El Durr.

"And upon you peace," responded the tall man.

He was young, clean-shaven, and unusually fair. His face had all the quality of the æsthetic, his eyes were grey, and under the plain red tarboosh, the hair, close-clipped, was brown. This was he who was called Yisma Effendi— to be vulgarly translated "Sir Listener"— British by birth and thought, of Arab appearance, and most certainly the confidential spy of the six nations in the days before war made mudheads of some, gold sacks of others, and of one in particular, a dunghill where a foolish cock crowed a victory which was not entirely his own.

"Take it," said the carpenter, and with his two hands laid on the waiting palm of the other a fold of thin paper.

Yisma read quickly and nodded.

"Who saw you take this at the Mosque?" he asked.

"None, Yisma," said the man eagerly, "for I knelt close to the young man praying, and presently, as I prostrated at 'the merciful,' he pushed this along the floor"

Yisma paced the apartment in thought.

"Tewfik Effendi— is he within the city?" he asked.

Durr spat on the ground.

"May he roast in hell for a policeman," he said, "but he is not. This morning I saw him go out of the Jaffa Gate and take the road to Bethlehem— now I say to you, Effendi, that here in Jerusalem there is no man more fit to die than he, for he is an oppressor of the poor and a taker of bribes— I know a certain place near by the tomb of Rachael—"

"Where he buries his money, El Durr," said the other drily. "All men know this in Jerusalem. Yet none has seen him bury it or take it up again. Now I think you are from Hebron, and they who dwell near Hebron are, by all accounts, great thieves; tell me brother, why you have not found this treasure?"

The face of Durr twisted in a grin.

"Ashallah!" he said piously. "I am an honest man."

Yisma looked at the note again, a few scrawled words in Arabic, and, despite the mysteriousness of their passage from writer to reader, and for all the furtive passing from hand to hand, wholly unimportant. For it dealt with a certain sordid business at the Armenian Monastery which was remote from the realms of high politics in which Yisma moved. Yet he must speak significantly of TewfIk Effendi, that the dramatic instinct of his servants should be whetted, for his agents worked best under the illusion that, through their activities, the freedom and lives of their fellows were endangered.

Durr lingered on, though he had been dismissed, and his employer did not hurry him. Momentous news came at the tail of such interviews as this. That is the way of the Orient.

"Yisma, you are as a father to those who serve you, and your wisdom is greater than Suliman's. You know that I am a great traveller, and that I was educated in the English fashion by the blessed fathers of St. Francis, and can speak your language and pray correctly in your churches."

Yisma smiled faintly.

"I know that you neglect many religions, Durr. Also that you speak my tongue."

Durr twiddled his bare toes uncomfortably.

"I go by Joppa in three days," he said a little incoherently. "I have a friend who lives in a beautiful house in London; it is in a pretty place called Camden Town, and he makes magic and sees the future and is growing very rich. He has written to me asking that I go to him, for he needs a priest of Osiris."

"Osiris?" said the startled Yisma. "Oh man, is this a new religion?"

"It is a magic of Egypt," said Durr smugly, "in which I am proficient. And, Yisma, El Kuds has nothing for me— it is full of fleas and piastres— and what is a Turkish piastre? I work from sun up to sun down, hewing wood with the sweat of my body, and at the end have two silver coins to jingle. Let me go, Yisma Effendi."

"Go in peace," said Yisma. "But this remember. It is written that be who serves new Gods must first be immortal. I have a feeling that this will end badly for you, Durr the Carpenter. Go!"

Durr grinned and made his salaam, for he saw nothing that was deadly in Camden Town. He had smelt the cold cities of the north and found them good, and when a man of the hot lands is so perverted that he prefers the drab grubbiness of Camden Town to a cool, flat stone in the shadow of Sidna Omar, his perversion is beyond remedy. So Durr went northward, travelling cheaply— it is possible to go from Jerusalem to the East India Docks for 39s. if you know the ropes.

BAYHAM STREET, Camden Town,is not exactly beautiful, nor was the stuccoed house in which dwelt Ahmed Hafiz, B.A., the finest example of Bayham Street architecture.

Ahmed Hafiz, B.A., was both a teacher and a student. He was a teacher of Oriental languages and a student of the occult. That branch of occultism which he most earnestly studied was the mysterious workings of the feminine mind. He had sent urgently for Durr (they had been acquainted in his early student days, when Durr, a donkey boy of Egypt, had been brought to England by an eccentric philanthropist who had ideas of educating the native) because Durr represented a new source of income.

The reason for the urgency of his call to Jerusalem was Mrs. Sophia Baffleston. Mrs. Baffleston was the widow of a rich builder, and she lived in Torrington Square, and had servants and cats and canaries, window- boxes, and other appurtenances and appendages of the well-to-do. She was rich but cautious. She outraged Ahmed's holiest emotions by beating him down in the matter of fees, and even for the private seances she arranged in her own Victorian drawing-room, she deducted five shillings from the agreed honorarium because the seance had lasted half an hour less than the stipulated time.

He had gazed into crystals and had seen dark men and fair men; he had warned her of a fair woman who was plotting against her (thereby securing the instant dismissal of a perfectly innocent cook), and had emphasised the tender influences of a dark but educated man who secretly adored her; and the net result of his soul's perspiring was (so his books said) the sum of £12, 7s. 6d., which covered the activities of eighteen months.

It was a chance word, spoken at the end of a long, and to Ahmed, boring seance, that put him on the track of easy money. For the first time since their acquaintance, Mrs. Sophia Baffleston betrayed her romantic secret, and Ahmed was instantly alert.

"Osiris, lady? Yes, the great cult still lives. But it is a mystery into which I could not lead you. The priests are few and monies must be paid," he eyed her speculatively, but she did not seem pained. Rather her large face was shining, and in her faded eyes was a light which Ahmed had hoped to see when he had talked of adoring dark men.

"Much money," he said. "I have a friend who is a priest of the Son of Seb, and it may be possible to initiate you...even to make you a priestess."

That was it! She was exalted, trembling, bade him stay whilst she brought books that she had read. Rider Haggard's Cleopatra was one; she was word perfect, could quote grisly incantations and describe dark and terrible ceremonies. Ahmed went home thinking in thousands, and after considerable cogitation, wrote a letter which he addressed to "Mahmut El Durr, a Carpenter who lives in a small house near the Gate of Damascus, opposite the School of the Jews in El Kuds."

It was a long letter, mainly about Osiris, the Son of Seb and of Nut, the Giver of Justice in Hell Mrs. Baffleston had an admirer, who, like her late husband, was in the building trade, but, unlike her late husband, lived everlastingly on the verge of bankruptcy. He was a large, red-faced man with a leer, and his name was Harry Borker. Osiris was a name outside his knowledge. If he had been told Osiris was a giver of judgment in the nether regions, he would have thought it was a fancy name for the Official Receiver. On the day of Ahmed's discovery, he called upon the lady of his choice, and she tolerated him, her mind being so occupied with ecstatic possibilities that he was one with the wallpaper.

"Sophia, don't you think it's about time you gave up this fortune- telling business?" be pleaded. "It makes me jealous to see that skinny-gutted nigger popping in and out as if he owned the place. You're young; in a manner of speaking you're attractive, I always say there's many a good tune played on an old fiddle."

"Oh Set, slayer of my spouse! I am Isis, his beloved, and Horus my son shall slay thee!" murmured Mrs. Baffleston.

"Good God!" said the alarmed Mr. Borker. "What are you talking about, Sophia? I never laid my hands on your old man. And you ain't got a son called Horace!"

Mrs. Baffleston, dimly aware of his presence, pointed a fat and glittering finger to the door.

"To thy hell!" she said dreamily. Mr. Borker went.

In the months that followed, the handsome bank balance of Mrs. Baffleston seemed more and more remote. She was no longer accessible. Every afternoon at two o'clock she left the house, entered her small Panhard (in those days a very classy car), and drove to Bayham Street, where she was invariably met at the door of Ahmed's house by a young man of Eastern origin, whose pock-marked face was one the watchful Mr. Borker grew to know and hate.

Then one day he learnt that his lady-love had given her servants notice, and had placed her house and furniture, her Panhard, broughams, and high-stepping horses in the hands of an auctioneer. The discovery coincided with the arrival of a writ in bankruptcy, which determined Mr. Borker in his plans for the future.

Ahmed Hafiz learnt the news with no less of a shock.

"What is this, Durr?" he asked one day when the novitiate had departed. "What does this old woman intend?"

"I know nothing," said Durr dreamily. "I am a mere slave of Osiris, and She is the Lord's Priestess."

"Stuff and rubbish!" When Ahmed was annoyed, he expressed himself in English. "For three months you have, on your word of honour as a gentleman, promised to get me five hundred pounds from this old she-ox. By Jove! I have only had twenty-two pounds!"

"Have no fear, Ahmed, she will give you riches beyond the dreams of Suliman," soothed El Durr, and would have changed the subject if Ahmed had permitted.

"This jiggery pokery will not do for me!" he said violently. "I have brought you here and given you food and expensive clothes, and now you are going to do dirty work against me! Why is this unprintable woman selling her house? Where does she skip? Ah! That brings chagrin to your face, donkey boy! You are going to take her away! By gad! That's disgusting! After all the trouble I've had with the fat one, and a donkey boy comes and kidnaps her under my very nostrils! Who made you Osiris? Who gave you special speeches and bought incense at nine and six a pack?"

It cost El Durr £85 to appease the just wrath of his patron. He could well afford that sum, for he had hidden in his shirt the greater part of the £500 which an infatuated priestess of Osiris had given him.

Mrs. Baffleston came east as plain Mrs. Baffleston in a P. & O. steamer. None of her fellow-passengers guessed the tremendous mystery behind that plain, stout, and stumpy lady who went ashore at Alexandria. She saw the Nile under the most favourable conditions; the sun was setting and the river was alive with craft. Mrs. Baffleston regarded her domain majestically, and thought she would go on to Thebes by a Cook's excursion that was leaving the following morning, particulars of which she had studied in the quiet of her room at Shepheards.

"Priestess," pleaded El Durr, almost pathetically, "you must not go to Thebes. I have had word from the high priest that you must take your place in El Kuds, where I have a fine house for you."

Durr was thinking of the expense. Contrary to his general expectations, the priestess of Osiris had not handed to him the money she had received from the sale of her house and furniture, even though he had come to her in a state of agitation and ecstasy, and had told her of a vision which he had had, wherein the great god himself, supported by his divine relatives, had instructed her to place her confidence and her bank-roll in the hands of her faithful disciple.

What was more annoying, he did not even know where she kept the money, and although he had conducted a patient and thorough investigation of her baggage, his labours had been profitless. In Jerusalem, populated with his thieving relatives, it would be a fairly simple matter to make the transfer.

Mrs. Baffleston was not mad— no madder than any other enthusiastic sectarian. The dream of her life was realised; she was saturated in the mysticism of a cult which she imperfectly understood; she was swayed by emotions which were both pleasant and comforting; but although her faith in herself had been considerably augmented, her trust in humanity had undergone no perceptible change.

Durr was in a dilemma. The advent of a priest of Osiris into the chaotic welter of religions which distinguish the life of Jerusalem would attract very little notice. The arrival of an English woman, and her appearance in an eastern household, would reach the ears of the authorities. More undesirable, Yisma Effendi, who heard all things, would require an explanation.

One afternoon there arrived by the train from Joppa a veiled woman, to all appearances very much like a score of other veiled women, except that she was unusually stout and short, and wore jewels on her bare hands, which induced daydreams in many a Mussulman' s heart. Durr had already taken a house which had the advantage of being fairly remote from the establishment over which Yisma Effendi presided; a coat of blue wash and a few mystic designs transferred a big sitting-room into a temple. And here, for at least a month, she practised mystic rites, burnt incense and joss sticks, invoked Osiris and Isis and extending her fat palms, solemnly blasted and withered her enemies. She had no enemy, but a Camden Town butcher, with whom she had once engaged in a law action. Him she blasted three times a week with great ruthlessness. Durr, pursuing his own mystic studies, discovered that she kept her money in her boots.

One night there was some slight trouble on the Jaffa Road over a question of lamps. As you should know, the Greeks may hang five lamps in the Angels Chapel of the Church of the Sepulchre, four may be burnt by the Armenians and one by the Copts. This question of burning lamps in sacred places is a very strenuous one— did not the Greeks pay 10,000 piastres for the right of burning so much as a single candle over a certain holy stone?— and it became a frenzied casus belli on a night in May when the rumour spread that the Copts had received a faculty for adding another lamp to the one authorised.

And there was a free fight which brought out a company of infantry and all Tewfik Effendi's available police.

When order was restored, the police discovered a man lying in the middle of the road, stabbed to the heart. He was evidently a tourist and English, which made the matter more scandalous, for he could not possibly have been interested in the question of lamps.

Tewfik Effendi, a trifle too stout for his office, came to the house near the Gate and had an audience with Yisma Effendi.

"By the prophet I know nothing of this— nor did I see the Nazarene until after we had driven the Copts to their quarters," spluttered the Chief of Police. "Now tell the Mutasarrif this, Oh Yisma Effendi, that none of my men drew steel, for we are used to such troubles in Jerusalem." (He called the city "El Kuds," which is the Arabic name and means the Sanctuary.)

Yisma, in his long silk dressing-gown, sat by his desk examining the blood-stained papers which the Chief of Police had brought. They were business letters, mainly, and a Cook's tourist ticket.

"Did none see this man before the fight?" asked Yisma.

"I saw him," said Tewfik impressively. "He was in the street— this I saw before the light went and before I summoned my police. He was making strange signs to some one at the window of a house."

Yisma saw the body later, a stout, florid Englishman evidently of the middle classes, not an unusual type. Strangely enough, his clothes had not been searched for money, for in his hip pocket was some £80 in English banknotes.

He had been killed instantaneously by a quick knife-thrust through the heart, and there was still on his face that look of hall-amused, half-distressed surprise which is to be found in such cases.

There was nothing to do save to summon the British Consul and the English doctor— and that had already been done.

Yisma went back to his house before daybreak, with no other thought than that a very unfortunate accident had occurred to a too adventurous Englishman who, from curiosity, had sought to investigate a religious riot at first hand.

That night came a wire from London.

"Dead man's full name, Harry Borker, fugitive bankrupt. Remit any assets for benefit of creditors."

"Poor devil," said Yisma. "I wonder what brought him to Jerusalem?"

Yisma Effendi— he had almost forgotten what his name looked like in English— had a network of spies throughout Palestine and even beyond. For in Damascus and Cairo, to name extremes of the geographic pole, were men who looked and listened and told all that they saw and heard into his private ear.

Being, as he was, the faithful servant of several governments, who employed him to watch the beginnings of creeds and maintain a vigilant supervision of all miracles, his time was too fully occupied to worry overmuch about this regrettable incident, which was rather within the province of the British Consul and Tewfik's ragamuffins than his, and although he had given the greater part of a night to his investigations, the matter was put out of his mind when Yosef, his table-man, brought him his breakfast in the morning.

"God give you a happy day," said Yosef conventionally.

"And give you fortune," retorted the polite Yisma.

Yosef set the coffee, fussed around putting plates and knives and fruit in position, breathed on an apple and polished it on his sleeve (Yisma noted the apple carefully— he could never get Yosef out of this habit), and waited, knowing that there was news.

"In the bazaars they say that the Frankish man who was killed near the Bab el Amud sought to ravish the hareem of Bayhum Effendi."

"Who is this Bayhum Effendi?" asked Yisma, to whom the name was new.

"He is a rich merchant who lives here. Some say that he is one man and some another. There is a talk that he is Durr the Carpenter, grown rich."

Yisma smiled.

"Durr is in England serving new gods," he said. "The bazaar talks, to drown talk. In what café does this story run?

"In all," was the prompt reply. "Bayhum Effendi has a wife who is fairer than snow upon the great hills of Judea. This man came to take her away, and by Bayhum's order he was killed by a man from Gaza named El Khauwan, the deceitful. He has now gone out of the city to his own home, having been well paid. Yisma, he has a twisted nose and is haj."

Yisma, who accounted no gossip too light for study, sent a party of horsemen to intercept the deceitful one, and by nightfall he was brought to the little courtyard, where he was informally questioned.

"By my head and my father's grave, I know nothing of this evil story, Yisma," he swore. "I am a poor man who came here to see my own brother who is sick, I and the little donkey I rode."

Yisma considered. To bastinado a man in order to make him confess to a crime which would hang him, is a fairly unprofitable piece of work.

"Take him to Tewfik Effendi," he said at last. "Let him be held until to-morrow."

He sent for the mysterious Bayhum Effendi, but that defender of hareems did not come. Instead, there arrived in his courtyard a flushed and angry lady, who wore the costume of the East, but whose manner and style of talking was distinctly Occidental.

Yisma Effendi sat cross-legged on his divan, for once in his life speechless with astonishment.

"I want to see the British Counsel," she said violently.

"Consul?" murmured Yisma.

"I don't care whether it's counsel or whether it's consul, I've been robbed. £640 in English banknotes! It's lucky I had the rest hidden away or he'd have taken that too!"

"May I ask," said Yisma, "who you are and what you are doing in Jerusalem?"

Mrs. Baffleston jerked up her head defiantly, for she was a woman of property and not used to being questioned.

"I am a priestess of Osiris," she said loudly, "though I don't think there's much in it, because I've been blasting that fellow all the morning, 'is 'ead and 'is 'eart, and by all accounts he's still alive."

Yisma interviewed the Chief of Police, and found that, by the happy-go- lucky methods of Eastern justice, Mrs. Baffleston's evidence was not essential. He went to the station to see her off— an unusual act of condescension on his part.

"No more of this business for me," she said determinedly. "You've got my address, mister?"

Yisma nodded.

"You will send the money by registered post if you get it?"

"I shall get it," said Yisma, concealing a smile.

"I have telegraphed to a friend of mine to meet me in London; I'm going to settle down after this. The things I've had to endure since I've been in Jerusalem! No, I'm going to settle down. Maybe I'll get married." She smirked a little. "Mr. Borker— you've probably heard of him; he's well known in the building trade, Harry Borker."

"I've heard of him," said Yisma soberly.

IT WAS three weeks before they caught El Durr, and most of the money was intact. They brought him to Yisma the day before he came up for judgment.

"For every man, one land and one god," he said. "This man desired the woman's money and followed her to El Kuds, and because I was afraid that he would go to you, I hired a countryman to hit him a little on the head. I think Tewfik Pasha will hang me."

"I think that also," said Yisma Effendi.

El Durr's nose wrinkled.

"It is written," he said philosophically. "Now this is a mystery to me, Yisma Effendi, for if I had stayed in Camden Town I should not have hanged, nor this man have died. It seems to me there is very bad luck in new gods as you said. Let it be known to the good fathers of St. Francis that I died a follower of the prophet."

They hanged El Durr within view of the Mosque of Omar, in the shadow of which he was wont to take his siesta.

____________________

8: The Bed by the Window

E. F. Benson

1867-1940

Hutchinson's Story-Magazine, July 1929

Weird Tales, Nov 1929

Edward Frederic Benson

Prologue

MY FRIEND Lionel Bailey understands the works of Mr. Einstein, and he reads them with the rapt thrilled attention that more ordinary people give to detective stories. He says they are so exciting that he can not put them down: they make him late for dinner. It may be owing to this unusual mental conformation of his that he talks about time and space in a manner that is occasionally puzzling, for he thinks of them as something quite different from our accepted notions of them, and tonight as we sat over my fire hearing a spring-gale of March bugling outside, and dashing solid sheets of rain against my window, I had found him very difficult to follow. But though he thinks in "terms which the average man finds unintelligible, he is always ready (though with an effort) to quit the austere heights on which he naturally roams, and explain. And his explanations are often so lucid that the average man (I allude to myself) can generally get some idea of what he means. Just now he had made some extremely cryptic remark about the real dimensions of time, and of the palpable incorrectness of our conception of it: but rightly interpreting the moaning sound with which I received this, he very kindly Came to my aid.

"You see, time, as we think of it," he said, "is a most meaningless convention. We talk of the future and the past as if they were opposite poles, whereas they are really the same. What we thought of as the future a minute ago or a century ago, we now see to be the past: the future is always in process of becoming the past, The two are the same, as I said just now, looked at from different points."

"But they aren't the same," said I, rather incautiously. "The future may become the past, but the past never becomes the future."

Lionel sighed.

"A most unfortunate remark," he said. "Why, the whole of the future is made up of the past: it entirely depends on it; the future consists of nothing else but the past.'

I did see what he meant. There was no denying it, so I tried something else.

'A slippery slidy affair altogether," I said. "The future becomes the past, and the past the future. But luckily there's one firm spot in this welter, and that's the present. That's solid: there's nothing wrong with the present, is there?"

Lionel moved slightly in his chair: an indulgent, patient movement.

"Oh, dear; oh dear," he said. ""You've chosen as your firm solid point the most shifting and unstable of all. What is the present? By the time you've said 'This is the present,' it has slid away into the past. The past has got some sort of real existence, and we know that the future will blossom out of it. But the present hardly can be said to exist at all, for the moment you say that it is here it has changed. It is far the most elusive part of the phantom which we call Time. It is the door, that is the most that can be said for it, through which the future passes into the past. Yet somehow, though it scarcely exists, we can see from it into the past and into the future."

I felt I could venture to contradict that.

"'Thank heaven we can't," I said. "It would be the ultimate terror to be able to see into the future. It's bad enough sometimes to be able to remember the past."

He shook his head.

"But we can see into the future," he said. "The future is entirely evolved out of the past, and if we knew everything about the past, we should equally know everything about the future. Everything that happens is merely a fresh link in the chain of unalterable consequences. The little we know about the solar system, for instance, makes it a certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow."

"Oh, that kind of thing," said I. "Just material, mathematical deductions.'

"'No, all kinds of things. For instance, I'm sure you know the certainty that we all have now and then, that somebody present is about to say some particular definite sentence. A few seconds pass, and then out it comes precisely as we had known it would. That's not so material and mathematical. It's a little instance of a very big thing called clairvoyance. "

"I know what you mean," I said. "But it may be some trick of the brain. It isn't a normal experience."

"Everything is normal," said Lionel. "Everything depends on some rule. We only call things abnormal when we don't know what the rule is. Then there are mediums: mediums constantly see into the future, and to some extent everyone is a medium; we've all had glimpses."

He paused a moment.

"And there is such a simple explanation," he said. "You see, we're all existing in eternity, though, just for the span of our life-time, we're also existing in Time. But there's eternity outside Time, though the mist of material things usually obscures it from our vision. Now and then the mist clears, and then—how shall I express anything so simple?—then we look down on Time, like a little speck of an island below us, quite clear, future and past and present, and awfully small. We get just a glimpse, no more, and then the mist closes round us again. But on these occasions we can see into the future just as clearly as we can look into the past, and we can see not only those who have passed outside the mist of material phenomena, whom we call ghosts, but the future or the past of those who are still inside it. They all appear to us then as they are in eternity, where there is neither past nor future."'

I suddenly found that my grip on what he was saying was beginning to give way.

"That's enough for one night," said I flippantly. "The future is the past, and the past is the future, and there isn't any present, and ghosts may come from what has happened or what will happen. I should like to see a ghost out of the future.... And as you've had a whisky and soda in the immediate past, I feel sure you will have one in the immediate future, as it's the same thing. Say when."

I WAS off into the country next day in order to make amends for a couple of months of wilful idleness in London by hermitizing myself in a small village on the coast of Norfolk, where I knew nobody, and where, I was credibly informed, there was nothing to do: I should thus have to work in order to get through the hours of the day. There was a house there, kept by a man and his wife who took in lodgers, and there I proposed to plant myself till I had got through these criminal arrears. Mr. Hopkins had been a butler, and his wife a cook, and, so I was told by a friend who had made trial of their ministrations, they made their inmates extremely comfortable. There were a couple of other folk, Mr. Hopkins had written to me, now staying in the house, and he regretted he could not give me a sitting-room to myself. But he could provide me with a big double bedroom, where there was ample room for a writing-table and my books. That was good enough.

Hopkins had ordered a ear to convey me from the nearest railway station, six miles distant, to Faringham, and a little before sunset, on a bright windy day of March, I came to the village. Though I had certainly never been here before I had some odd sense of remote familiarity with it, and I suppose I must have seen and forgotten some hamlet which was like it. There was just one street lined with fishermen's houses, built of rounded flints, with nets hung up to dry on the walls of small plots in front, and a few miscellaneous shops. We passed through the length of this, and came at the end to a much bigger, three-storied house, at the gate of which we stopped. A spacious square of garden separated it from the road, with espaliered pear-trees bordering the path that led to the front door: beyond flat open country stretched away to the horizon, intersected with big dikes and ditches, across which I could see, a mile distant, a line of white shingle where lay the sea. My arrival was hooted on the motor-horn, and Hopkins, a prim dark spare man, came out to see to my luggage. His wife was waiting inside, and she took me up to my room.

Certainly it would do very well: there were two windows commanding a view of the marsh eastward, in one of which was set a big writing-table. A fire sparkled on the hearth; two beds stood in opposite angles of the room, one near the second window, the other by the fireplace in front of which was a large armchair. This armchair had a footstool, under the table was a waste-paper basket, and on it one of those old-fashioned but convenient contrivances which show the day of the month and the day of the week, with pegs to adjust them. Everything had been thought out for comfort, everything looked spotlessly clean and eared-for, and at once I felt myself at home here.

"But what a charming room, Mrs. Hopkins," I said.. "It's just what I want."

She moved away from the door as I spoke, to let her husband enter with my bags. She gave him one swift ugly look and I found myself thinking "How she dislikes him!" But the impression was momentary, and having elected to sleep in the bed by the fireplace, I went downstairs with her for a cup of tea, while her husband unpacked for me.

When I came up again, the unpacking was over, and all my effects dispersed, clothes laid in drawers and cupboards, and my books and papers neatly stacked on the table. There was no settling down to be done: I had stepped into possession of this pleasant room, as if I had long lived and worked in it. Then my eye fell on the little adjustable contrivance on the table for displaying the current date, and I saw that this one detail had escaped the vigilance of my hosts, for it marked Tuesday, May 8th, instead of the true date, Thursday, March 22nd. I was rather pleased to observe that the Hopkinses were not too perfect, and after twisting the record back to the correct date, I instantly settled down to work, for there was nothing to get used to before I felt at home.

A plain and excellent dinner was served some three hours later, and I found that one of my fellow-guests was an elderly sepulchral lady with a genteel voice who spoke but rarely and then about the weather. She had by her on the table a case of Patience cards and a bottle of medicine. She took a dose of the latter before and after her meal, and at once retired to the common sitting-room where that night and every other she played long sad games of Patience. The other was a ruddy young man who confided to me that he was making a study of the minute fresh-water fleas that infest fresh-water snails, for which daily he dragged the dikes. He had been so fortunate as to find a new species which would undoubtedly be called Pulex Dodsoniana in his honor. Hopkins waited on us with soft velvet-footed attention, and his wife brought in the admirable fruits of her kitchen. Once there was some slight collision of crockery in her tray, and happening to look up I saw the glance he gave her. It was not mere dislike that inspired it, but some quiet deadly hatred.

Dinner over, I went in for a few minutes to the sitting-room where the sepulchral lady was sitting down to her Patience and Mr. Dodson to his microscope, and very soon betook myself upstairs to resume my work.

The room was pleasantly warm, my things laid out for the night, and for a couple of hours I busied and buried myself. Then the door of the room, without any inquiry of knocking, silently opened, and Mrs. Hopkins stood there. She gave a little gasp of dismay as she saw me.

"I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir," she said. "I quite forgot: so stupid of me. But this is the room my husband and I usually occupy, if it is not being used. So forgetful of me."

I AWOKE next morning after long traffic with troubled nonsensical dreams to find the sun pouring in at the windows as Hopkins drew up the blinds. I thought that Mr. Dodson had come in to show me a collection of huge fleas that battened on Patience cards, or rather that would be abundant there on Tuesday, May 8th, for, as he pointed out, there were none there now since the present had no existence. And then Hopkins, who had been bending over the bed by the window, apologized for being in my room, and explained that he could hate his wife more intensely here: he hoped that I had not been disturbed by him. Then there was the crack of some explosion, which resolved itself into the rattle of the up-going blind, and there indeed he was. .. .

I was soon out of bed and dressing, but somehow that farrago of dreamstuff concocted out of actual experience, hung about me. I could not help feeling that there was significance in it, if I could only find the clue, and it did not, as is usual with dreams, fade and evaporate with my waking: it seemed to retreat into hidden caves and recesses of my brain and wait in ambush there till it was called out.

Then my eye fell on the date recorder on my table, and I saw with surprize that it still registered Tuesday, May 8th, though I would have been willing to swear that last night I had adjusted it to the correct date. And with that surprize was mingled a faint and rather uncomfortable misgiving, and involuntarily I asked myself what Tuesday, what May 8th was indicated there. Was it some day in past years, or in years yet to come? I knew that such a question was an outrage on common sense; probably I imagined that I had screwed the cylinder back to the present, but had not actually done so. But now I felt that this date referred to some event that had happened or was to happen. It was a record or some mysterious presage out of the future—like a railway signal suddenly hoisted at night at some wayside station. The line lay empty, but presently out of the darkness would come a yell and a roar from the approaching train... This time, anyhow, there should be no mistake, and I knew that I moved the date back again.

THE days passed slowly at first, as is their wont in new surroundings, and then began to move with ever accelerating speed as I settled into an industrious routine. I worked all morning, turned myself unwillingly out of doors for a couple of hours in the afternoon, and worked again after tea and once more till round about midnight. My task prospered, I was well, and the house most comfortable, but all the time there was some instinct bidding me leave the place, or, since I successfully resisted that, to get through with my work as soon as might be and be gone. That strong tonic air of the coast often made me drowsy when I came in, and I would slip from my desk into the big armchair and sleep for a little.

But always after these short recuperative naps, I would wake with a start, feeling that Hopkins had come silently into the room as I slept, and in some inexplicable panic of mind I would wheel round, dreading to see him. Yet it was not, if I may so express it, his bodily presence which I feared, but some psychical phantom of him, which had sinister business on hand in this room. His thoughts were here—was that it?—something in him that hated and schemed. That business was not concerned with me; I seemed to be but a spectator waiting for the curtain to rise on some grim drama. Then, as this confused and fearful moment of waking passed, the horror slipped away, not dispersing exactly, but concealing itself and ready to emerge again.

Yet all the time the routine of the well-ordered house went smoothly on. Hopkins was busy with his jobs, doing much of the house-work, and valetting and waiting at table: his wife continued to ply her admirable skill in the kitchen. Sometimes its door would be open, as I went upstairs after dinner, and I had a glimpse of them as I passed, sitting friendly at their supper. Indeed I began to wonder whether that gleam of dislike on the one side and of sheer hate on the other, which I fancied I had seen, was not some fiction of my own mind, for if it was real there would surely be some betrayal of the truth, a voice raised in anger, and a sudden shrill answer. But there was none: quietly and efficiently the two went about 'their work, and sometimes late at night I could hear them pass to the attic-floor above, where they slept. A few footsteps would sound muffled overhead, and then there was silence, till in the morning I, waking early, heard the discreet movements begin again, and soft footfalls pass my door on their way downstairs.

This room of mine, where for three weeks now I had been so prosperously at work, was growing a haunted and terrible place to me. Never once had I seen in it anything outside the ordinary, nor heard any sound that betokened another presence except my own and that of the flapping flames on the hearth, and I told myself that it was I, or, more exactly, some fanciful sense of the unseen and the unheard that was troubling me and causing this ghostly invasion. Yet the room itself had a share in it too, for downstairs, or out in the windy April day, or even just outside the door of the room, I was wholly free of this increasing obsession. Something had happened here which had left its mark not on material things, and which was imperceptible to the organ 'of sight and hearing, the effect of which was trickling not merely into my brain, but filtering through it into the very source of life. Yet the explanation that a phantom was arising out of the past would not wholly fit, for whatever this haunting was, it was getting nearer, and though its lineaments were not yet visible, they were forming with greater distinctness below the veil that hid them. It was establishing touch with me, as if it was some denizen of a remote world that reached across time and space, and was already laying its fingers on me, and it took advantage of small physical happenings in that room to encompass me with its influence. For instance, when one evening I was brushing my hair before dinner, a white featureless face peered over my shoulder, and then with an arrested shudder I saw that this was only the reflection of the oval looking-glass on the ceiling. Or, as I lay in bed, before putting out my light, a puff of wind came in through the open sash, making the striped curtain to belly, and before I could realize the physical cause of it, there was a man in striped pajamas bending over the bed by the window. Or a wheeze of escaping gas came from the coals on the hearth, and to my ears it sounded like a strangled gasp of someone in the room. Something was at work, using the trivial sounds and sights for its own ends, kneading away in my brain to make it ready and receptive for the revelation it was preparing for it. It worked very cleverly, for the morning after the curtain had shaped itself into the pajamaed figure bending over the other bed, Hopkins, when he called me, apologized for his attire. He had overslept himself, and in order not to delay further, had come down in a coat over his striped pajamas. Another night the wind lifted the cretonne covering that lay over the bed by the window, inflating it into the shape of a body there. It stirred and turned before it was deflated again, and it was just then that the coal on the hearth gasped and choked.

BUT BY NOW my work was completed: I had determined not to yield to the fear of any strange and troubling fancies until that was done, and tonight, very late, I scrawled a dash across the page below the final words, and added the date. I sat back in my chair, yawning and tired and pleased that I was now free to go back to London next day. For nearly a week now I had been alone in the house, and I reflected how natural it was that, diving into myself all day over my work, and seeing nobody, I had been creating phantoms to keep me company. Idly enough, my glance lighted on the record of the day of the week and the month, and I saw that once more it showed Tuesday, May 8th.... Next moment I perceived that my eyes had played me false; they had visualized something that was inside my brain, for a second glance told me that the day indicated there was indeed Tuesday, but April 24th.

"Certainly it's time I went away,"' I said to myself.

The fire was out, and the room rather cold. Feeling very sleepy, and also very content that I had finished my task, I undressed quickly, leaving shut the window by the other bed.

But the curtains were undrawn and the blind was up, and the last thing I saw before I went to sleep was a narrow slip of moonlight on the floor.

I AWOKE. The moonlight had broadened to a thick oblong patch, very bright. The bed beyond it was in shadow, but clearly visible, and I saw that there was someone sleeping there. And there was someone standing at the foot of the bed, a man in striped pajamas. He took a couple of steps across the patch of moonlight, and then swiftly thrusting his arms forward, he bent over the bed. The figure that lay there moved: the knees shot up, and an arm came out from beneath the coverlet. The bed creaked and shuddered with the struggle that was going on, but the man held tight to what he was grasping. He jumped on. to the bed, crushing the knees flat again, and over his shoulder I saw and recognized the face of the woman who lay there. Once she got her neck free from the strangle-hold, and I heard a long straining gasp for breath. Then the man's fingers found their place again: once more the bed shook as with the quivering of leaves in a wind, and after that all was still. The man got up: he stood for a moment in the patch of moonlight, wiping the sweat from his face, and I could see him clearly. And then I knew that I was sitting up in bed, looking out into the familiar room. It was bright with the big patch of moonlight that lay on the floor, and empty and quiet. There was the other bed with its cretonne covering, flat and tidy.

THE sequel is probably familiar to most people as the Faringham murder. On the morning of May 8th, according to the account given by Hopkins to the police, he came downstairs .as usual from the attic where he had slept about half-past seven, and found that the lock of the front door of his house had been forced, and the door was open. His wife was not yet down, and he went upstairs to the room on the first floor where they often slept together, when it was not being used by their guests, and found her lying strangled in her bed. He instantly rang up the police and also the doctor, though he felt sure she was dead, and while waiting for them observed that a drawer of the table, in which she was accustomed to keep the money she had in the house, had been broken open. She had been to the bank the day before and cashed a check for fifty pounds, in order to pay the bills of last month, and the notes were missing. He had seen her place them in the drawer when she brought them back. Questioned as to his having slept in the attic, while his wife had slept alone below, he said that this room had been lately occupied, and would be occupied again in a few days: he had not therefore thought it worth while to move down, though his wife had done so.

But there were two weak points in this story. The first was that the woman had been strangled as she lay in bed, full length, with the blankets and sheet over her. But if the supposed burglar had throttled her, because she had been awakened by his entrance, and threatened to raise the alarm, it seemed incredible that she should have remained lying there with the bedclothes up to her chin. It looked as if the murder was a wanton one, and had nothing to do with the burglary. Again, though the drawer into which she had put her money had been forced, it had not been locked. The burglar had only to pull the handle of it, and it would have opened. It looked as if the murderer had wanted to convey the impression that he was a burglar.

Hopkins was detained, and the house searched, and the missing roll of notes was found in the lining of an old greatcoat of his in the attic. Before he suffered the extreme penalty, he confessed his crime and told the manner of its execution. He had come down from his bedroom, entered his wife's room and strangled her. He had then forced the front door, and, unnecessarily, the drawer where she had put her money.

Reading it, I thought of Lionel Bailey's theory, and my own experience in the room where the murder was committed.

______________

9: Over an Absinthe Bottle

William C Morrow

1853-1923

Weird Tales, Apr 1933

The Argonaut 2 Jan 1893, as "The Pale Dice-Thrower"

William Chambers Morrow

ARTHUR KIMBERLIN, a young man of very high spirit, found himself a total stranger in San Francisco one rainy evening, at a time when his heart was breaking; for his hunger was of that most poignant kind in which physical suffering is forced to the highest point without impairment of the mental functions. There remained in his possession not a thing that he might have pawned for a morsel to eat; and even as it was, he had stripped his body of all articles of clothing except those which a remaining sense of decency compelled him to retain. Hence it was that cold assailed him and conspired with hunger to complete his misery. Having been brought into the world and reared a gentleman, he lacked the courage to beg and the skill to steal. Had not an extraordinary thing occurred to him, he either would have drowned himself in the bay within twenty-four hours or died of pneumonia in the street. He had been seventy hours without food, and his mental desperation had driven him far in its race with his physical needs to consume the strength within him; so that now, pale, weak, and tottering, he took what comfort he could find in the savory odors which came steaming up from the basement kitchen of the restaurants in Market Street, caring more to gain them than to avoid the rain. His teeth chattered; he shambled, stooped, and gasped. He was too desperate to curse his fate— he could only long for food. He could not reason; he could not understand that ten thousand hands might gladly have fed him; he could think only of the hunger which consumed him, and of food that could give him warmth and happiness.

When he had arrived at Mason Street, he saw a restaurant a little way up that thoroughfare, and for that he headed, crossing the street diagonally. He stopped before the window and ogled the steaks, thick and lined with fat; big oysters lying on ice; slices of ham as large as his hat; whole roasted chickens, brown and juicy. He ground his teeth, groaned, and staggered on.

A few steps beyond was a drinking saloon, which had a private door at one side, with the words "Family Entrance” painted thereon. In the recess of the door (which was closed) stood a man.

In spite of his agony, Kimberlin saw something in this man’s face that appalled and fascinated him. Night was on, and the light in the vicinity was dim; but it was apparent that the stranger had an appearance of whose character he himself must have been ignorant. Perhaps it was the unspeakable anguish of it that struck through Kimberlin’s sympathies. The young man came to an unrertain halt and stared at the stranger. At first he was unseen, for the stranger looked straight out into the street with singular fixity, and the death-like pallor of his face added a weirdness to the immobility of his gaze. Then he took notice of the young man.

"Ah,” he said, slowly and with peculiar distinctness, "the rain has caught you, too, without overcoat or umbrella! Stand in this doorway— there is room for two.”

The voice was not unkind, though it had an alarming hardness. It was the first word that had been addressed to the sufferer since hunger had seized him, and to be spoken to at all, and have his comfort regarded in the slightest way, gave him cheer. He entered the embrasure and stcod beside the stranger, who at once relapsed into his fixed gaze at nothing across the street. But presently the stranger stirred himself again.

"It may rain a long time,” said he; "I am cold, and I observe that you tremble. Let us step inside and get a drink.”

He opened the door and Kimberlin followed, hope beginning to lay a warm hand upon his heart. The pale stranger led the way into one of the little private booths with which the place was furnished. Before sitting down he put his hand into his pocket and drew forth a roll of bank-bills.

"You are younger than I,” he said; "won’t you go to the bar and buy a bottle of absinthe, and bring a pitcher of water and some glasses? I don’t like for the waiters to come around. Here is a twenty- dollar bill.”

Kimberlin took the bill and started down through the corridor toward the bar. He clutched the money tightly in his palm; it felt warm and comfortable, and sent a delicious tingling through his arm. How many glorious hot meals did that bill represent? He clutched it tighter and hesitated. He thought he smelled a broiled steak, with fat little mushrooms and melted butter in the steaming dish. He stopped and looked back toward the door of the booth. He saw that the stranger had closed it. He could pass it, slip out the door, and buy something to eat. He turned and started, but the coward in him (there are other names for this) tripped his resolution; so he went straight to the bar and made the purchase. This was so unusual that the man who served him looked sharply at him.

"Ain’t goin’ to drink all o’ that, are you?” he asked.

"I have friends in the box,” replied Kimberlin, "and we want to drink quietly and without interruption. We are in Number 7.”

"Oh, beg pardon. That’s all right,” said the man.

Kimberlin’s step was very much stronger and steadier as he returned with the liquor. He opened the door of the booth. The stranger sat at the side of the little table, staring at the opposite wall just as he had stared across the street. He wore a wide-brimmed, slouch hat, drawn well down. It was only after Kimberlin had set the bottle, pitcher, and glasses on the table, and seated himself opposite the stranger and within his range of vision, that the pale man noticed him.

"Oh! you have brought it? How kind of you! Now please lock the door.”

Kimberlin had slipped the change into his pocket, and was in the act of bringing it out when the stranger said—

"Keep the change. You will need it, for I am going to get it back in a way that may interest you. Let us first drink, and then I will explain.”

The pale man mixed two drinks of absinthe and water, and the two drank. Kimberlin, unsophisticated, had never tasted the liquor before, and he found it harsh and offensive; but no sooner had it reached his stomach than it began to warm him, and sent the most delicious thrill through his frame.

"It will do us good,” said the stranger; "presently we shall have more. Meanwhile, do you know how to throw dice?”

Kimberlin weakly confessed that he did not.

"I thought not. Well, please go to the bar and bring a dice-box. I would ring for it, but I don't want the waiters to be coming in.”

Kimberlin fetched the box, again locked the door, and the game began. It was not one of the simple old games, but had complications, in which judgment, as well as chance, played a part. After a game or two without stakes, the stranger said—

"You now seem to understand it. Very well— I will show you that you do not. We will now throw for a dollar a game, and in that way I shall win the money that you received in change. Otherwise I should be robbing you, and I imagine you can not afford to lose. I mean no offense. I am a plain-spoken man, but 1 believe in honesty before politeness. 1 merely want a little diversion, and you are so kind-natured that I am sure you will not object.”

"On the contrary,” replied Kimberlin, "I shall enjoy it.”

"Very well; but let us have another drink before we start. I believe I am growing colder.”

They drank again, and this time the starving man took his liquor with relish— at least, it was something in his stomach, and it warmed and delighted him.

The stake was a dollar a side. Kimberlin won. The pale stranger smiled grimly, and opened another game. Again Kimberlin won. Then the stranger pushed back his hat and fixed that still gaze upon his opponent, smiling yet. With this full view of the pale stranger’s face, Kimberlin was more appalled than ever. He had begun to acquire a certain self-possession and ease, and his marvelling at the singular character of the adventure had begun to weaken, when this new incident threw him back into confusion. It was the extraordinary expression of the stranger’s face that alarmed him. Never upon the face of a living being had he seen a pallor so death-like and chilling. The face was more than pale; it was white. Kimberlin’s observing facultyhad been sharpened by the absinthe, and, after having detected the stranger in an absent-minded effort two or three times to stroke a beard which had no existence, he reflected that some of the whiteness of the face might- be due to the recent removal of a full beard. Besides the pallor, there were deep and sharp lines upon the face, which the electric light brought out very distinctly. With the exception of the steady glance of the eyes and an occasional hard smile, which seemed out of place upon such a face, the expression was that of stone inartistically cut. The eyes were black, but of heavy expression; the lower lip was purple; the hands were ine, white, and thin, and dark veins bulged out upon them. The stranger pulled down his hat.

"You are lucky,” he said. "Suppose we try another drink. There is nothing like absinthe to sharpen one’s wits, and I see that you and I are going to have a delightful game.”

After the drink the game proceeded. Kimberlin won from the very first, rarely losing a game. He became greatly excited. His eyes shone; color came to his cheeks. The stranger, having exhausted the roll of bills which he first produced, drew forth another, much larger and of higher denominations. There were several thousand dollars in the roil. At Kimberlin’s right hand were his winnings— something like two hundred dollars. The stakes were raised, and the game went rapidly on. Another drink was taken. Then fortune turned the stranger’s way, and he won easily. It went back to Kimberlin, for he was now playing with all the judgment and skill he could command. Once only did it occur to him to wonder what he should do with the money if he should quit winner; but a sense of honor decided him that it would belong to the stranger.

By this time the absinthe had so sharpened Kimberlin’s faculties that, the temporary satisfaction which it had brought to his hunger having passed, his physical suffering returned with increased aggressiveness. Could he not order a supper with his earnings? No; that was out of the question, and the stranger said nothing about eating. Kimberlin continued to play, while the manifestations of hunger took the form of sharp pains, which darted through him viciously, causing him to writhe and grind his teeth. The stranger paid no attention, for he was now wholly absorbed in the game. He seemed puzzled and disconcerted. He played with great care, studying each throw minutely. No conversation passed between them now. They drank occasionally, the dice continued to rattle, the money kept piling up at Kimberlin’s hand.

The pale man began to behave strangely. At times he would start and throw back his head, as though he were listening. For a moment his eyes would sharpen and flash, and then sink into heaviness again. More than once Kimberlin, who had now begun to suspect his antagonist was some kind of monster, saw a frightfully ghastly expression sweep over his face, and his features would become fixed for a very short time in a peculiar grimace. It was noticeable, however, that he was steadily sinking deeper and deeper into a condition of apathy. Occasionally hewould raise his eyes to Kimberlin’s face after the young man had made an astonishingly lucky throw, and keep them fixed there with a steadiness that made the young man quail.

The stranger produced another roll of bills when the second was gone, and this had a value many times as great as the others together. The stakes were raised to a thousand dollars a game, and still Kimberlin won. At last the time came when the stranger braced himself for a final effort. With speech somewhat thick, but very deliberate and quiet, he said, —

"You have won seventy-four thousand dollars, which is exactly the amount I have remaining. We have been playing for several hours. I am tired, and I suppose you are. Let us finish the game. Each will now stake his all and throw a final game for it.”

Without hesitation, Kimberlin agreed. The bills made a considerable pile on the table. Kimberlin threw, and the box held but one combination that could possibly beat him; this combination might be thrown once in ten thousand times. The starving man’s heart beat violently as the stranger picked up the box with exasperating deliberation. It was a long time before he threw. He made his combination and ended by defeating his opponent. He sat looking at the dice a long time, and then he slowly leaned back in his chair, settled himself comfortably, raised his eyes to Kimberlin’s, and fixed that unearthly stare upon him. He said not a word; his face contained not a trace of emotion or intelligence. He simply looked. One can not keep one’s eyes open very long without winking, but the stranger did. He sat so motionless that Kimberlin began to be tortured.

"I will go now,” he said to the stranger— said that when he had not a cent and was starving.

The stranger made no reply, but did not relax his gaze; and under that gaze the young man shrank back in his own chair, terrified. He became aware that two men were cautiously talking in an adjoining booth. As there was now a deathly silence in his own, he listened, and this is what he heard:

"Yes; he was seen to turn into this street about three hours ago.”

"And he had shaved?”

"He must have done so; and to remove a full beard would naturally make a great change in a man.”

"But it may not have been he.”

"True enough; but his extreme pallor attracted attention. You know that he has been troubled with heart-disease lately, and it has affected him seriously.”

"Yes, but his old skill remains. Why, this is the most daring bank-robbery we ever had here. A hundred and forty-eight thousand dollars— think of it! How long has it been since he was let out of Joliet?”

"Eight years. In that time he has grown a beard, and lived by dice-throwing with men who thought they could detect him if he should swindle them; but that is impossible. No human being can come winner out of a game with him. He is evidently not here; let us look farther.”

Then the two men clinked glasses and passed out.

The dice-players— the pale one and the starving one— sat gazing at each other, with a hundred and forty-eight thousand dollars piled up between them. The Manner made no move to take in the money; he merely sat and stared at Kimberlin, wholly unmoved by the conversation in the adjoining room. His imperturbability was amazing, his absolute stillness terrifying.

Kimberlin began to shake with an ague. The cold, steady gaze of the stranger sent ice into his marrow. Unable to bear longer this unwavering look, Kimberlin moved to one side, and then he was amazed to discover that the eyes of the pale man, instead of following him, remained fixed upon the spot where he had sat, or, rather, upon the wall behind it. A great dread beset the young man. He feared to make the slightest sound. Voices of men in the bar-room were audible, and the sufferer imagined that he heard others whispering and tiptoeing in the passage outside his booth. He poured out some absinthe, watching his strange companion all the while, and drank alone and unnoticed. He took a heavy drink, and it had a peculiar effect upon him: he felt his heart bounding with alarming force and rapidity, and breathing was difficult. Still his hunger remained, and that and the absinthe gave him an idea that the gastric acids were destroying him by digesting his stomach. He leaned forward and whispered to the stranger, but was given no attention. One of the man’s hands lay upon the table; Kimberlin placed his upon it, and then drew back in terror— the hand was as cold as a stone.

The money must not lie there exposed. Kimberlin arranged it into neat parcels, looking furtively every moment at his immovable companion, and in mortal fear that he would stir! Then he sat back and waited. A deadly fascination impelled him to move back into his former position, so as to bring his face directly before the gaze of the stranger. And so the two sat and stared at each other.

Kimberlin felt his breath coming heavier and his heart-beats growing weaker, but these conditions gave him comfort by reducing his anxiety and softening the pangs of hunger. He was growing more and more comfortable and yawned. If he had dared he might have gone to sleep.

Suddenly a fierce light flooded his vision and sent him with a bound to his feet. Had he been struck upon the head or stabbed to the heart? No; he was sound and alive. The pale stranger still sat there staring at nothing and immovable; but Kimberlin was no longer afraid of him. On the contrary, an extraordinary buoyancy of spirit and elasticity of body made him feel reckless and daring. His former timidity and scruples vanished, and he felt equal to any adventure. Without hesitation he gathered up the money and bestowed it in his several pockets.

"I am a fool to starve,” he said to himself, “with all this money ready to my hand.”

A s cautiously as a thief he unlocked the door, stepped out, reclosed it, and boldly and with head erect stalked out upon the street. Much to his astonishment, he found the city in the bustle of the early evening, yet the sky was clear. It was evident to him that he had not been in the saloon as long as he had supposed. He walked along the street with the utmost unconcern of the dangers that beset him, and laughed softly but gleefully. Would he not eat now— ah, would he not? Why, he could buy a dozen restaurants! Not only that, but he would hunt the city up and down for hungry men and feed them with the fattest steaks, the juiciest roasts, and the biggest oysters that the town could supply. As for himself, he must eat first; after that he would set up a great establishment for feeding other hungry mortals without charge. Yes, he would eat first; if he pleased, he would eat till he should burst. In what single place could he find sufficient to satisfy his hunger? Could he live sufficiently long to have an ox killed and roasted whole for his supper? Besides an ox he would order two dozen broiled chickens, fifty dozen oysters, a dozen crabs, ten dozen eggs, ten hams, eight young pigs, twenty wild ducks, fifteen fish of four different kinds, eight salads, four dozen bottles each of claret, burgundy, and champagne; for pastry, eight plum-puddings, and for dessert, bushels of nuts, ices, and confections. It would require time to prepare such a meal, and if he could only live until it could be made ready it would be infinitely better than to spoil his appetite with a dozen or two meals of ordinary size. He thought he could live that long, for he felt amazingly strong and bright. Never in his life before had he walked with so great ease and lightness; bis feet hardly touched the ground— he ran and leaped. It did him good to tantalize his hunger, for that would make his relish of the feast all the keener. Oh, but how they would stare when he would give his order, and how comically they would hang back, and how amazed they would be when he would throw a few thousands of dollars on the counter and tell them to take their money out of it and keep the change! Really, it was worth while to be so hungry as that, for then eating became an unspeakable luxury. And one must not be in too great a hurry to eat when one is so hungry— that is beastly. How much of the joy of living do rich people miss from eating before they are hungry— before they have gone three days and nights without food! And how manly it is, and how great self-control it shows, to dally with starvation when one has a dazzling fortune in one’s pocket and every restaurant has an open door! To be hungry without money— that is despair; to be starving with a bursting pocket— that is sublime! Surely the only true heaven is that in which one famishes in the presence of abundant food, which he might have for the taking, and then a gorged stomach and a long sleep.

The starving wretch, speculating thus, still kept from food. He felt himself growing in stature, and the people whom he met became pigmies. The streets widened, the stars became suns and dimmed the electric lights, and the most intoxicating odors and the sweetest music filled the air. Shouting, laughing, and singing, Kimberlin joined in a great chorus that swept over the city, and then—

THE TWO detectives who had traced the famous bank-robber to the saloon in Mason Street, where Kimberlin had encountered the stranger of the pallid face, left the saloon; but, unable to pursue the trail farther, had finally returned. They found the door of booth No. 7 locked. After rapping and calling and receiving no answer, they burst open the door, and there they saw two men— one of middle age and the other very young— sitting perfectly still, and in the strangest manner imaginable staring at each other across the table. Between them was a great pile of money, arranged neatly in parcels. Near at hand were an empty absinthe bottle, a water-pitcher, glasses, and a dice-box, with the dice lying before the elder man as he had thrown them last. One of the detectives covered the elder man with a revolver and commanded—

"Throw up your hands!”

But the dice-thrower paid no attention. The detectives exchanged startled glances. They looked closer into the faces of the two men, and then they discovered that both were dead.

_________________

10: A Very Queer Inn

M. B. Archer

In: Strange Secrets, Chatto & Windus, 1889

Nothing is known of this author, other than this story.

JUST AS that invariable setting sun which so often ushers a traveller into a story-book was sinking to rest below the horizon, I came in sight of the country-inn which was to shelter me for the night.

Inns on a solitary wayside present the same desolate appearance which is noticeable in a stray lamb or a lost child. One ruminates whether they have no expression equivalent to the cry of a child or the bleat of a lamb. These inns are as solitary as Stonehenge. Once the altars of hospitality, they are now mostly visited by the curious.

The inn of Baytown stood near no bay, and only a very untravelled yokel would be likely to call the village close to it a town. The inn was a brown patch on the top of a slope; grey lights from the east fell hard upon it, while the crimson glory of the west slanted off to the distant landscape, and drew every warm tinge away from the village hotel. Immediately I conjured up all those dismal stories whose focus of action centres upon these wayside inns.

However, the dipping sun seemed to be delaying its downfall, so that I might reach my destination under its patronage, just as a spluttering candle will sometimes flare up desperately to accommodate a reader to the last line but one of his book.

I was not insensible to the luminary’s attention; I would not make light of it while it made light for me. I quickened my horse’s pace and soon drew rein before Baytown inn. Then the red globe departed in presence, and left only its train of effulgence behind. Evidently earthly monarchs have taken counsel of the celestial one, since they allow their personal splendour to stream off into gorgeous retinue.

But no earthly monarch disports the colours of his court in so wide an arena as the horizon across which the pompous sun swept his train. Serried troops of clouds moved superbly in the haze of his departed majesty, and to its shimmer reached the tallest trees, and their topmost leaves caught the glow of royalty, and shone like bits of burnished gold.

I might have reflected upon the beauty of the scene to an unlimited extent, for I find that the habit of reflection is thus much akin to the habit of smoking— it grows upon one insensibly. And as it is usual to have more than one cigar in a case, so it is usual to possess two or three forms of reverie in the mind. My thoughts were cut short, however, by an ostler, who came out of the inn and laid his hand on my horse’s bridle with an air of appropriation. He said,

“Fine today, sir; wet tomorrow.”

“Well,” said I, “how do you know that?”

“See those clouds over there, sir! Bless your heart, not that way, but where the sun doesn’t shine. Pretty closely banked together, you see, sir. Blue as mouldy cheese. Well, if they don’t bust tomorrow, I never see a storm. Come in, sir. ‘Good stabling for horse and man,’ as the poet do say.”

“This is a dead-alive place,” I remarked irreverently.

“Not a bit, sir, not a bit. Twice a week the people pours past here on their way to Wookle, which is two miles off. And they pours back again— in the course of nature, which keeps a river wet at its source, as my father used to say. ’Twouldn’t be much of a river, I suppose, that filled the sea and got dry at its rise. ‘Charity begins at home,’ as my mother used to say.”

“Perhaps you can tell me what your grandmother used to say?” I asked amiably.

The ostler gave me a sly glance.

“She said, sir, according to my memory, that civility were its own reward. But, to my thinking, civility comes all the easier when there’s something to wash it down, digestive like.”

“You don’t look like a teetotaller,” said I, fumbling in my pocket, while I scrutinized the ostler’s red nose, “Is there anybody human beside yourself here? because, if there is. I should like a room and a meal.”

“Master is down with the pigs,” said the ostler, fingering my remembrance with supple fingers. “And Simon, I don’t know where Simon is, sir. Here, Simon,” he cried, lifting his voice and shouting into vacancy, “you’re wanted.”

The sound died away without an answer to meet it; profound silence ensued for the space of three minutes, at the end of which time the ostler said,

“I don’t think he’s coming, sir.”

“I don’t think he is,” said I. Imagination must have been rife to dream that any creature was coming in the utter stillness, save a bluebottle fly which whisked through the air and settled on my nose.

“Can’t you take me in yourself?” said I, as the ostler put up his hands in preparation for another volley.

The man dropped his hands with alacrity.

“Course! Come along, sir, this way. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind getting out of the way of that goat. It always butts at strangers, poor thing.”

I willingly consented not to mind, under apprehensive circumstances, though I conjectured whether I or the goat should be an object of pity. After stumbling over a plank, which sent my hat flying into a tub of dirty water, I arrived safely at the inn-door, with the goat in my rear.

“Why, in the name of thunder,” said I inappositely, “do you keep a goat and a tub before your door?”

“Why, you see, sir,” said the ostler, grinning, “one’s a butt and the other butts. Singler and pluriel, as my schoolmaster used to say.”

“Hang your schoolmaster!” I exclaimed testily.

“Can’t, sir,” retorted the ostler; “he’s dead.”

I picked out my drenched hat with a grace that was not suave, and followed the man into a room. There he left me, with the cheering assurance that if the reluctant Simon did not soon come the landlord himself would appear after he had disengaged himself from his pigs. Judging from the silence of Simon’s distant presence I prepared to fortify myself with patience, and began to look about me, and to investigate the place as if I were the man in possession.

The large gloomy room in which I sat seemed to have packed into it the ancient refuse furniture of the county. The chair which supported me creaked uneasily, as though to warn me that it was only warranted to bear the weight of a ghostly ancestor. An old looking-glass above the cracked mantelpiece had tearful tendencies, which induced dull deadened streaks down its would-be glossy surface; and some peacocks’ feathers in two antiquated vases waved to and fro like the plumes of a hearse. Some old prints, entitled to the respect of age, but claiming no other respect whatever, backed against the wall, as though they were ready to retire from the scene, a sentiment on their part which did them credit; for they were atrociously executed, and the nearest approach to definite drawing was presented by a head and a tail separated by vacuum. A vivid imagination, ruralized, might discern in these salient features the suggestion of a frolicsome lamb. The sofa was pitted with a disease peculiar to rep and rosewood; a species of furniture smallpox. The ravages of this malady revealed a dirty white substance, which might have been taken from the pictorial lamb after it had tumbled in the gutter. A chiffonier, crammed with photographs in every stage of consumptive complexion, and weighted by an enormous Bible, completed the chief furniture of the room. After taking stock of a stuffed dog, a footstool, and two more chairs, elegantly frail, the inventory was complete.

I heard a knock at the door; it was very feeble, very uncertain. I shouted out, “Come in!” for it seemed to me that so unsubstantial a summons must need a vigorous reply in order to reach it. The waiter opened the door; his back was as weak as the wooden one which supported me. He appeared to have been dispossessed at some time of his spine; probably in infancy, for he achieved a variety of contortions that could only have been acquired after long practice. He had the inbred ease of a caterpillar, and his hairy hands fostered the crawling illusion.

I saluted this flexible human, as he opened the door and crept round the edge of it to the inside, with a quiet, “Well, sir?”

“Well, sir!” repeated the waiter, staring at me very hard indeed, as if I had him under examination, and he was trying to gauge my profundity.

“Well, sir?” I reiterated, waiting to hear what he would say next.

“Well, sir?” he repeated, as if he were waiting for the same thing too.

“Have you nothing to say for yourself?” demanded I.

“No, sir,” answered the man, with exasperating submission.

“Nothing!” I cried warmly.

“Missis told me to ask you whether you meant to stay here all night.”

“Is that what you call having nothing to say?” asked I.

“Bless you, sir, I haint,” replied the waiter earnestly. “I never have anything to say, not of my own.”

I looked at the man with sudden compunction, as at one whose speech, like his time, belonged to other people. He noticed the glance, and was going to shrink away, when I called him back.

“You may tell your mistress I mean to stay the night. And what is the matter?”

For my waiter had begun to cry.

I looked at him in the silence of astonishment. I was uncomfortable.

I shut my eyes, to open them again with a sense of reality. There was no need for the test. This waiter of a wayside inn had already displayed to me two uncommon accomplishments: he undulated and he cried; and he did both with the ease of habit.

I put my hands in my pockets. There is no other attitude which so fully expresses the master of the situation. I felt like a very small First Napoleon.

“Now, my man,” said I, “what do you mean by this? If you are a knave, I shall find you out; if you are a fool—”

“Bless you, sir,” interrupted the waiter uneasily, “I hain’t insane. But the house is chock-full, as I live. All of us sleep here; we never have stranger what stop.”

“And yet your mistress sent to ask me if I meant to stop all night?”

“She didn’t, that’s it!” cried the waiter writhing in a frenzy of grief, as if I had stamped upon all his nerves at once. “She said you could not stop all night; but I forgot, I made a mistake; Oh dear!”

“Don’t be a fool,” I said. “What room in this place do you call your own, because—”

The man petrified me with a stare. Then he said slowly,

“I go anywheres, sir. I haint anything in this world; leastways, not o’ mine.”

This was the sublimity of the ridiculous. They are not only next door to each other; they can fall into each other and make ruins. I was impelled to change the purpose which I had before resolved on when I had started in the morning from Baytown inn.

“Never mind about my bedroom,” I said briskly. “Where is the top loft?”

I looked straight at the snaky figure and the washed-out eyes, receiving in return only a puzzled expression, which revealed nothing, and seemed to have nothing to reveal.

“Come, you know it,” I said persuasively.

But this last effect was lost by the appearance of another figure in the doorway— a figure stout and sleek and well proportioned, whose thick round head was thrust into a soft felt hat, which was trying not to burst its seams asunder under the pressure. It had so far failed as to bulge into several awkward holes.

“Are you the proprietor?” I asked of this third masculine apparition.

“Guess so,” he replied, with a jolly roll on the last word. “Fat enough for the place, ain’t I, sir?”

He did not wait for an answer, but, seeing some symptom of jocosity in his remark, which had totally escaped me, he began to laugh with the vehemence which makes one think of a fit. The waiter had ceased to cry; the landlord was laughing; I could not assume an impassive air.

The last gamut died away at length, and mine host inquired if I wanted anything.

“I want a bedroom,” said I, with some hesitation. Perhaps the landlord could cry as well as his man.

“Bedroom ready,” promptly replied the landlord. “Here, you Wriggler, go and tell your missis to be quick.”

The Wriggler departed, and I began with, “Your man—”

“A little soft— ha, ha!” said the landlord, rubbing his hands in a cheerful way. “We are all soft somewhere, eh, sir? Some in the head; some in the heart. Now, my place is in the heart.”

I congratulated the landlord on the happy locality of his tender spot, and asked him if there was only one bedroom for travellers in the house.

“Only one, sir. Our trade depends on the market-people. We are not often favoured with a gentleman of your evident ability, sir. Ha, ha! There’s a garret, sir, where they say you can have a fine view of the moon. Ha, ha, ha! We call it the top loft, sir.”

I asked myself how a man could laugh so much at nothing, and for answer found myself laughing too. We joined our peals together, and made a chime which might have convinced a misanthrope that we were convulsed with overpowering wit.

“Well, that a good joke,” said my landlord, rubbing his hands with the satisfied air of a man who had just made a bargain.

“Capital!” echoed I. “One doesn’t get that sort of thing every day.” My landlord spoke like a connoisseur.

“No, nor every other day,” said I cordially.

“You’re a good judge, sir, if you know as much about wine—”

I accepted the delicate hint, and before long mine host and I sat opposite to each other in a small parlour, with a bottle of claret between us, which no more separated us than a galvanic battery divides the people who are holding on to its wires.

I had a purpose in my conversation with the landlord; there were times when I doubted whether he had not a purpose with me. Through the bursts of his exuberant mirth I caught now and then a stray glance, which was distrustful, sharp, anxious. But one cannot draw a flash of lightning as it passes, and I could not transcribe definitely on my mind the glances which aroused me.

We sat and talked long. I persisted in chatting until my dinner was ready. The landlord was not so willing to stay as I was to keep him. He took an immense interest in my dinner, and left the room several times to overlook it. I waited for him to come back, and on the principle of at traction, by which a strong will galvanizes a weak one, he came back, always with a joke upon his lips. I laughed so much to accommodate him, that I began to long for the serenity of a meal. But my mirth and my conversational powers had as yet been wasted, and I had not arrived at the consciousness of a well-earned repast.

Yet I had made minute inquiries. With the enthusiasm of an antiquary, I had asked for a history of the old inn about me.

The landlord gave it freely. I inquired if he would allow me to look through it. With affability he promised me an inquisitorial visit after dinner. But before dinner— For once my baffled faculties hoped that a meal would prove suggestive instead of soporific.

As it progressed in the large ghostly room, which I had first entered, I meditated on several plans of circumventing the landlord. It is always difficult to fathom jollity; one has much more chance of unmasking a serious shrewd man than of showing up an individual bulwarked with the bonhomie of my jolly landlord. There was no air of mystery about him. It is proverbially possible to find skeletons in cupboards, where a fit darkness reigns. But to fish one up out of a steaming punch-bowl, the very reservoir of joviality, is scarcely to be expected of any man.

However, my task had been set me, and I had promised to execute it, with the suggestion that a sterner execution might be the result of it. I had, happily, no tremors, only an incertitude as to the best way of proceeding. Under this perplexity, for the first time in my life, I ceased to envy one living statesman.

My dinner was a good one, and I could not help appreciating the zeal of the landlord, as my palate warmed with fine flavours. For an out-of-the-way place the cooking was extraordinary, and was explained by the assertion of my landlord that he had been the pupil of a renowned chef. It is not easy to cherish suspicions against a man who gives you a good dinner; and after the wriggler had cork-screwed away my last dish, I lit a cigar and slowly paced the room.

“The confounded dreamer!” said I, fondly apostrophizing an absent friend. “He will find a ghost in his sugar basin someday. Suspicious, indeed! Think of that mushroom omelette, and don’t talk to me of suspicions. Pooh! a man with a firm mind can see at a glance that the idea was only the wildest conjecture.”

At this resolute climax the door creaked ominously. My firm mind started on its well-balanced hinges. The door was not well-balanced at all; but it swung on its hinges, nevertheless, and revealed the Wriggler.

As an habitué of the place and its customs since five o’clock, I was not surprised that he did not speak. It was not even astonishing to find him staring at me meditatively for a second or two. I maintained that serene composure which any adept in the art of being photographed soon learns. With similar composure he scanned my features. But that he writhed continually, one might have taken him for a petrified artist, absorbed in the sublime reverie of creating me on canvas.

I waited patiently for speech from the oracle. When it came, I was persuaded it would be worth hearing. Expectations are delusive; the Wriggler suddenly withdrew his face, and was about to latch the door outside. I interposed. He was quietly wriggling with the grace of a boa-constrictor in the middle of my room; my hand was tenacious of his coat-collar.

“Now,” said I, with as much suavity as I could command, “you must explain to me your kind scrutiny of my features. You don’t understand? Well, what is there in my face to stare at?”

“Missis wanted me to look at you,” said the Wriggler.

It was quite evident that the man had no mind to pursue his mistress’ behest, for he slid to the door with the subtle ease that oil trickles down a warm tin.

“Please,” faltered the Wriggler, “missis didn’t tell me to tell you I was to look at you.”

“What of that?” I demanded.

“Don’t tell her,” replied the man. “If she knew I told you, she would be angry if you told her.”

I consented to have nothing to do with these perplexing pronouns, and told the man to go away and mind his own business.

“Lor, sir,” said he, in departing, “I hain’t got no business, not o’ mine.”

This unexpected visit had upset all my comfortable theories of resolving my friend’s arguments into dreams. Why should the Wriggler be sent to look at me? I was not a young man of Apollo-like appearance, nor at all calculated to impress the imagination even of a landlady. When acquaintances wish to pay me a compliment, they find it easiest to congratulate me on the improvement in my general appearance if I mount a pair of eyeglasses. I appreciate their delicacy, while I gauge it. Without a looking-glass it is possible for me to know that to produce effect I must purchase it. No, the landlady’s interest in my features could not be due to an admiration of them during any surreptitious glance which she might have obtained.

There was a mystery, without doubt — the waiter had convinced me on that score — and I set myself to brood over it in a methodical manner. But the landlord’s jolly face interposed continually between me and my morbid fancies. How could such an appearance hold any horror in disguise? Impossible. And yet — ah, yet — I dropped into the depths of a reverie.

A reverie is the plantation where phantoms are raised. They spring up like the proverbial mushrooms, and they are the same sort of creation — dark, misshapen, flexible. It was too warm for a fire, or else a few burning coals heat the chill atmosphere of sickly fancies, and induce a current of fresh air through the mind. I stared at the fireless grate: I watched the flickering candles; I measured my shadow on the wall; I paced the room; I sat down on every chair; I even turned up the Bible, read attentively through Noah’s family-tree, and having satisfied myself as to his extreme respectability, I drank to his memory.

Now, whether the wine fermented an idea, or whether the Bible supplied it, I never can determine. Certain it is that I returned to the latter, and turned over its leaves between the division that separates the Old Testament from the New. There another genealogy confronted me: of less ancient stock than Noah’s, but of more interest to me on that account.

There were three pages inserted between the Old and New Testament, closely lined and headed respectively with Births, Marriages, Deaths. This was a family Bible; and the compiler of it had provided lines enough to certify the names of as many children as Methuselah might have had during his thousand years of existence. There was provision made for forty births, forty marriages, and forty deaths. The supply, in all respects, was generous.

But generosity is one of those commodities which, like charity, is often ill-bestowed. In this desert of a register there existed only one oasis of an entry in black ink— one on each page. They were written in a large anxious hand, which I easily traced to my landlord. One generally observes that these jovial uneducated men only exhibit anxiety when they sit down to write. I traced the register backwards. Of death there was one notice:

“Died, on the 20th January 18––, my mother, Elizabeth Ann Fern, aged seventy-six. Her end was peace.”

Under the head of marriages this singular statement occurred:

“On the 10th September 18––, I, Thomas Fern, bachelor, married Mary Sexton, spinster, at the parish church, Bay town. May we never live to regret it!

I turned to the births. There was one recorded:

“This day, the 9th August 18––, I, Thomas Fern, joyfully record the birth of a daughter. Her name is to be Lucy.”

This announcement was dated eleven years past. I shut the Bible. These records were quite in the vein of my jolly landlord. They were simple and practical. I felt relieved again, and determined to see if the child was still extant, with the intent of having her in to amuse, after the fashion of an elderly man who likes children.

I walked out of my sitting-room, and, in the low passage outside, came into concussion with my first friend— the ostler. He was running through the house from back to front, and dashed against me, as if he thought I was an apparition, and expected to find me only a vaporous obstacle.

“Sharp work, sir,” said he, rubbing his forehead where it had met mine.

“Particularly so,” said I, trying to imitate his tone of cordial fraternity.

“That dratted goat has flied away, you see, sir, and I was—”

“Flying after it,” said I comprehensively. “Very good! I should not expect anything in this place to follow the ordinary suggestions of Nature. Can I assist you?”

“Well, it’s storming,” said the ostler, in the reflective manner which I had observed before. “That ’ere goat’s a regular Wandering Jew. You never seed the brain it has for travelling. It’s my belief it’s haunted.” The ostler dropped his voice to an impressive whisper.

“You don’t mean it!” I said, looking mysterious.

“Fact, sir! Ever since— But bless my heart, if I go out with a ghost to carry my thoughts for me, I shall never get down to Ditchley Pond.”

“If the goat has such a remarkable bump of locality as you suggest,” said I. “could it not find its way back again?”

“Bless your hinnercent mind, sir, the missis wouldn’t rest a moment while that ’ere goat was flying about. Ever since—”

There was a pause again. I nodded encouragingly. “Yes; ever since?”

“No; that I won’t!” cried the ostler, buttoning up his coat-collar with sudden determination. “’Tain’t the sort of reflection for a dark night. Would you like to come, sir; I daresay it won’t rain all the way to Ditchley Pond. That dratted goat always flies to the water like a poisoned rat.”

“How far is it?” asked I hesitatingly.

“Something short of two mile, sir. I reckon a little more back, because the creature has to be pulled against its will. When a thing sticks its four legs into the ground square, you has an instinct that it have got two too many.”

“Does your mistress expect you to go out in this storm after the goat?” said I.

“Hush— sh, sir! We never tell her it’s lost till it’s found. She’d be in that wandering way that runs between hysterics and a faint. I’ll run him up in no time; and if you are afraid of spoiling the shine of your hat, sir, I wouldn’t advise you to go with me, for those blue clouds are bursting their very skins.”

I submitted to this kind consideration, and, out of respect to my hat, declined the wild goat-chase. The ostler nodded me a cheery good-night and opened the front door. There was a rush of rain outside, and the wind, with wet skirts, trailed through the passage, and sighed and moaned.

I would have begged the man to delay his search until calmer weather; but he had shut the door and was gone. I opened it to call after him; there was no response, save from the heavy wind. I heard the ostler’s feet racing through the dark night. Would he have told me the sequel of that ever since — if I had gone with him? Not he, after that resolution of voice and action. Besides, I had rheumatism, and avoided the rain from sheer instinct.

I determined to hunt out the mistress of the establishment. If she were as peculiar as the rest of its supporters, I thought the quartet of singularity would be complete. Besides, there was the child, and one seeks for a child by its mother’s side, as one looks for seaweed on the shore of the ocean. I pursued my way through the irregular passage that ran from back to front, with a keen look-out ahead, lest the Wriggler should be also bent upon some express message, which might lead to some more sharp work, as the ostler expressively termed it.

The passage was dimly lighted, as for accustomed feet, and I stumbled twice over steps that occurred in the darkest recesses of the corridor. There were voices sounding, however, in the fore, and there was also a ray of light, which slanted through an open doorway; a light that flickered and waned and reddened, and came evidently from a fire. The voices drifted over the light; they were duo— the treble of a woman, the rougher utterance of a man.

I went cautiously along, but not stealthily; for when one is not very sure of one’s reception, there is nothing like footfalls to presage an introduction. Evidently my boots served this purpose; the voices suddenly stopped. I went on, pushed farther open the already opened door, and stood before my landlord’s wife and the Wriggler. The Wriggler had been under cross-examination; there was the evidence of restraint and anxious memory upon his face. He welcomed my advent with relief, and looked at the door as a felon looks at the “Way out” for the public thoroughfare. The woman before me rose as I made my unceremonious entrance. I had purposely avoided knocking; but the purpose was not sufficient to extinguish my annoyance at having committed a breach of common courtesy, most especially as I looked at the landlady. I had expected to see a buxom dame of “marmish” manners and florid countenance. Instead, I saw a woman who could have compelled respect in any society. Her composure, the decision and repose of her massive olive-skinned face, the unconscious steadiness and dignity of her attitude, were impressive. My intentional discourtesy ceased to be atoned for by circumstances; her presence made the intrusion an unwarrantable liberty.

“I must really apologize,” said I, with real earnestness. “My abrupt entrance cannot be excused by the only excuse I have to make— that I heard voices within, and wanted to speak to someone.”

“It is no matter, sir,” said Mrs. Fern, looking a little surprised. “I am quite ready to speak to you, sir, if there is anything I can do for you. Simon, you may go.”

The accent of this speech was Scotch; that nativity explained some portion of the landlady’s manner. Simon, the Wriggler, went with alacrity, and was so jubilant over his escape, that he ventured the suggestion of a wink at me.

“Are you lonely, sir?” asked Mrs. Fern, with a smile, which showed to advantage on her thin crisp lips.

“Rather eerie, I think,” said I. “You will understand a native word.”

“You catch a Scotch twang in my speech,” she said; “but I am not Scotch, though my father was. He was a superstitious man, and used to make me eerie with his tales of fays and goblins upon the winter mountains.”

“That sort of education should develop here,” said I. “One could swear to a legion of spirits round this house. Are you nervous?”

“Not a bit,” said she, with a cheery laugh. “Nor are you, sir; only uncommonly impressionable for a man.”

“You have a taste for photography,” said I, smiling. “It asserts itself here as well as in your drawing-room.”

“Ah, sir, that is my husband. I hate litter, and like every bit of mahogany to show off its polish, as long as there is any. But my husband has an odd fancy to keep brittle stuff everywhere, and he wouldn’t part with those photographs for all the fine pictures that were ever painted.”

“That is a hobby,” said I.

“No, begging your pardon, sir,” Mrs. Fern answered. “it is a soft heart. Didn’t he tell you he had a soft heart? Well, it’s true, though people are not often correct about their characteristics, to my thinking. Things soon get valuable to him by association; and he keeps more than one silly trifle because he has kept it before, for some forgotten reason. I hate litter; but he humours me, and I must humour him.”

“I don’t know whether I ought to condemn your sex, even to make you an exception, Mrs. Fern,” said I. “But women are not generally as fair as you in giving and receiving.”

“Are you married, sir?” asked the landlady; and her shrewd placid face, as it surveyed me, made the question perfectly becoming.

“Not I,” said I, laughing. “Never had a fancy yet, except for cigars. Do you believe it?”

“No,” she said quietly. “I don’t.” The voice was resolute, but there was not a sign of curiosity upon her face. She turned the subject, not abruptly, but by a leading route.

“I was going to say, sir, that only a married man has a chance of knowing how much a woman can give and give in without seeming to do either. You must not reckon yourself a judge, sir, if you will pardon my saying so.”

“Thank you for setting me straight,” I answered. “l recognize you as an authority. But am I detaining you as much as I am keeping you standing? Your husband promised to let me see some rooms in the house after dinner.”

“He will be here in a minute,” Mrs. Fern replied. “Won’t you sit down, sir? Simon, where is George?”

This latter was addressed to the Wriggler, who had crept into the room with some coals. While I wondered that so dignified a woman should ask a servant about her husband by his Christian name, she turned to me with an interpreting glance and an amused laugh.

“Not my husband, sir, but the ostler!”

I bowed instinctively, and began to be afraid lest my purpose should be discernible to this quick-eyed woman. In my conversation with her I had forgotten it, and this reminder made me feel ill at ease.

The Wriggler stood blankly still, coals in hands and mouth agape.

His mistress betrayed no impatience, but said decisively, “Are you silly, Simon?”

The nursery tale which used to beguile my childhood with pictures and verses, anent an acute pie-man who refused Simon a pie without a penny, here came vividly to my mind. I laughed, and the landlady heard me.

“Pray excuse me,” said I apologetically. “It is only another instance of photography which I will explain to you in a moment.”

“You have not forgotten the nursery, sir,” said she smiling. “Simon, where is George?”

The poor Wriggler trembled, and I could divine the cause of his agitation after the ostler’s remarks.

“Well, Simon?” said his mistress, with asperity.

“He’s out,” burst forth the unhappy waiter, wringing his hands and shooting the coals forth right and left.

“Good luck, man!” exclaimed Mrs. Fern, seizing the shovel-handle and stopping the downfall. “Are you quite daft?” She threw the coals on the fire, and then petrified the Wriggler with another question: “Why has George gone out? He will get drowned in this deluge.”

The Wriggler faltered miserably. He stuttered and broke into a palpable falsehood:

“Please, ’m, I don’t know.”

His mistress dismissed him, with an uneasy expression upon her face.

“One can never judge of that poor fellow,” she said to me. “He generally seems to tell a lie when he speaks the truth; and when he does venture on a falsehood he manages to assume a plausible air.”

I asked myself if she were trying to deceive herself or me. Her calm straightforward face rebuked my suspicions.

At this moment my landlord entered. He nodded at me, and rolled out a jolly—

“Evening, sir. How did you like your dinner?”

“Never ate a better one,” I answered. “You are a master of combinations.”

“I served under a good master, you see, sir. What is the matter, missis? You don’t look spry tonight.”

“George has gone out,” said the landlady, in a distrustful tone.

“Has he?” said Mr. Fern, stooping down low to tie up a bootlace. “Well, it’s a mercy he’s weather-proofed, ain’t it? There’s enough water tonight to drown anyone with warmer blood than a fish.”

“Why has he gone out?” asked his wife.

“Couldn’t swear,” replied the landlord, still busied with his bootlace. “He’s one of the sort that has whims. Best to leave whims to break out free, like smallpox or scarlet fever, I say.”

This liberal view of the subject did not seem to satisfy Mrs. Fern. I saw that a question trembled on her lip, which she once or twice resolutely repressed. I should have retired in order to afford her the liberty of making it, but that her husband was evidently afraid of meeting the demand. He seemed anxious to keep me there, and told his wife to get out some of her own particular cordial, which he warranted would warm a corpse back to life. I suggested that it was a wonder his house was not besieged for so marvellous an elixir, and he laughed, and asked me, as a future corpse, to give my opinion of the liquor.

It was excellent— sweet as Noyeau, almost as fine-flavoured as Chartreuse; and as I mentioned Chartreuse I was forthwith led into telling a legend of an old monk, who had divulged the secret of a famous liqueur, and whose retribution was devised by his fellows. He was allowed to take nothing but the liquor until he died. “Best way of being starved I ever heard of,” ejaculated the landlord, and he went to put a wedge of wood into a shaking window.

And during this time the storm grew in passion and intensity. There was a wild animus in its strength; there was almost personal spite in its clamours at the doors and windows. The landlady’s face got whiter, and her thin lips almost disappeared in the pressure with which they met. Her husband drank the cordial, held it up to the light and admired its colour; but he laughed uneasily.

I was anxious to introduce the topic of the child, and yet knew not how. Mrs. Fern wore a black dress, but there was no crape upon it; and above its blackness, no sign of mourning about it. Neither were there any signs of childhood in this living-room. I looked vainly for a doll, or a toy, or a ribbon, or a shoe. Where, then, was little Lucy Fern? On a visit? in her bed? Surely not That man and woman had no air about them which bespoke the caresses of a child. And on such a fearful night as this, no child could be left alone; no mother, with the evident tenderness of Mrs. Fern’s disposition, would fail to be by the cot of the house, and to make a warm presence there through the desolate and resounding darkness.

I drank two glasses of cordial, and my landlady was pressing another on me, when there came a tap at the back door; and thither went the landlord. George followed his master into the kitchen, and in the rear came the Wriggler, supported by his fellow-servant’s presence. Mrs. Fern was holding the bottle over my little glass when they entered; she put it down again.

The landlord took off his hat and put it on again: this served to pass the first awkward moment. Mrs. Fern scanned George thoroughly. He was wet from head to foot, and raindrops trickled from his heavy eyebrows down his broad flat face, and some of them entered his gaping mouth.

“Well, George,” said Mrs. Fern rather shortly, “I should have thought you had had enough of water without swallowing it! Come near the fire, man, and let us look at ye.”

George advanced, an unwilling spectacle. I could not help smiling. The wiry ostler was deluged, his short coat was patched with masses of wet, his cut-sleeves were twinkling with raindrops; and he himself looked as if he had lost his identity— had become an amphibious creature, and was bewildered at his new condition.

“Why, man, ye’re as daft as Simon!” said Mrs. Fern impatiently. “Is the water glueing your feet to the floor? What possessed you to go out this night!”

There was silence. The landlord returned to his bootlace; the Wriggler began to slide to the door; George kept his ground, but bent his head and looked at the floor. I was an interested spectator of this sudden tableau. Mrs. Fern’s brow clouded; into her clear grey eyes there stole a hot mist, and she half turned away and opened a cupboard-door.

“Of course,” she said, in a low troubled voice. “I knew it must be that. George, have you brought it back?”

The question was spoken in a different tone from the soliloquy. There was a breath of defiance in it; and the woman faced the ostler inquiringly.

“Yes, mum,” said George. “I didn’t want you to know about it until I brought it back; but that Wriggler is always a burstin’ of himself with a secret, if it is no bigger than a sparrow’s egg.”

Mrs. Fern took up the bottle of cordial again. Her hand was not as steady as before, but she managed to pour me out my glass. Then she produced a tumbler, half filled it, and gave it to the ostler.

“Take that, George, and go to bed, and Simon shall dry your clothes: you’re a good lad. And the goat’s all right?”

“He ain’t too ill to be obstinate,” said George, smiling assuringly. “Not a soul can manage that rampageous animal since—”

“Hush!” said the landlord. “Enough of that. Don’t stand shivering, my lad; you can put off having rheumatism till you’re as old as me.”

George departed with a general good-night, followed by the Wriggler. A strange gloom had fallen on mine host, and mine hostess looked stern and sad. I could make no inquiries that night, and asked, instead, for my candle. Mrs. Fern gave it to me, and offered to show me to my bedroom. It was still early, but I had no mind to face the sepulchral parlour again. Mine host bade me good-night and hoped I should sleep well, and I returned the compliment. Mrs. Fern preceded me upstairs, opened a door, and hoped that I should be comfortable. I replied suitably, and was left alone with my candle, my bedroom, and my reflections.

This new chamber was situated exactly over the parlour, and was of the same dimensions and the same dreariness. The furniture was still more worn than that below-stairs, and the huge bedstead stood like a stranded ark in the middle of the apartment. I walked across the worm-eaten floor to the place where my small knapsack stood, and began to undo the straps; they creaked, but something else creaked, and I sprang to the door and opened it wide, to find nothing. There was an old key in the lock, too rusty to turn; there was no bolt to the door; and the only protection I could devise consisted in placing a chair against the door and on the chair two tin candlesticks, so that anyone wishing to enter must perforce enter with a noise.

The storm was getting madder every moment. I pulled up my blind and peered into the deluged country through the window. The rain dashed against it in heavy splashes; but in the intervals I could see a sombre landscape, in which the draggled trees stood like giants, melancholy and forlorn. A few lights were dotted about the village, and the wind made them shiver as it passed over them to grapple with the trees in furious gusts of spasmodic strength. The view without was suicidal in its influences. I turned again to the one within. Except that the room was dry and sheltered, it was scarcely more cheering than the miserable landscape. I held up my candle and glanced round me. There was but one picture on the wall. It was a photograph enlarged and coloured: the photograph of a very pretty child, with light blue eyes and curling flaxen hair. And the face boded the firmness of Mrs. Fern, together with the good humour and frankness of her husband. This must be the child whose birth was registered in the family Bible. She looked about seven years old, but the intelligence of her large eyes and wide brow spoke of a mental growth beyond the proportion of the physical. I was not surprised at the unusual brightness of this child; her mother was a remarkable woman, repressed by ordinary circumstances. Even a sculptor would show no recognized talent if he had only cast iron to mould. And the circumstances of Mrs. Fern’s life were not such as to give her scope for the expression of a resolute and original character. In some volcanic era she might have stood as to the burning, bush, illuminated with all its fiery passions, even the focus of them, while she remained erect and unconsumed.

Yet these forces of character are seldom wholly lost, though they be concealed. The young child at whose portrait I was gazing had the prophetic air of one whose way in the world would be signalled by phosphorescent footprints, and whose speech when it fell, would be clearer than the mumble of the crowd. Where was she, this child? Did not her mother love her with that affection which a mature mind conceives for one cast in the same mould, still undeveloped, but giving hints of power lying within the measure of its growth, as a young science prophesies material of wonderment for coming ages?

I could not go to bed while the storm still raged. There was a sofa in one corner, and I wheeled it close away from the wall, and lay myself down and listened to the demoniacal breathing of the storm. With a hundred eerie voices it shrieked past my window and sent a passing blast down the chimney. With a thump and a twirl and a scurry like a High land reel gone mad, the dervish wind played its blustering pranks till it moaned like a spent thing, and sobbed with the reaction of its furious anguish.

Under such influence I fell asleep, and the last face I had seen came to me— a little face, the crowning of a slender, delicate form; a little face with pleading eyes and earnest visage, and determined lips and brows; a straight, slim creature, that held out its hands to me, and the raindrops fell from them drearily. I tried to touch it, but I could not; it shrank from my approach, and still entreated me when I left it; and when I gave up all hope of holding it in my grasp, it came and whispered close to my ear with wet cold lips that it was wandering, ever wandering. Unhouseled and tormented, restless and tired to death, it sought for peace, and yet could not find a clod of mother earth that would cover it and keep it warm.

The wan eyes pleaded for sleep, the young worn face wanted a yielding pillow, the little body strained with sickening pilgrimage was all a-quiver for a couch whereon to lay its limbs.

I could not touch it nor speak to it— it went. And darkness followed it and overspread me, and dreamless slumber came upon me, wherein lies the monotony of unconsciousness.

Something awoke me, I could not tell what. I sprang to my feet with that bewildering sense which comes from startled awakement, that I must act in a crisis without knowing what the crisis might be. Gradually my nerves regained vitality. What had awoke me? There was not a sound in the house. And yet, was there not? In acute states of sensitiveness one seems to feel sound rather than to hear it. I knew that there were footsteps moving not many paces off. I looked at my watch: it was one o’clock in the morning. I had slept for three hours. And again I listened. There were steps approaching close to my door. Double footsteps; two people, and one was the onerous tread of man, the other of light-footed woman. I looked at the door, expecting to see it burst open, with a shock of tin candle sticks, and Heaven only knows what other shocks besides. But my door remained unmoved, and I advanced to it swiftly and laid my head against the keyhole. A woman’s dress rustled. Mrs. Fern’s voice whispered sadly,

“Dear Thomas, not tonight! O, not tonight!”

“Ay, tonight,” answered the landlord, in a dogged, sullen tone that I could scarcely recognize as his. “Go you to bed, my lass, and I will fetch a light.”

“How can I go to bed? Thomas, you are mad. Not tonight, dear Thomas. You have not the nerve.”

“Go you to bed, lass. Go back, lass. Leave me alone; I’m going to get a light.”

I heard the heavy footsteps descend and the lighter foot steps ascend. There was a dead silence, in which twenty fancies rose like night shades in my mind. One minute contained the materials for a hundred lives. A hundred lives are lived through sixty years each, with less emotion, less incidents, than were crammed into that minute of absolute inaction.

The candle had burnt to the socket; at the same time I was conscious that the storm no longer raged. I drew up the blind, and from the broken sky, worn as it were to pieces, the moon beamed calmly. That most imperturbable light has no heart of fire in it; it makes use of a quintessence of devouring flame only to radiate its surface— like many a stoical nature, that basks in the fame of a great name, and has no sympathy for the genius that creates it.

Nevertheless, that reflected light was next best to having a new candle, which I had not. Mine was flickering out fast. Since I could not carry the moon about with me, I would have foregone the universal radiance for the sake of having an ordinary dip. Still, I thought one might be worse off without a moon. I waited for some time, and heard no sound. Perhaps my landlord had found the queen of the night effulgent enough to make a candle unnecessary. I opened the door and stood in the dark passage. Presently footsteps came along the corridor downstairs, and no light came with them. The footsteps came nearer, and up the stairs. Before they reached the landing on which my door opened I had retreated behind it, and had shut it.

A pause of the heavy feet, and then they went on upwards, and my mind carried my body after them; for, with a sudden resolution, I turned into the black stairway, and followed my landlord in my stockinged feet. He stayed a moment at the next landing in the darkness, and his wife came to her bedroom door and entreated him to rest. He answered her doggedly, bade her back to her bed, shut her door after her, and went on. I went on.

A slight twist in the landing showed a steep ladder, whitened by the moon, that streamed through a small window. My landlord sped up this as agilely as if he were not stout. I watched him to the top of it. He unclosed his hand, and put a key in the door that fronted the ladder. The lock turned noiselessly and he went in, leaving the door ajar. Up that ladder I crept carefully. I was not so corpulent as the landlord, but my feet blundered and were not certain.

I reached the top without making a sound. Then I pushed open the door, and stood within a room that I knew was the top loft.

In one moment I saw its peculiarities; in another I saw its mystery. The moonlight was radiantly cold within its compass; there was nothing unrevealed. It showed an attic with a lean-to roof, and the rafters above were rough and splintered. It lit up, with the height of contrast, black hangings that were nailed against the walls. It shone into the empty, blackened, ill-shaped room, and lay upon the pile of a red rug that covered the centre of the floor; and upon a box with silver handles raised high in the midst; and upon an old man grovelling before it in a posture that was too undone for kneeling and too utterly debased for devotion.

And I, with senses alert, and with cold veins, moved a heavy step further into the room. My landlord sprang to his feet, and stood before me, and looked at me, and spoke no word.

I spoke. “You are found out at last, Mr. Fern,” I said.

He looked at me, and waited for the words to form sense within his brain. Then, with a sigh and with unmoved acquiescence,

“Yes, at last.”

I scarcely knew what to say next: the man did not defy me; he only looked nonplussed.

“The law has reached you through me, Mr. Fern; you must submit to it.”

“Yes, yes,” he said quietly. “But I have duped it this three year come October.”

“Great Heaven!” I cried; “can you talk coolly of your crime? Are you hardened to the most awful form of murder—”

“Eh, what?” said the man, dazed at the first word, and indignant and furious at the second. “I a murderer? Curse you! God judge you, sir, as you have foully judged me.”

He laid his great hand upon my arm, and shook it. The tears were running down his face, while the deep curses of a broken heart thronged to his lips, and stayed there for powerlessness of utterance. I looked at him and at the silvered coffin and at the desolate room, and wrenched my arm from his grasp.

“Then, in the name of your Judge and mine, what is that?” I said, pointing to the sepulchral box.

His anger died; his passion was quenched; he covered his face with his hands, and groped his way to the little coffin, and laid his head upon it, and cried with words unintelligible some names of endearment that were framed in sobs. I felt a movement behind me, and turned to see Mrs. Fern. Her face was as white as the light that illuminated it, but the strength of her bearing was unshaken by the funereal room or the stricken husband. She had put on a long gown, and beneath it her breath came and went quickly; otherwise the form of her mien was calm.

She looked at me and passed me, and went to her husband and put her arms round his neck. He moved to her touch, and laid his great tousled head upon her shoulder. The passion of grief which shook him showed the balance of that jovial temperament. She smoothed his face with her hand as if it had been a baby’s; she bent over his head her indomitable one, tearless, tender, powerful. And, after a time, with a slight movement she brought his eyes and hers to the small window, and pointed to him the heavens, from which all clouds were drifting, where the serene rested deep blue between the glittering stars, and stretched backwards from this bright white moon.

He lifted his small eyes to her face with a curious expression, like the appeal of the dumb brute that begs for a translation of the feeling that it cannot give tongue to. There was no shade of sentimentality in Mrs. Fern’s spoken answer to this mute speech.

“Why will you not look there instead of here?”

He turned back to the coffin, and hid his face from the suggestions of the far-away heavens. His words were thick, and his hoarse voice quivered.

“Because this is her. The bit of flesh I held is here; the lips I kissed are here; the cheek I loved is here. It is only the thing, you say, not the spirit. The spirit may be yonder, as cold and uncanny as those blessed stars. But ’twas the dear body that I nursed and loved. The bright eyes her blue eyes— I nailed them safe in here.”

He nodded his head at me, and went on with a proud mournfulness I should not have expected of him:

“You called me a hard word, sir— a word that might tempt a man to be the vile brute you named. Your scent is mighty keen, sir, but it sniffed astray at the last. The demon that killed my child was Croup, and I kissed down her dead eyelids. You may go in the churchyard and see her name written on a gravestone, and you might have seen, three years a-gone, a funeral there. They put a coffin in the ground, didn’t they, wife? but it don’t hold my darling.”

He stood up straight now, and faced me with tremor, with eagerness. Grief and passion gave him eloquence, and his defence was warm.

“Do you think I would give my pretty one to the filthy worms, to eat out her eyes, and crawl into her ears, and feed on her lips? Do you think I would put her into the cold, the storm, and the sodden earth? Couldn’t the old roof that had sheltered her lively living body cover her when she was so mighty still and gave no trouble? I read an old book that tells how to wrap up the dead, that they will keep at least for years.

“I made two coffins, one within the other, and put her on a soft feather bed inside them. And I shut her up and brought her here, and kept her here. And they buried an empty box yonder; and I and wife held another service here, without e’er a clergyman, but with our groans and tears.

“And the child was always frightened in a storm; I always come to watch when there is rain and wind. But tonight my lass persuaded me not to come because you were in the house. I waited, but my spirit wouldn’t hold. I had to come, and I came at last, just to see her quiet, after the hullabaloo. And you came, sir; you’ve outwitted me. My lass is a keen lass, and she read somewhat in your face. You never married; you never lost a child. And you think it’s easy to bury dead limbs out of your sight? But it ain’t; Lord, it ain’t. It’s the heart-breakingest thing; it’s— O Lord!”

His head bent over the coffin-lid again. I stepped to Mrs. Fern and whispered to her:

“Forgive me, I will leave you now. I will go to my room until morning. Will you see me then?”

She nodded, and I went.

A YEAR LATER, I stood in the churchyard of Baytown, and with me stood George, the ostler. The mortal remains of little Lucy Fern lay then beneath the gravestone. I had gone to the clergyman of the parish after that stormy night. He had heard my tale with some professional horror and with much human sympathy, and he had lent his aid in conveying to its last resting-place the coffin of the top loft.

And a year after, George and I stood there together. The ostler rambled in his meditative style, while I listened:

“Bless you, sir, you did a sight of good to the master and missis. Queer whispers was always on the go. They never could be happy with a dead corpse a-corrupting of itself over their heads. As my mother used to say, the worms must live, and we ain’t no right to stand against the natural food of a thing. Curious thing, Miss Lucy died in a storm; couldn’t tell which howled the louder— it or master. Not missis, bless you, sir. She’s one of that sort that chews her tears, reg’lar.

“That dratted goat was the plaything of Miss Lucy. It were always civil to her, and as sweet as an ass eating hay. But the night she died, it made off in the storm. The missis sent me after it; and when I had tugged it back, the little soul was dead. But the goat always goes astray now when there’s a storm. The missis won’t have it chained up, because of Miss Lucy; but she doesn’t like it to go away, for she’s got a fancy, her father taught her, that the child has a hold on the goat somehow— sort of unvisible reins, sir; and it might go off and drown itself in that sloppy pond, and then the sperit of Miss Lucy would naturally go down; and bless you, sir, I hain’t up to these spiritual things. My grandfather used to say, he liked the sperits that you can keep bottled up; they don’t give you the shivers when they gets into you. Pretty grave, sir! I planted them violets. The earth do know how to put a good face on the horrors cuddled in its old bosom.”

“We thought we’d come down after you, sir,” said Mr. Fern’s voice at that moment.

Mrs. Fern was with him. I made way for her to stand before the stone. Her calm eyes studied the words upon it, as though they were the features of her daughter’s face. Mr. Fern stooped to pick a violet, and he gave it to his wife.

And in tender silence the fresh spring wind breathed upon our lips the murmurs of its youth, and gently brushed the grave of a young life which had blossomed and died like a flower of spring.

_____________

11: Our Mr. Smith

Oswald Crawfurd

1834-1909

In: The Revelations of Inspector Morgan (1906)

AFTER a hard day's professional work I was sitting in my little room in Baker Street, deeply meditating on a subject never very long absent from my thoughts. Reader, you can guess what that subject is. I was considering the marvelous analytical faculty of my friend Purlock Hone, when the door opened and Purlock Hone himself appeared on the threshold. In my accustomed impulsive and ecstatic way, not unmingled with that humour which I am proud to say tempers the veneration I feel for that colossal intellect, I was beginning with the trivial phrase, "Talk of the—!" when my friend cut me short, with "Sh," and put his finger on his lips.

He sat down by the fire without a word, deposited his hat, gloves and handkerchief in the coal scuttle (I have before referred to my friend's untidy habits) and reached to the mantelpiece for my favourite meerschaum. He filled the pipe with long cut Cavendish, and, sitting with knotted brows, smoked it to the end before he spoke a word. Then he said:

"Humph!" It was little enough perhaps, but from Purlock Hone it meant volumes.

"Well?" I said. "Go on."

He did. He filled the pipe anew, and, for a second time, smoked it to the bitter end.

"Your pipe, Jobson, wants cleaning!"— and he gently threw it upon the fire, from which I rescued it before the flames had done it much injury. From any one else this action had seemed hasty, if not inconsiderate; in this gifted and marvellous being it betokened a profound train of abstract and analytical meditation. I waited patiently for some revelation of the subject of his thoughts.

I need not remind the reader that in the spring of this year the world of international politics was gravely agitated. Menacing rumours were about everywhere, the international atmosphere was electrical and mutterings of the tempest were to be heard on every side, but no one could divine where and when the storm would burst— on whom the bolt would fall.

Mysterious messages were daily passing between the Dowager Empress of China and Kaiser William; what did they portend? President Castro of Venezuela was known to be in secret communication with the Dalai Lama. Our eminent statesman, Mr. Keir Hardie, was said to have despatched an ultimatum to the Emperor of Japan and an identical document to President Roosevelt. The aged wife of the Second Commissionaire at the Foreign Office (Irish by birth and of convivial habits) had made certain compromising revelations of the policy of the government in a tavern in Charles Street, Westminster, and the Cabinet of St. James's was already tottering to its fall!

I eagerly recapitulated to my friend these various sources of disquietude to the nation, to Europe and the World, and urged him eagerly to enlighten me as to which of these great world problems he was preparing to solve. His answer was characteristic of this remarkable man, characteristic at once of his geniality, his simplicity, his wonderful self-control, his modesty, and at the same time of his refusal, even to me, to commit himself to an avowal.

"Any one of them, or none— or all; I cannot guess," said Purlock Hone.

My friend could not guess! I forbore from speech, but I smiled when I reflected that I was in the presence of the man who had more than once interposed to save a British Ministry from defeat, who had maintained the balance of power in Europe by discovering a stolen naval treaty, nay, of the man who had restored the jewelled crown of England when it had been lost for nearly three hundred years!

"A penny for your thoughts," said Purlock Hone gaily. "Or, come, you shall hear them from me for nothing."

"I defy you to know what I was thinking of," I said impulsively, but a moment later that defiance seemed to me rash, as in truth it proved to be.

"My dear Jobson," said this greatest of clairvoyants, "if you wanted me not to guess your thoughts you should not have smiled and looked towards the portrait of the late Premier. That told me, as clearly as if you had spoken, that you were recalling my little service to the late Unionist Government. I suppose you are unconscious of the fact, but you distinctly hitched the belt of your trousers as you crossed the room, with a sailor-like roll in your walk; what more was needed to tell me your thoughts were of my modest success in the matter of the lost naval treaty?"

"Amazing! And the recovery of the Crown of England?"

"You have tell-tale eyes, Jobson, and you rolled them regally as you directed them to the print of His Gracious Majesty over the mantelpiece."

"Wonderful man! Stupendous perspicacity!" I muttered.

Purlock Hone filled my rescued pipe for the third time and resumed his smoking. As in most other things, so in his taste for tobacco he resembles no other human being. I happened to know that he had not touched a pipe, a cigar, or a cigarette for a month before.

"Smoking, Jobson, is one of the world's follies. No ordinary man needs tobacco. It is poison!"

"Yet you smoke, Hone, even to excess at times," I said.

"I said no ordinary man, Jobson," retorted my friend.

I quailed under the justice of the reproof. Any other man would have pressed his victory. He generously forbore.

"I smoke only when some very heavy work is before me," he went on; "not otherwise."

Then I had guessed aright! He had some great work in hand. Never before had I seen so deep a frown between those sagacious eyes, never had the thoughtful face been so pale, the whole physiognomy so enigmatic. Never had so thick a cloud of tobacco smoke issued from between those oracular lips.

"I expect a visitor," he observed presently, between two puffs of tobacco smoke.

"Where?" I asked.

"Here," said Hone simply. "I left word at home that any one who called at my place was to come on here. Read this!" He tossed a letter across the table. I read aloud:

Dear Sir:

I will do myself the pleasure of waiting upon you between five and six to-day.

Yours faithfully,

John Smith

"A pregnant communication, Jobson, eh?"

"I dare say, but I confess I don't see anything peculiar about it." I looked again at the letter. It seemed to me as plain an epistle as any man could write. A dunning tradesman might have written it — a tax collector might have subscribed it.

"What do you make of those t's, Jobson? Does the spacing of the words tell you anything? Are those w's and i's there for nothing?"

"To me, Hone, they are there for nothing, but then— I am not a Purlock Hone."

He smiled as he regarded me with pity, and cocked his left eye, using one of those fascinating and favourite actions of his that bring him down to the level of our common humanity.

"It is a disguised hand, Jobson, and do you observe the absence of an address?"

The lucid and enlightened explanation that I expected was cut short by a ring at the door bell. Immediately afterwards the maid announced Mr. Smith. A little man with grey side whiskers, a neat black frock coat and carrying a somewhat gampish silk umbrella, entered the room.

"Be seated, Mr.— Smith." The slight pause between the last two words of Hone's sentence was eloquent.

"Which of you two gentlemen is Purlock Hone, Esquire?" The accent on which "Mr. Smith" spoke was cockney and the tone deprecating.

I looked to Hone to answer. He smiled upon the stranger. It was a smile of complete approval. "Admirable!" said my friend. "Pray go on, sir." The visitor was visibly taken aback.

"I asks a plain question, gentlemen, and I looks to get a plain answer."

"It does you the greatest credit, my dear sir," said Hone. "It would pass almost anywhere;"

The little gentleman with grey side whiskers got red in the face and his eyes grew round. He was obviously angry, or was he only acting anger?

My friend Purlock Hone, as I think I have observed before in the course of these memoirs, often smiles, but seldom condescends to laugh.

Our visitor coloured violently and struck the end of his umbrella on the floor. "Look here," he said, "play-acting is play-acting, but I comes here on business; my name is John Smith, and I don't want none of your chaff."

"Capital! Capital! Go on, Mr.—Smith!"

"I will do so, sir, if you please!" The little gentleman put his hand in the inner breast pocket of his coat and produced therefrom a blue envelope; a quick glance at the superscription showed me that it was addressed to my friend and was written in that bold, regular, cursive hand which is characteristic of the man engaged in commercial pursuits. My interest was now strongly roused. I waited eagerly developments.

The mysterious visitor looked from one to the other of us. As you two gentlemen refuse to say which of you is Hone, Esquire, I'll mak< so bold as to read this communication to the two of you."

"You may do so with perfect safety, Mr. Smith. My friend is in my confidence."

The little gentleman cast a puzzled look at us both and read as follows:

" 'To Purlock Hone, Esquire,

" 'Dear Sir

" 'Our Mr. Smith will wait on you in respect of our little account already rendered and which you have no doubt overlooked. Early attention to the same will oblige.'"

The reader paused and looked at my friend. I, too, looked, i face was inscrutable, his lips were grimly closed. My curiosity— shall I say my indiscretion?— got the better of me.

"And whose Mr. Smith may you be, sir?" I asked.

The little man glibly read out the conclusion of the letter:

" 'Yours obediently, Dear Sir,

" 'Jones and Sons; Hatters;

" 'Oxford Street.'

"And here is the bill, gentlemen. 'To one fancy broad-brimmed silk hat-cathedral style;  To one clerical soft felt bowler; To one slouched Spanish Sombrero;— To one...' "

Purlock Hone raised his hand, as if deprecating a list of furthei items, and Mr. Smith stopped and stared at him.

"What!" I thought. "Is it a real account for hats— after all, I remembered all these unusual forms of head-covering having formed parts of the various disguises in which my friend had walked the streets of London incognito. No! There must be some deep diplomatic secret behind the seemingly simple transaction!

"What is the total amount, Mr. Smith?" asked my friend in muffled tones.

"Nine, eleven, four, sir."

Without another word Hone walked across to my writing-table, took his cheque book from his pocket, sat down, and wrote and signed a cheque for nine pounds eleven shillings and fourpence.

"There you are, Mr. Smith. No— don't trouble to give me a receipt. The cheque is to order and Jones & Sons' endorsement will be as good as a receipt."

"Mr. Smith" rose quickly as my friend pronounced these, no doubt, pregnant words, bowed, and took his departure with "I wish you good morning, gentlemen." He preserved the deprecating attitude and the cockney accent of the small tradesman to the very last.

Purlock Hone preserved a pregnant silence. He slowly filled my pipe for the fourth time with strong Cavendish tobaco. I struck a match and handed it to him. It was my tacit tribute of admiration to the skill with which this mysterious scene, of evidently the highest diplomatic tension, had been played through without a hitch by the two great actors concerned. Words would have failed me— had I attempted to use them. My friend held my wrist while he lit his pipe at my match. His hand did not tremble more than mine— indeed not so much.

"Purlock Hone!" I cried with rising enthusiasm, "if I did not know that a great thing had passed and that Mr. Smith was the emissary of some great European Power and the bearer of some deep international secret, and that you have conveyed a secret reply to some European potentate under the pretence of writing a cheque on your banker, I could have sworn that Mr. Smith was a dunning hatter's assistant, and that you had paid an overdue bill!"

"Jobson, you know I make a rule never to take you in— every one else, but not you. Mr. Smith was in point of fact an emissary, but only from Jones & Sons of Oxford Street, and I have paid their bill."

Purlock Hone is one of the few men who can afford to tell the plain truth when it is against him. He is great even in defeat!

_________________

12: Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff

Bret Harte

1839-1902

Harper's Magazine, March, 1901

Francis Bret Harte

IT HAD BEEN a day of triumph for Colonel Starbottle. First, for his personality, as it would have been difficult to separate the Colonel's achievements from his individuality; second, for his oratorical abilities as a sympathetic pleader; and third, for his functions as the leading counsel for the Eureka Ditch Company versus the State of California. On his strictly legal performances in this issue I prefer not to speak; there were those who denied them, although the jury had accepted them in the face of the ruling of the half-amused, half-cynical Judge himself. For an hour they had laughed with the Colonel, wept with him, been stirred to personal indignation or patriotic exaltation by his passionate and lofty periods— what else could they do than give him their verdict? If it was alleged by some that the American eagle, Thomas Jefferson, and the Resolutions of '98 had nothing whatever to do with the contest of a ditch company over a doubtfully worded legislative document; that wholesale abuse of the State Attorney and his political motives had not the slightest connection with the legal question raised— it was, nevertheless, generally accepted that the losing party would have been only too glad to have the Colonel on their side. And Colonel Starbottle knew this, as, perspiring, florid, and panting, he rebuttoned the lower buttons of his blue frock-coat, which had become loosed in an oratorical spasm, and readjusted his old-fashioned, spotless shirt frill above it as he strutted from the court-room amidst the hand-shakings and acclamations of his friends.

And here an unprecedented thing occurred. The Colonel absolutely declined spirituous refreshment at the neighboring Palmetto Saloon, and declared his intention of proceeding directly to his office in the adjoining square. Nevertheless the Colonel quitted the building alone, and apparently unarmed except for his faithful gold-headed stick, which hung as usual from his forearm. The crowd gazed after him with undisguised admiration of this new evidence of his pluck. It was remembered also that a mysterious note had been handed to him at the conclusion of his speech— evidently a challenge from the State Attorney. It was quite plain that the Colonel— a practised duellist— was hastening home to answer it.

But herein they were wrong. The note was in a female hand, and simply requested the Colonel to accord an interview with the writer at the Colonel's office as soon as he left the court. But it was an engagement that the Colonel— as devoted to the fair sex as he was to the "code"— was no less prompt in accepting. He flicked away the dust from his spotless white trousers and varnished boots with his handkerchief, and settled his black cravat under his Byron collar as he neared his office. He was surprised, however, on opening the door of his private office to find his visitor already there; he was still more startled to find her somewhat past middle age and plainly attired. But the Colonel was brought up in a school of Southern politeness, already antique in the republic, and his bow of courtesy belonged to the epoch of his shirt frill and strapped trousers. No one could have detected his disappointment in his manner, albeit his sentences were short and incomplete. But the Colonel's colloquial speech was apt to be fragmentary incoherencies of his larger oratorical utterances.

"A thousand pardons— for— er— having kept a lady waiting— er! But— er— congratulations of friends— and— er— courtesy due to them— er— interfered with— though perhaps only heightened— by procrastination— pleasure of— ha!" And the Colonel completed his sentence with a gallant wave of his fat but white and well-kept hand.

"Yes! I came to see you along o' that speech of yours. I was in court. When I heard you gettin' it off on that jury, I says to myself that's the kind o' lawyer I want. A man that's flowery and convincin'! Just the man to take up our case."

"Ah! It's a matter of business, I see," said the Colonel, inwardly relieved, but externally careless. "And— er— may I ask the nature of the case?"

"Well! it's a breach-o'-promise suit," said the visitor, calmly.

If the Colonel had been surprised before, he was now really startled, and with an added horror that required all his politeness to conceal. Breach-of-promise cases were his peculiar aversion. He had always held them to be a kind of litigation which could have been obviated by the prompt killing of the masculine offender— in which case he would have gladly defended the killer. But a suit for damages!— damages!— with the reading of love-letters before a hilarious jury and court, was against all his instincts. His chivalry was outraged; his sense of humor was small— and in the course of his career he had lost one or two important cases through an unexpected development of this quality in a jury.

The woman had evidently noticed his hesitation, but mistook its cause. "It ain't me— but my darter."

The Colonel recovered his politeness. "Ah! I am relieved, my dear madam! I could hardly conceive a man ignorant enough to— er— er— throw away such evident good fortune— or base enough to deceive the trustfulness of womanhood— matured and experienced only in the chivalry of our sex, ha!"

The woman smiled grimly. "Yes!— it's my darter, Zaidee Hooker— so ye might spare some of them pretty speeches for her— before the jury."

The Colonel winced slightly before this doubtful prospect, but smiled. "Ha! Yes!— certainly— the jury. But— er— my dear lady, need we go as far as that? Cannot this affair be settled— er— out of court? Could not this— er— individual— be admonished— told that he must give satisfaction— personal satisfaction— for his dastardly conduct— to — er— near relative— or even valued personal friend? The— er— arrangements necessary for that purpose I myself would undertake."

He was quite sincere; indeed, his small black eyes shone with that fire which a pretty woman or an "affair of honor" could alone kindle. The visitor stared vacantly at him, and said, slowly:

"And what good is that goin' to do us?"

"Compel him to— er— perform his promise," said the Colonel, leaning back in his chair.

"Ketch him doin' it!" said the woman, scornfully. "No— that ain't wot we're after. We must make him pay! Damages— and nothin' short o' that."

The Colonel bit his lip. "I suppose," he said, gloomily, "you have documentary evidence— written promises and protestations— er— er—  love-letters, in fact?"

"No— nary a letter! Ye see, that's jest it— and that's where you come in. You've got to convince that jury yourself. You've got to show what it is— tell the whole story your own way. Lord! to a man like you that's nothin'."

Startling as this admission might have been to any other lawyer, Starbottle was absolutely relieved by it. The absence of any mirth-provoking correspondence, and the appeal solely to his own powers of persuasion, actually struck his fancy. He lightly put aside the compliment with a wave of his white hand.

"Of course," said the Colonel, confidently, "there is strongly presumptive and corroborative evidence? Perhaps you can give me— er— a brief outline of the affair?"

"Zaidee kin do that straight enough, I reckon," said the woman; "what I want to know first is, kin you take the case?"

The Colonel did not hesitate; his curiosity was piqued. "I certainly can. I have no doubt your daughter will put me in possession of sufficient facts and details— to constitute what we call— er— a brief."

"She kin be brief enough— or long enough— for the matter of that," said the woman, rising. The Colonel accepted this implied witticism with a smile.

"And when may I have the pleasure of seeing her?" he asked, politely.

"Well, I reckon as soon as I can trot out and call her. She's just outside, meanderin' in the road— kinder shy, ye know, at first."

She walked to the door. The astounded Colonel nevertheless gallantly accompanied her as she stepped out into the street and called, shrilly, "You Zaidee!"

A young girl here apparently detached herself from a tree and the ostentatious perusal of an old election poster, and sauntered down towards the office door. Like her mother, she was plainly dressed; unlike her, she had a pale, rather refined face, with a demure mouth and downcast eyes. This was all the Colonel saw as he bowed profoundly and led the way into his office, for she accepted his salutations without lifting her head. He helped her gallantly to a chair, on which she seated herself sideways, somewhat ceremoniously, with her eyes following the point of her parasol as she traced a pattern on the carpet. A second chair offered to the mother that lady, however, declined. "I reckon to leave you and Zaidee together to talk it out," she said; turning to her daughter, she added, "Jest you tell him all, Zaidee," and before the Colonel could rise again, disappeared from the room. In spite of his professional experience, Starbottle was for a moment embarrassed. The young girl, however, broke the silence without looking up.

"Adoniram K. Hotchkiss," she began, in a monotonous voice, as if it were a recitation addressed to the public, "first began to take notice of me a year ago. Arter that— off and on—"

"One moment," interrupted the astounded Colonel; "do you mean Hotchkiss the President of the Ditch Company?" He had recognized the name of a prominent citizen— a rigid ascetic, taciturn, middle-aged man— a deacon— and more than that, the head of the company he had just defended. It seemed inconceivable.

"That's him," she continued, with eyes still fixed on the parasol and without changing her monotonous tone— "off and on ever since. Most of the time at the Free-Will Baptist church— at morning service, prayer-meetings, and such. And at home— outside— er— in the road."

"Is it this gentleman— Mr. Adoniram K. Hotchkiss— who— er— promised marriage?" stammered the Colonel.

"Yes."

The Colonel shifted uneasily in his chair. "Most extraordinary! for— you see— my dear young lady— this becomes— a— er— most delicate affair."

"That's what maw said," returned the young woman, simply, yet with the faintest smile playing around her demure lips and downcast cheek.

"I mean," said the Colonel, with a pained yet courteous smile, "that this— er— gentleman— is in fact— er— one of my clients."

"That's what maw said, too, and of course your knowing him will make it all the easier for you," said the young woman.

A slight flush crossed the Colonel's cheek as he returned quickly and a little stiffly, "On the contrary— er— it may make it impossible for me to— er— act in this matter."

The girl lifted her eyes. The Colonel held his breath as the long lashes were raised to his level. Even to an ordinary observer that sudden revelation of her eyes seemed to transform her face with subtle witchery. They were large, brown, and soft, yet filled with an extraordinary penetration and prescience. They were the eyes of an experienced woman of thirty fixed in the face of a child. What else the Colonel saw there Heaven only knows! He felt his inmost secrets plucked from him— his whole soul laid bare— his vanity, belligerency, gallantry— even his medieval chivalry, penetrated, and yet illuminated, in that single glance. And when the eyelids fell again, he felt that a greater part of himself had been swallowed up in them.

"I beg your pardon," he said, hurriedly. "I mean— this matter may be arranged— er— amicably. My interest with— and as you wisely say— my— er— knowledge of my client— er— Mr. Hotchkiss— may affect— a compromise."

"And damages," said the young girl, readdressing her parasol, as if she had never looked up.

The Colonel winced. "And— er— undoubtedly compensation— if you do not press a fulfilment of the promise. Unless," he said, with an attempted return to his former easy gallantry, which, however, the recollection of her eyes made difficult, "it is a question of— er— the affections?"

"Which?" said his fair client, softly.

"If you still love him?" explained the Colonel, actually blushing.

Zaidee again looked up; again taking the Colonel's breath away with eyes that expressed not only the fullest perception of what he had said, but of what he thought and had not said, and with an added subtle suggestion of what he might have thought. "That's tellin'," she said, dropping her long lashes again. The Colonel laughed vacantly. Then feeling himself growing imbecile, he forced an equally weak gravity. "Pardon me— I understand there are no letters; may I know the way in which he formulated his declaration and promises?"

"Hymn-books," said the girl, briefly.

"I beg your pardon," said the mystified lawyer.

"Hymn-books— marked words in them with pencil— and passed 'em on to me," repeated Zaidee. "Like 'love,' 'dear,' 'precious,' 'sweet,' and 'blessed,'" she added, accenting each word with a push of her parasol on the carpet. "Sometimes a whole line outer Tate and Brady— and Solomon's Song, you know, and sich."

"I believe," said the Colonel, loftily, "that the— er— phrases of sacred psalmody lend themselves to the language of the affections. But in regard to the distinct promise of marriage— was there— er— no other expression?"

"Marriage Service in the prayer-book— lines and words outer that— all marked," said Zaidee. The Colonel nodded naturally and approvingly. "Very good. Were others cognizant of this? Were there any witnesses?"

"Of course not," said the girl. "Only me and him. It was generally at church-time— or prayer-meeting. Once, in passing the plate, he slipped one o' them peppermint lozenges with the letters stamped on it 'I love you' for me to take."

The Colonel coughed slightly. "And you have the lozenge?"

"I ate it," said the girl, simply.

"Ah," said the Colonel. After a pause he added, delicately: "But were these attentions— er— confined to— er— -sacred precincts? Did he meet you elsewhere?"

"Useter pass our house on the road," returned the girl, dropping into her monotonous recital, "and useter signal."

"Ah, signal?" repeated the Colonel, approvingly.

"Yes! He'd say 'Kerrow,' and I'd say 'Kerree.' Suthing like a bird, you know."

Indeed, as she lifted her voice in imitation of the call the Colonel thought it certainly very sweet and birdlike. At least as she gave it. With his remembrance of the grim deacon he had doubts as to the melodiousness of his utterance. He gravely made her repeat it.

"And after that signal?" he added, suggestively.

"He'd pass on," said the girl.

The Colonel coughed slightly, and tapped his desk with his pen-holder.

"Were there any endearments— er— caresses— er— such as taking your hand— er— clasping your waist?" he suggested, with a gallant yet respectful sweep of his white hand and bowing of his head;— "er—  slight pressure of your fingers in the changes of a dance— I mean," he corrected himself, with an apologetic cough— "in the passing of the plate?"

"No;— he was not what you'd call 'fond,'" returned the girl.

"Ah! Adoniram K. Hotchkiss was not 'fond' in the ordinary acceptance of the word," said the Colonel, with professional gravity.

She lifted her disturbing eyes, and again absorbed his in her own. She also said "Yes," although her eyes in their mysterious prescience of all he was thinking disclaimed the necessity of any answer at all. He smiled vacantly. There was a long pause. On which she slowly disengaged her parasol from the carpet pattern and stood up.

"I reckon that's about all," she said.

"Er— yes— but one moment," said the Colonel, vaguely. He would have liked to keep her longer, but with her strange premonition of him he felt powerless to detain her, or explain his reason for doing so. He instinctively knew she had told him all; his professional judgment told him that a more hopeless case had never come to his knowledge. Yet he was not daunted, only embarrassed. "No matter," he said, vaguely. "Of course I shall have to consult with you again." Her eyes again answered that she expected he would, but she added, simply, "When?"

"In the course of a day or two," said the Colonel, quickly. "I will send you word." She turned to go. In his eagerness to open the door for her he upset his chair, and with some confusion, that was actually youthful, he almost impeded her movements in the hall, and knocked his broad-brimmed Panama hat from his bowing hand in a final gallant sweep. Yet as her small, trim, youthful figure, with its simple Leghorn straw hat confined by a blue bow under her round chin, passed away before him, she looked more like a child than ever.

The Colonel spent that afternoon in making diplomatic inquiries. He found his youthful client was the daughter of a widow who had a small ranch on the cross-roads, near the new Free-Will Baptist church— the evident theatre of this pastoral. They led a secluded life; the girl being little known in the town, and her beauty and fascination apparently not yet being a recognized fact. The Colonel felt a pleasurable relief at this, and a general satisfaction he could not account for. His few inquiries concerning Mr. Hotchkiss only confirmed his own impressions of the alleged lover— a serious-minded, practically abstracted man— abstentive of youthful society, and the last man apparently capable of levity of the affections or serious flirtation. The Colonel was mystified— but determined of purpose— whatever that purpose might have been.

The next day he was at his office at the same hour. He was alone— as usual— the Colonel's office really being his private lodgings, disposed in connecting rooms, a single apartment reserved for consultation. He had no clerk; his papers and briefs being taken by his faithful body-servant and ex-slave "Jim" to another firm who did his office-work since the death of Major Stryker— the Colonel's only law partner, who fell in a duel some years previous. With a fine constancy the Colonel still retained his partner's name on his door-plate— and, it was alleged by the superstitious, kept a certain invincibility also through the manes of that lamented and somewhat feared man.

The Colonel consulted his watch, whose heavy gold case still showed the marks of a providential interference with a bullet destined for its owner, and replaced it with some difficulty and shortness of breath in his fob. At the same moment he heard a step in the passage, and the door opened to Adoniram K. Hotchkiss. The Colonel was impressed; he had a duellist's respect for punctuality.

The man entered with a nod and the expectant, inquiring look of a busy man. As his feet crossed that sacred threshold the Colonel became all courtesy; he placed a chair for his visitor, and took his hat from his half-reluctant hand. He then opened a cupboard and brought out a bottle of whiskey and two glasses.

"A— er— slight refreshment, Mr. Hotchkiss," he suggested, politely. "I never drink," replied Hotchkiss, with the severe attitude of a total abstainer. "Ah— er— not the finest bourbon whiskey, selected by a Kentucky friend? No? Pardon me! A cigar, then— the mildest Havana."

"I do not use tobacco nor alcohol in any form," repeated Hotchkiss, ascetically. "I have no foolish weaknesses."

The Colonel's moist, beady eyes swept silently over his client's sallow face. He leaned back comfortably in his chair, and half closing his eyes as in dreamy reminiscence, said, slowly: "Your reply, Mr. Hotchkiss, reminds me of— er— sing'lar circumstances that — er— occurred, in point of fact— at the St. Charles Hotel, New Orleans. Pinkey Hornblower— personal friend— invited Senator Doolittle to join him in social glass. Received, sing'larly enough, reply similar to yours. 'Don't drink nor smoke?' said Pinkey. 'Gad, sir, you must be mighty sweet on the ladies.' Ha!" The Colonel paused long enough to allow the faint flush to pass from Hotchkiss's cheek, and went on, half closing his eyes: "'I allow no man, sir, to discuss my personal habits,' said Doolittle, over his shirt collar. 'Then I reckon shootin' must be one of those habits,' said Pinkey, coolly. Both men drove out on the Shell Road back of cemetery next morning. Pinkey put bullet at twelve paces through Doolittle's temple. Poor Doo never spoke again. Left three wives and seven children, they say — two of 'em black."

"I got a note from you this morning," said Hotchkiss, with badly concealed impatience. "I suppose in reference to our case. You have taken judgment, I believe." The Colonel, without replying, slowly filled a glass of whiskey and water. For a moment he held it dreamily before him, as if still engaged in gentle reminiscences called up by the act. Then tossing it off, he wiped his lips with a large white handkerchief, and leaning back comfortably in his chair, said, with a wave of his hand, "The interview I requested, Mr. Hotchkiss, concerns a subject— which I may say is— er— er— at present not of a public or business nature— although later it might become— er— er— both. It is an affair of some— er— delicacy."

The Colonel paused, and Mr. Hotchkiss regarded him with increased impatience. The Colonel, however, continued, with unchanged deliberation: "It concerns— er— a young lady— a beautiful, high-souled creature, sir, who, apart from her personal loveliness—  er— er— I may say is of one of the first families of Missouri, and—  er— not— remotely connected by marriage with one of— er— er— my boyhood's dearest friends. The latter, I grieve to say, was a pure invention of the Colonel's— an oratorical addition to the scanty information he had obtained the previous day. The young lady," he continued, blandly, "enjoys the further distinction of being the object of such attention from you as would make this interview—  really— a confidential matter— er— er— among friends and— er— er—  relations in present and future. I need not say that the lady I refer to is Miss Zaidee Juno Hooker, only daughter of Almira Ann Hooker, relict of Jefferson Brown Hooker, formerly of Boone County, Kentucky, and latterly of— er— Pike County, Missouri."

The sallow, ascetic hue of Mr. Hotchkiss's face had passed through a livid and then a greenish shade, and finally settled into a sullen red. "What's all this about?" he demanded, roughly. The least touch of belligerent fire came into Starbottle's eye, but his bland courtesy did not change. "I believe," he said, politely, "I have made myself clear as between— er— gentlemen, though perhaps not as clear as I should to— er— er— jury."

Mr. Hotchkiss was apparently struck with some significance in the lawyer's reply. "I don't know," he said, in a lower and more cautious voice, "what you mean by what you call 'my attentions' to— any one— or how it concerns you. I have not exhausted half a dozen words with— the person you name— have never written her a line— nor even called at her house." He rose with an assumption of ease, pulled down his waistcoat, buttoned his coat, and took up his hat. The Colonel did not move. "I believe I have already indicated my meaning in what I have called 'your attentions,'" said the Colonel, blandly, "and given you my 'concern' for speaking as— er— er mutual friend. As to your statement of your relations with Miss Hooker, I may state that it is fully corroborated by the statement of the young lady herself in this very office yesterday."

"Then what does this impertinent nonsense mean? Why am I summoned here?" said Hotchkiss, furiously.

"Because," said the Colonel, deliberately, "that statement is infamously— yes, damnably to your discredit, sir!"

Mr. Hotchkiss was here seized by one of those important and inconsistent rages which occasionally betray the habitually cautious and timid man. He caught up the Colonel's stick, which was lying on the table. At the same moment the Colonel, without any apparent effort, grasped it by the handle. To Mr. Hotchkiss's astonishment, the stick separated in two pieces, leaving the handle and about two feet of narrow glittering steel in the Colonel's hand. The man recoiled, dropping the useless fragment. The Colonel picked it up, fitting the shining blade in it, clicked the spring, and then rising, with a face of courtesy yet of unmistakably genuine pain, and with even a slight tremor in his voice, said, gravely:

"Mr. Hotchkiss, I owe you a thousand apologies, sir, that— er—  a weapon should be drawn by me— even through your own inadvertence—  under the sacred protection of my roof, and upon an unarmed man. I beg your pardon, sir, and I even withdraw the expressions which provoked that inadvertence. Nor does this apology prevent you from holding me responsible— personally responsible— elsewhere for an indiscretion committed in behalf of a lady— my— er— client."

"Your client? Do you mean you have taken her case? You, the counsel for the Ditch Company?" said Mr. Hotchkiss, in trembling indignation.

"Having won your case, sir," said the Colonel, coolly, "the— er— usages of advocacy do not prevent me from espousing the cause of the weak and unprotected."

"We shall see, sir," said Hotchkiss, grasping the handle of the door and backing into the passage. "There are other lawyers who— "

"Permit me to see you out," interrupted the Colonel, rising politely.

"— will be ready to resist the attacks of blackmail," continued Hotchkiss, retreating along the passage.

"And then you will be able to repeat your remarks to me in the street," continued the Colonel, bowing, as he persisted in following his visitor to the door.

But here Mr. Hotchkiss quickly slammed it behind him, and hurried away. The Colonel returned to his office, and sitting down, took a sheet of letter paper bearing the inscription "Starbottle and Stryker, Attorneys and Counsellors," and wrote the following lines:

Hooker versus Hotchkiss.

DEAR MADAM,— Having had a visit from the defendant in above, we should be pleased to have an interview with you at 2 p.m. to-morrow. Your obedient servants, STARBOTTLE AND STRYKER.

This he sealed and despatched by his trusted servant Jim, and then devoted a few moments to reflection. It was the custom of the Colonel to act first, and justify the action by reason afterwards.

He knew that Hotchkiss would at once lay the matter before rival counsel. He knew that they would advise him that Miss Hooker had "no case"— that she would be non-suited on her own evidence, and he ought not to compromise, but be ready to stand trial. He believed, however, that Hotchkiss feared that exposure, and although his own instincts had been at first against that remedy, he was now instinctively in favor of it. He remembered his own power with a jury; his vanity and his chivalry alike approved of this heroic method; he was bound by the prosaic facts— he had his own theory of the case, which no mere evidence could gainsay. In fact, Mrs. Hooker's own words that "he was to tell the story in his own way" actually appeared to him an inspiration and a prophecy.

Perhaps there was something else, due possibly to the lady's wonderful eyes, of which he had thought much. Yet it was not her simplicity that affected him solely; on the contrary, it was her apparent intelligent reading of the character of her recreant lover— and of his own! Of all the Colonel's previous "light" or "serious" loves none had ever before flattered him in that way. And it was this, combined with the respect which he had held for their professional relations, that precluded his having a more familiar knowledge of his client, through serious questioning, or playful gallantry. I am not sure it was not part of the charm to have a rustic femme incomprise as a client.

Nothing could exceed the respect with which he greeted her as she entered his office the next day. He even affected not to notice that she had put on her best clothes, and he made no doubt appeared as when she had first attracted the mature yet faithless attentions of Deacon Hotchkiss at church. A white virginal muslin was belted around her slim figure by a blue ribbon, and her Leghorn hat was drawn around her oval cheek by a bow of the same color. She had a Southern girl's narrow feet, encased in white stockings and kid slippers, which were crossed primly before her as she sat in a chair, supporting her arm by her faithful parasol planted firmly on the floor. A faint odor of southernwood exhaled from her, and, oddly enough, stirred the Colonel with a far-off recollection of a pine-shaded Sunday school on a Georgia hillside and of his first love, aged ten, in a short, starched frock. Possibly it was the same recollection that revived something of the awkwardness he had felt then.

He, however, smiled vaguely and, sitting down, coughed slightly, and placed his fingertips together. "I have had an— er— interview with Mr. Hotchkiss, but— I— er— regret to say there seems to be no prospect of— er— compromise." He paused, and to his surprise her listless "company" face lit up with an adorable smile. "Of course!— ketch him!" she said. "Was he mad when you told him?" She put her knees comfortably together and leaned forward for a reply.

For all that, wild horses could not have torn from the Colonel a word about Hotchkiss's anger. "He expressed his intention of employing counsel— and defending a suit," returned the Colonel, affably basking in her smile. She dragged her chair nearer his desk. "Then you'll fight him tooth and nail?" she said eagerly; "you'll show him up? You'll tell the whole story your own way? You'll give him fits?— and you'll make him pay? Sure?" she went on, breathlessly.

"I— er— will," said the Colonel, almost as breathlessly.

She caught his fat white hand, which was lying on the table, between her own and lifted it to her lips. He felt her soft young fingers even through the lisle-thread gloves that encased them and the warm moisture of her lips upon his skin. He felt himself flushing— but was unable to break the silence or change his position. The next moment she had scuttled back with her chair to her old position.

"I— er— certainly shall do my best," stammered the Colonel, in an attempt to recover his dignity and composure.

"That's enough! You'll do it," said the girl, enthusiastically. "Lordy! Just you talk for me as ye did for his old Ditch Company, and you'll fetch it— every time! Why, when you made that jury sit up the other day— when you got that off about the Merrikan flag waving equally over the rights of honest citizens banded together in peaceful commercial pursuits, as well as over the fortress of official proflig— "

"Oligarchy," murmured the Colonel, courteously.

"Oligarchy," repeated the girl, quickly, "my breath was just took away. I said to maw, 'Ain't he too sweet for anything!' I did, honest Injin! And when you rolled it all off at the end— never missing a word— (you didn't need to mark 'em in a lesson-book, but had 'em all ready on your tongue), and walked out— Well! I didn't know you nor the Ditch Company from Adam, but I could have just run over and kissed you there before the whole court!"

She laughed, with her face glowing, although her strange eyes were cast down. Alack! the Colonel's face was equally flushed, and his own beady eyes were on his desk. To any other woman he would have voiced the banal gallantry that he should now, himself, look forward to that reward, but the words never reached his lips. He laughed, coughed slightly, and when he looked up again she had fallen into the same attitude as on her first visit, with her parasol point on the floor.

"I must ask you to— er— direct your memory— to— er— another point; the breaking off of the— er— er— er— engagement. Did he— er— give any reason for it? Or show any cause?"

"No; he never said anything," returned the girl.

"Not in his usual way?— er— no reproaches out of the hymn-book?— or the sacred writings?"

"No; he just quit."

"Er— ceased his attentions," said the Colonel, gravely. "And naturally you— er— were not conscious of any cause for his doing so." The girl raised her wonderful eyes so suddenly and so penetratingly without reply in any other way that the Colonel could only hurriedly say: "I see! None, of course!"

At which she rose, the Colonel rising also. "We— shall begin proceedings at once. I must, however, caution you to answer no questions nor say anything about this case to any one until you are in court."

She answered his request with another intelligent look and a nod. He accompanied her to the door. As he took her proffered hand he raised the lisle-thread fingers to his lips with old-fashioned gallantry. As if that act had condoned for his first omissions and awkwardness, he became his old-fashioned self again, buttoned his coat, pulled out his shirt frill, and strutted back to his desk.

A day or two later it was known throughout the town that Zaidee Hooker had sued Adoniram Hotchkiss for breach of promise, and that the damages were laid at five thousand dollars. As in those bucolic days the Western press was under the secure censorship of a revolver, a cautious tone of criticism prevailed, and any gossip was confined to personal expression, and even then at the risk of the gossiper. Nevertheless, the situation provoked the intensest curiosity. The Colonel was approached— until his statement that he should consider any attempt to overcome his professional secrecy a personal reflection withheld further advances. The community were left to the more ostentatious information of the defendant's counsel, Messrs. Kitcham and Bilser, that the case was "ridiculous" and "rotten," that the plaintiff would be nonsuited, and the fire-eating Starbottle would be taught a lesson that he could not "bully" the law— and there were some dark hints of a conspiracy. It was even hinted that the "case" was the revengeful and preposterous outcome of the refusal of Hotchkiss to pay Starbottle an extravagant fee for his late services to the Ditch Company. It is unnecessary to say that these words were not reported to the Colonel. It was, however, an unfortunate circumstance for the calmer, ethical consideration of the subject that the church sided with Hotchkiss, as this provoked an equal adherence to the plaintiff and Starbottle on the part of the larger body of non-church-goers, who were delighted at a possible exposure of the weakness of religious rectitude. "I've allus had my suspicions o' them early candle-light meetings down at that gospel shop," said one critic, "and I reckon Deacon Hotchkiss didn't rope in the gals to attend jest for psalm-singing." "Then for him to get up and leave the board afore the game's finished and try to sneak out of it," said another. "I suppose that's what they call religious."

It was therefore not remarkable that the courthouse three weeks later was crowded with an excited multitude of the curious and sympathizing. The fair plaintiff, with her mother, was early in attendance, and under the Colonel's advice appeared in the same modest garb in which she had first visited his office. This and her downcast modest demeanor were perhaps at first disappointing to the crowd, who had evidently expected a paragon of loveliness— as the Circe of the grim ascetic defendant, who sat beside his counsel. But presently all eyes were fixed on the Colonel, who certainly made up in his appearance any deficiency of his fair client. His portly figure was clothed in a blue dress-coat with brass buttons, a buff waistcoat which permitted his frilled shirt front to become erectile above it, a black satin stock which confined a boyish turned-down collar around his full neck, and immaculate drill trousers, strapped over varnished boots. A murmur ran round the court. "Old 'Personally Responsible' had got his war-paint on," "The Old War-Horse is smelling powder," were whispered comments. Yet for all that the most irreverent among them recognized vaguely, in this bizarre figure, something of an honored past in their country's history, and possibly felt the spell of old deeds and old names that had once thrilled their boyish pulses. The new District Judge returned Colonel Starbottle's profoundly punctilious bow. The Colonel was followed by his negro servant, carrying a parcel of hymn-books and Bibles, who, with a courtesy evidently imitated from his master, placed one before the opposite counsel. This, after a first curious glance, the lawyer somewhat superciliously tossed aside. But when Jim, proceeding to the jury-box, placed with equal politeness the remaining copies before the jury, the opposite counsel sprang to his feet.

"I want to direct the attention of the Court to this unprecedented tampering with the jury, by this gratuitous exhibition of matter impertinent and irrelevant to the issue."

The Judge cast an inquiring look at Colonel Starbottle.

"May it please the Court," returned Colonel Starbottle with dignity, ignoring the counsel, "the defendant's counsel will observe that he is already furnished with the matter— which I regret to say he has treated— in the presence of the Court— and of his client, a deacon of the church— with— er— -great superciliousness. When I state to your Honor that the books in question are hymn-books and copies of the Holy Scriptures, and that they are for the instruction of the jury, to whom I shall have to refer them in the course of my opening, I believe I am within my rights."

"The act is certainly unprecedented," said the Judge, dryly, "but unless the counsel for the plaintiff expects the jury to sing from these hymn-books, their introduction is not improper, and I cannot admit the objection. As defendant's counsel are furnished with copies also, they cannot plead 'surprise,' as in the introduction of new matter, and as plaintiff's counsel relies evidently upon the jury's attention to his opening, he would not be the first person to distract it." After a pause he added, addressing the Colonel, who remained standing, "The Court is with you, sir; proceed."

But the Colonel remained motionless and statuesque, with folded arms.

"I have overruled the objection," repeated the Judge; "you may go on."

"I am waiting, your Honor, for the— er— withdrawal by the defendant's counsel of the word 'tampering,' as refers to myself, and of 'impertinent,' as refers to the sacred volumes."

"The request is a proper one, and I have no doubt will be acceded to," returned the Judge, quietly. The defendant's counsel rose and mumbled a few words of apology, and the incident closed. There was, however, a general feeling that the Colonel had in some way "scored," and if his object had been to excite the greatest curiosity about the books, he had made his point.

But impassive of his victory, he inflated his chest, with his right hand in the breast of his buttoned coat, and began. His usual high color had paled slightly, but the small pupils of his prominent eyes glittered like steel. The young girl leaned forward in her chair with an attention so breathless, a sympathy so quick, and an admiration so artless and unconscious that in an instant she divided with the speaker the attention of the whole assemblage. It was very hot; the court was crowded to suffocation; even the open windows revealed a crowd of faces outside the building, eagerly following the Colonel's words.

He would remind the jury that only a few weeks ago he stood there as the advocate of a powerful company, then represented by the present defendant. He spoke then as the champion of strict justice against legal oppression; no less should he to-day champion the cause of the unprotected and the comparatively defenseless— save for that paramount power which surrounds beauty and innocence— even though the plaintiff of yesterday was the defendant of to-day. As he approached the court a moment ago he had raised his eyes and beheld the starry flag flying from its dome— and he knew that glorious banner was a symbol of the perfect equality, under the Constitution, of the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak— an equality which made the simple citizen taken from the plough in the veld, the pick in the gulch, or from behind the counter in the mining town, who served on that jury, the equal arbiters of justice with that highest legal luminary whom they were proud to welcome on the bench to-day. The Colonel paused, with a stately bow to the impassive Judge. It was this, he continued, which lifted his heart as he approached the building. And yet— he had entered it with an uncertain— he might almost say— a timid step. And why? He knew, gentlemen, he was about to confront a profound— aye! a sacred responsibility! Those hymn-books and holy writings handed to the jury were not, as his Honor surmised, for the purpose of enabling the jury to indulge in— er— preliminary choral exercise! He might, indeed, say "alas not!" They were the damning, incontrovertible proofs of the perfidy of the defendant. And they would prove as terrible a warning to him as the fatal characters upon Belshazzar's wall. There was a strong sensation. Hotchkiss turned a sallow green. His lawyers assumed a careless smile.

It was his duty to tell them that this was not one of those ordinary "breach-of-promise" cases which were too often the occasion of ruthless mirth and indecent levity in the courtroom. The jury would find nothing of that here, There were no love-letters with the epithets of endearment, nor those mystic crosses and ciphers which, he had been credibly informed, chastely hid the exchange of those mutual caresses known as "kisses." There was no cruel tearing of the veil from those sacred privacies of the human affection— there was no forensic shouting out of those fond confidences meant only for one. But there was, he was shocked to say, a new sacrilegious intrusion. The weak pipings of Cupid were mingled with the chorus of the saints— the sanctity of the temple known as the "meeting-house" was desecrated by proceedings more in keeping with the shrine of Venus— and the inspired writings themselves were used as the medium of amatory and wanton flirtation by the defendant in his sacred capacity as Deacon.

The Colonel artistically paused after this thunderous denunciation. The jury turned eagerly to the leaves of the hymn-books, but the larger gaze of the audience remained fixed upon the speaker and the girl, who sat in rapt admiration of his periods. After the hush, the Colonel continued in a lower and sadder voice: "There are, perhaps, few of us here, gentlemen— with the exception of the defendant— who can arrogate to themselves the title of regular churchgoers, or to whom these humbler functions of the prayer-meeting, the Sunday-school, and the Bible class are habitually familiar. Yet"— more solemnly— "down in your hearts is the deep conviction of our short-comings and failings, and a laudable desire that others at least should profit by the teachings we neglect. Perhaps," he continued, closing his eyes dreamily, "there is not a man here who does not recall the happy days of his boyhood, the rustic village spire, the lessons shared with some artless village maiden, with whom he later sauntered, hand in hand, through the woods, as the simple rhyme rose upon their lips,

Always make it a point to have it a rule Never to be late at the Sabbath-school."

He would recall the strawberry feasts, the welcome annual picnic, redolent with hunks of gingerbread and sarsaparilla. How would they feel to know that these sacred recollections were now forever profaned in their memory by the knowledge that the defendant was capable of using such occasions to make love to the larger girls and teachers, whilst his artless companions were innocently— the Court will pardon me for introducing what I am credibly informed is the local expression 'doing gooseberry'?" The tremulous flicker of a smile passed over the faces of the listening crowd, and the Colonel slightly winced. But he recovered himself instantly, and continued:

"My client, the only daughter of a widowed mother— who has for years stemmed the varying tides of adversity— in the western precincts of this town— stands before you today invested only in her own innocence. She wears no— er— rich gifts of her faithless admirer— is panoplied in no jewels, rings, nor mementoes of affection such as lovers delight to hang upon the shrine of their affections; hers is not the glory with which Solomon decorated the Queen of Sheba, though the defendant, as I shall show later, clothed her in the less expensive flowers of the king's poetry. No! gentlemen! The defendant exhibited in this affair a certain frugality of— er— pecuniary investment, which I am willing to admit may be commendable in his class. His only gift was characteristic alike of his methods and his economy. There is, I understand, a certain not unimportant feature of religious exercise known as 'taking a collection.' The defendant, on this occasion, by the mute presentation of a tip plate covered with baize, solicited the pecuniary contributions of the faithful. On approaching the plaintiff, however, he himself slipped a love-token upon the plate and pushed it towards her. That love-token was a lozenge— a small disk, I have reason to believe, concocted of peppermint and sugar, bearing upon its reverse surface the simple words, 'I love you!' I have since ascertained that these disks may be bought for five cents a dozen— or at considerably less than one half-cent for the single lozenge. Yes, gentlemen, the words 'I love you!'— the oldest legend of all; the refrain, 'when the morning stars sang together'— were presented to the plaintiff by a medium so insignificant that there is, happily, no coin in the republic low enough to represent its value.

"I shall prove to you, gentlemen of the jury," said the Colonel, solemnly, drawing a Bible from his coat-tail pocket, "that the defendant, for the last twelve months, conducted an amatory correspondence with the plaintiff by means of underlined words of sacred writ and church psalmody, such as 'beloved,' 'precious,' and 'dearest,' occasionally appropriating whole passages which seemed apposite to his tender passion. I shall call your attention to one of them. The defendant, while professing to be a total abstainer— a man who, in my own knowledge, has refused spirituous refreshment as an inordinate weakness of the flesh, with shameless hypocrisy underscores with his pencil the following passage and presents it to the plaintiff. The gentlemen of the jury will find it in the Song of Solomon, page 548, chapter II, verse 5." After a pause, in which the rapid rustling of leaves was heard in the jury-box, Colonel Starbottle declaimed in a pleading, stentorian voice, "'Stay me with — er— flagons, comfort me with— er— apples— for I am— er— sick of love.' Yes, gentlemen!— yes, you may well turn from those accusing pages and look at the double-faced defendant. He desires— to— er— be — 'stayed with flagons'! I am not aware, at present, what kind of liquor is habitually dispensed at these meetings, and for which the defendant so urgently clamored; but it will be my duty before this trial is over to discover it, if I have to summon every barkeeper in this district. For the moment, I will simply call your attention to the quantity. It is not a single drink that the defendant asks for — not a glass of light and generous wine, to be shared with his inamorata— but a number of flagons or vessels, each possibly holding a pint measure— for himself!"

The smile of the audience had become a laugh. The Judge looked up warningly, when his eye caught the fact that the Colonel had again winced at this mirth. He regarded him seriously. Mr. Hotchkiss's counsel had joined in the laugh affectedly, but Hotchkiss himself was ashy pale. There was also a commotion in the jury-box, a hurried turning over of leaves, and an excited discussion.

"The gentlemen of the jury," said the Judge, with official gravity, "will please keep order and attend only to the speeches of counsel. Any discussion here is irregular and premature— and must be reserved for the jury-room— after they have retired."

The foreman of the jury struggled to his feet. He was a powerful man, with a good-humored face, and, in spite of his unfelicitous nickname of "The Bone-Breaker," had a kindly, simple, but somewhat emotional nature. Nevertheless, it appeared as if he were laboring under some powerful indignation.

"Can we ask a question, Judge?" he said, respectfully, although his voice had the unmistakable Western-American ring in it, as of one who was unconscious that he could be addressing any but his peers.

"Yes," said the Judge, good-humoredly.

"We're finding in this yere piece, out of which the Kernel hes just bin a-quotin', some language that me and my pardners allow hadn't orter to be read out afore a young lady in court— and we want to know of you— ez a fair-minded and impartial man— ef this is the reg'lar kind o' book given to gals and babies down at the meetin'-house."

"The jury will please follow the counsel's speech, without comment," said the Judge, briefly, fully aware that the defendant's counsel would spring to his feet, as he did promptly. "The Court will allow us to explain to the gentlemen that the language they seem to object to has been accepted by the best theologians for the last thousand years as being purely mystic. As I will explain later, those are merely symbols of the Church— "

"Of wot?" interrupted the foreman, in deep scorn.

"Of the Church!"

"We ain't askin' any questions o' you— and we ain't takin' any answers," said the foreman, sitting down promptly.

"I must insist," said the Judge, sternly, "that the plaintiff's counsel be allowed to continue his opening without interruption. You" (to defendant's counsel) "will have your opportunity to reply later."

The counsel sank down in his seat with the bitter conviction that the jury was manifestly against him, and the case as good as lost. But his face was scarcely as disturbed as his client's, who, in great agitation, had begun to argue with him wildly, and was apparently pressing some point against the lawyer's vehement opposal. The Colonel's murky eyes brightened as he still stood erect with his hand thrust in his breast.

"It will be put to you, gentlemen, when the counsel on the other side refrains from mere interruption and confines himself to reply, that my unfortunate client has no action— no remedy at law— because there were no spoken words of endearment. But, gentlemen, it will depend upon you to say what are and what are not articulate expressions of love. We all know that among the lower animals, with whom you may possibly be called upon to classify the defendant, there are certain signals more or less harmonious, as the case may be. The ass brays, the horse neighs, the sheep bleats— the feathered denizens of the grove call to their mates in more musical roundelays. These are recognized facts, gentlemen, which you yourselves, as dwellers among nature in this beautiful land, are all cognizant of. They are facts that no one would deny— and we should have a poor opinion of the ass who, at— er— such a supreme moment, would attempt to suggest that his call was unthinking and without significance. But, gentlemen, I shall prove to you that such was the foolish, self-convicting custom of the defendant. With the greatest reluctance, and the— er— greatest pain, I succeeded in wresting from the maidenly modesty of my fair client the innocent confession that the defendant had induced her to correspond with him in these methods. Picture to yourself, gentlemen, the lonely moonlight road beside the widow's humble cottage. It is a beautiful night, sanctified to the affections, and the innocent girl is leaning from her casement. Presently there appears upon the road a slinking, stealthy figure— the defendant, on his way to church. True to the instruction she has received from him, her lips part in the musical utterance" (the Colonel lowered his voice in a faint falsetto, presumably in fond imitation of his fair client),"'Kerree!' Instantly the night became resonant with the impassioned reply" (the Colonel here lifted his voice in stentorian tones), "'Kerrow.' Again, as he passes, rises the soft 'Kerree'; again, as his form is lost in the distance, comes back the deep 'Kerrow.'"

A burst of laughter, long, loud, and irrepressible, struck the whole courtroom, and before the Judge could lift his half-composed face and take his handkerchief from his mouth, a faint "Kerree" from some unrecognized obscurity of the courtroom was followed by a loud "Kerrow" from some opposite locality. "The sheriff will clear the court," said the Judge, sternly; but alas, as the embarrassed and choking officials rushed hither and thither, a soft "Kerree" from the spectators at the window, outside the courthouse, was answered by a loud chorus of "Kerrows" from the opposite windows, filled with onlookers. Again the laughter arose everywhere— even the fair plaintiff herself sat convulsed behind her handkerchief.

The figure of Colonel Starbottle alone remained erect— white and rigid. And then the Judge, looking up, saw what no one else in the court had seen— that the Colonel was sincere and in earnest; that what he had conceived to be the pleader's most perfect acting, and most elaborate irony, were the deep, serious, mirthless convictions of a man without the least sense of humor. There was a touch of this respect in the Judge's voice as he said to him, gently, "You may proceed, Colonel Starbottle."

"I thank your Honor," said the Colonel, slowly, "for recognizing and doing all in your power to prevent an interruption that, during my thirty years' experience at the bar, I have never yet been subjected to without the privilege of holding the instigators thereof responsible— personally responsible. It is possibly my fault that I have failed, oratorically, to convey to the gentlemen of the jury the full force and significance of the defendant's signals. I am aware that my voice is singularly deficient in producing either the dulcet tones of my fair client or the impassioned vehemence of the defendant's repose. I will," continued the Colonel, with a fatigued but blind fatuity that ignored the hurriedly knit brows and warning eyes of the Judge, "try again. The note uttered by my client" (lowering his voice to the faintest of falsettos) "was 'Kerree'; the response was 'Kerrow'"— and the Colonel's voice fairly shook the dome above him.

Another uproar of laughter followed this apparently audacious repetition, but was interrupted by an unlooked-for incident. The defendant rose abruptly, and tearing himself away from the withholding hand and pleading protestations of his counsel, absolutely fled from the courtroom, his appearance outside being recognized by a prolonged "Kerrow" from the bystanders, which again and again followed him in the distance. In the momentary silence which followed, the Colonel's voice was heard saying, "We rest here, your Honor," and he sat down. No less white, but more agitated, was the face of the defendant's counsel, who instantly rose.

"For some unexplained reason, your Honor, my client desires to suspend further proceedings, with a view to effect a peaceable compromise with the plaintiff. As he is a man of wealth and position, he is able and willing to pay liberally for that privilege. While I, as his counsel, am still convinced of his legal irresponsibility, as he has chosen, however, to publicly abandon his rights here, I can only ask your Honor's permission to suspend further proceedings until I can confer with Colonel Starbottle."

"As far as I can follow the pleadings," said the Judge, gravely, "the case seems to be hardly one for litigation, and I approve of the defendant's course, while I strongly urge the plaintiff to accept it."

Colonel Starbottle bent over his fair client. Presently he rose, unchanged in look or demeanor. "I yield, your Honor, to the wishes of my client, and— er— lady. We accept."

Before the court adjourned that day it was known throughout the town that Adoniram K. Hotchkiss had compromised the suit for four thousand dollars and costs.

Colonel Starbottle had so far recovered his equanimity as to strut jauntily towards his office, where he was to meet his fair client. He was surprised, however, to find her already there, and in company with a somewhat sheepish-looking young man— a stranger. If the Colonel had any disappointment in meeting a third party to the interview, his old-fashioned courtesy did not permit him to show it. He bowed graciously, and politely motioned them each to a seat.

"I reckoned I'd bring Hiram round with me," said the young lady, lifting her searching eyes, after a pause, to the Colonel's, "though he was awful shy, and allowed that you didn't know him from Adam— or even suspected his existence. But I said, 'That's just where you slip up, Hiram; a pow'ful man like the Colonel knows everything— and I've seen it in his eye.' Lordy!" she continued, with a laugh, leaning forward over her parasol, as her eyes again sought the Colonel's, "don't you remember when you asked me if I loved that old Hotchkiss, and I told you 'That's tellin',' and you looked at me, Lordy! I knew then you suspected there was a Hiram somewhere— as good as if I'd told you. Now, you, jest get up, Hiram, and give the Colonel a good handshake. For if it wasn't for him and his searchin' ways, and his awful power of language, I wouldn't hev got that four thousand dollars out o' that flirty fool Hotchkiss— enough to buy a farm, so as you and me could get married! That's what you owe to him. Don't stand there like a stuck fool starin' at him. He won't eat you— though he's killed many a better man. Come, have I got to do all the kissin'!"

It is of record that the Colonel bowed so courteously and so profoundly that he managed not merely to evade the proffered hand of the shy Hiram, but to only lightly touch the franker and more impulsive fingertips of the gentle Zaidee. "I— er— offer my sincerest congratulations— though I think you— er— overestimate— my— er— powers of penetration. Unfortunately, a pressing engagement, which may oblige me also to leave town to-night, forbids my saying more. I have— er— left the— er— business settlement of this— er— case in the hands of the lawyers who do my office-work, and who will show you every attention. And now let me wish you a very good afternoon."

Nevertheless, the Colonel returned to his private room, and it was nearly twilight when the faithful Jim entered, to find him sitting meditatively before his desk. "'Fo' God! Kernel— I hope dey ain't nuffin de matter, but you's lookin' mightly solemn! I ain't seen you look dat way, Kernel, since de day pooh Marse Stryker was fetched home shot froo de head."

"Hand me down the whiskey, Jim," said the Colonel, rising slowly.

The negro flew to the closet joyfully, and brought out the bottle. The Colonel poured out a glass of the spirit and drank it with his old deliberation.

"You're quite right, Jim," he said, putting down his glass, "but I'm— er— getting old— and— somehow— I am missing poor Stryker damnably!"

__________________

13: The Gylston Slander

Herbert Jenkins

1876-1923

Hutchinson's Story Magazine July 1920

"IT'S ALL VERY WELL for the Chief to sit in there like a five-guinea palmist," Gladys Norman cried one morning, as after interviewing the umpteenth caller that day she proceeded vigorously to powder her nose, to the obvious interest of William Johnson; "but what about me? If anyone else comes I must speak the truth. I haven't an unused lie left."

"Then you had better let Johnson have a turn," said a quiet voice behind her.

She span round, with flaming cheeks and white-flecked nose, to see the steel grey eyes of Malcolm Sage gazing on her quizzically through gold-rimmed spectacles. There was only the slightest fluttering at the corners of his mouth.

As his activities enlarged, Malcolm Sage's fame had increased, and he was overwhelmed with requests for assistance. Clients bore down upon him from all parts of the country; some even crossing the Channel, whilst from America and the Colonies came a flood of letters giving long, rambling details of mysteries, murders and disappearances, all of which he was expected to solve.

Those who wrote, however, were as nothing to those who called. They arrived in various stages of excitement and agitation, only to be met by Miss Gladys Norman with a stereotyped smile and the equally stereotyped information that Mr. Malcolm Sage saw no one except by appointment, which was never made until the nature of the would-be client's business had been stated in writing.

The Surrey cattle-maiming affair, and the consequent publicity it gave to the name of Malcolm Sage, had resulted in something like a siege of the Bureau's offices.

"I told you so," said Lady Dene gaily to her husband, and he had nodded his head in entire agreement.

Malcolm Sage's success was largely due to the very quality that had rendered him a failure as a civil servant, the elasticity of his mind.

He approached each problem entirely unprejudiced, weighed the evidence, and followed the course it indicated, prepared at any moment to retrace his steps, should they lead to a cul-de-sac.

He admitted the importance of the Roman judicial interrogation, "cui bono?" (whom benefits it?); yet he realised that there was always the danger of confusing the pathological with the criminal.

"The obvious is the correct solution of most mysteries," he had once remarked to Sir James Walton; but there is always the possibility of exception.

The Surrey cattle-maiming mystery had been a case in point. Even more so was the affair that came to be known as "The Gylston Slander." In this case Malcolm Sage arrived at the truth by a refusal to accept what, on the face of it, appeared to be the obvious solution.

It was through Robert Freynes, the eminent K.C., that he first became interested in the series of anonymous letters that had created considerable scandal in the little village of Gylston.

Tucked away in the north-west corner of Hampshire, Gylston was a village of some eight hundred inhabitants. The vicar, the Rev. John Crayne, had held the living for some twenty years. Aided by his wife and daughter, Muriel, a pretty and high-spirited girl of nineteen, he devoted himself to the parish, and in return enjoyed great popularity.

Life at the vicarage was an ideal of domestic happiness. Mr. and Mrs. Crayne were devoted to each other and to their daughter, and she to them. Muriel Crayne had grown up among the villagers, devoting herself to parish work as soon as she was old enough to do so. She seemed to find her life sufficient for her needs, and many were the comparisons drawn by other parents in Gylston between the vicar's daughter and their own restless offspring.

A year previously a new curate had arrived in the person of the Rev. Charles Blade. His frank, straightforward personality, coupled with his good looks and masculine bearing, had caused him to be greatly liked, not only by the vicar and his family, but by all the parishioners.

Suddenly and without warning the peace of the vicarage was destroyed. One morning Mr. Crayne received by post an anonymous letter, in which the names of his daughter and the curate were linked together in a way that caused him both pain and anxiety.

A man with a strong sense of honour himself, he cordially despised the anonymous letter-writer, and his first instinct had been to ignore that which he had just received. On second thoughts, however, he reasoned that the writer would be unlikely to rest content with a single letter; but would, in all probability, make the same calumnious statements to others.

After consulting with his wife, he had reluctantly questioned his daughter. At first she was inclined to treat the matter lightly; but on the grave nature of the accusations being pointed out to her, she had become greatly embarrassed and assured him that the curate had never been more than ordinarily attentive to her.

The vicar decided to allow the matter to rest there, and accordingly he made no mention of the letter to Blade.

A week later his daughter brought him a letter she had found lying in the vicarage grounds. It contained a passionate declaration of love, and ended with a threat of what might happen if the writer's passion were not reciprocated.

Although the letter was unsigned, the vicar could not disguise from himself the fact that there was a marked similarity between the handwriting of the two anonymous letters and that of his curate. He decided, therefore, to ask Blade if he could throw any light on the matter.

At first the young man had appeared bewildered; then he had pledged his word of honour, not only that he had not written the letters, but that there was no truth in the statements they contained.

With that the vicar had to rest content; but worse was to follow.

Two evenings later, one of the churchwardens called at the vicarage and, after behaving in what to the vicar seemed a very strange manner, he produced from his pocket a letter he had received that morning, in which were repeated the scandalous statements contained in the first epistle.

From then on the district was deluged with anonymous letters, all referring to the alleged passion of the curate for the vicar's daughter, and the intrigue they were carrying on together. Some of the letters were frankly indelicate in their expression and, as the whole parish seethed with the scandal, the vicar appealed to the police for aid.

One peculiarity of the letters was that all were written upon the same paper, known as "Olympic Script." This was supplied locally to a number of people in the neighbourhood, among others, the vicar, the curate, and the schoolmaster.

Soon the story began to find its way into the newspapers, and Blade's position became one full of difficulty and embarrassment. He had consulted Robert Freynes, who had been at Oxford with his father, and the K.C., convinced of the young man's innocence, had sought Malcolm Sage's aid.

"You see, Sage," Freynes had remarked, "I'm sure the boy is straight and incapable of such conduct; but it's impossible to talk to that ass Murdy. He has no more imagination than a tin-linnet."

Freynes's reference was to Chief Inspector Murdy, of Scotland Yard, who had been entrusted with the enquiry, the local police having proved unequal to the problem.

Although Malcolm Sage had promised Robert Freynes that he would undertake the enquiry into the Gylston scandal, it was not until nearly a week later that he found himself at liberty to motor down into Hampshire.

One afternoon the vicar of Gylston, on entering his church, found a stranger on his knees in the chancel. Note-book in hand, he was transcribing the inscription of a monumental brass.

As the vicar approached, he observed that the stranger was vigorously shaking a fountain-pen, from which the ink had evidently been exhausted.

At the sound of Mr. Crayne's footsteps the stranger looked up, turning towards him a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, above which a bald conical head seemed to contradict the keenness of the eyes and the youthful lines of the face beneath.

"You are interested in monumental brasses?" enquired the vicar, as he entered the chancel, and the stranger rose to his feet. "I am the vicar," he explained. There was a look of eager interest in the pale grey eyes that looked out from a placid, scholarly face.

"I was taking the liberty of copying the inscription on this," replied Malcolm Sage, indicating the time-worn brass at his feet, "only unfortunately my fountain-pen has given out."

"There is pen and ink in the vestry," said the vicar, impressed by the fact that the stranger had chosen the finest brass in the church, one that had been saved from Cromwell's Puritans by the ingenuity of the then incumbent, who had caused it to be covered with cement. Then as an after-thought the vicar added, "I can get your pen filled at the vicarage. My daughter has some ink; she always uses a fountain-pen."

Malcolm Sage thanked him, and for the next half-hour the vicar forgot the worries of the past few weeks in listening to a man who seemed to have the whole subject of monumental brasses and Norman architecture at his finger-ends.

Subsequently Malcolm Sage was invited to the vicarage, where another half-hour was occupied in Mr. Crayne showing him his collection of books on brasses.

As Malcolm Sage made a movement to depart, the vicar suddenly remembered the matter of the ink, apologised for his remissness, and left the room, returning a few minutes later with a bottle of fountain-pen ink. Malcolm Sage drew from his pocket his pen, and proceeded to replenish the ink from the bottle. Finally he completed the transcription of the lettering of the brass from a rubbing produced by the vicar.

Reluctant to allow so interesting a visitor to depart, Mr. Crayne pressed him to take tea; but Malcolm Sage pleaded an engagement.

As they crossed the hall, a fair girl suddenly rushed out from a door on the right. She was crying hysterically. Her hair was disordered, her deep violet eyes rimmed with red, and her moist lips seemed to stand out strangely red against the alabaster paleness of her skin.

"Muriel!"

Malcolm Sage glanced swiftly at the vicar. The look of scholarly calm had vanished from his features, giving place to a set sternness that reflected the tone in which he had uttered his daughter's name.

At the sight of a stranger the girl had paused, then, as if realising her tear-stained face and disordered hair, she turned and disappeared through the door from which she had rushed.

"My daughter," murmured the vicar, a little sadly, Malcolm Sage thought. "She has always been very highly strung and emotional," he added, as if considering some explanation necessary. "We have to be very stern with her on such occasions. It is the only way to repress it."

"You find it answer?" remarked Malcolm Sage.

"She has been much better lately, although she has been sorely tried. Perhaps you have heard."

Malcolm Sage nodded absently, as he gazed intently at the thumb-nail of his right hand. A minute later he was walking down the drive, his thoughts occupied with the pretty daughter of the vicar of Gylston.

At the curate's lodgings he was told that Mr. Blade was away, and would not return until late that night.

As he turned from the gate, Malcolm Sage encountered a pale-faced, narrow-shouldered man with a dark moustache and a hard, peevish mouth.

To Malcolm Sage's question as to which was the way to the inn, he nodded in the direction from which he had come and continued on his way.

"A man who has failed in what he set out to accomplish," was Malcolm Sage's mental diagnosis of John Gray, the Gylston schoolmaster.

It was not long before Malcolm Sage realised that the village of Gylston was intensely proud of itself. It had seen in the London papers accounts of the mysterious scandal of which it was the centre. A Scotland Yard officer had been down, and had subjected many of the inhabitants to a careful cross-examination. In consequence Gylston realised that it was a village to be reckoned with.

The Tired Traveller was the centre of all rumour and gossip. Here each night in the public-bar, or in the private-parlour, according to their social status, the inhabitants would forgather and discuss the problem of the mysterious letters. Every sort of theory was advanced, and every sort of explanation offered. Whilst popular opinion tended to the view that the curate was the guilty party, there were some who darkly shook their heads and muttered, "We shall see."

It was remembered and discussed with relish that John Gray, the schoolmaster, had for some time past shown a marked admiration for the vicar's daughter. She, however, had made it clear that the cadaverous, saturnine pedagogue possessed for her no attractions.

During the half-hour that Malcolm Sage spent at The Tired Traveller, eating a hurried meal, he heard all there was to be heard about local opinion.

The landlord, a rubicund old fellow whose baldness extended to his eyelids, was bursting with information. By nature capable of making a mystery out of a sunbeam, he revelled in the scandal that hummed around him.

After a quarter of an hour's conversation, the landlord's conversation, Malcolm Sage found himself possessed of a bewildering amount of new material.

"A young gal don't have them highsterics for nothin'," mine host remarked darkly. "Has fits of 'em every now and then ever since she was a flapper, sobbin' and cryin' fit to break 'er heart, and the vicar that cross with her."

"That is considered the best way to treat hysterical people," remarked Malcolm Sage.

"Maybe," was the reply, "but she's only a gal, and a pretty one too," he added inconsequently.

"Then there's the schoolmaster," he continued, "'ates the curate like poison, he does. Shouldn't be surprised if it was him that done it. 'E's always been a bit sweet in that quarter himself, has Mr. Gray. Got talked about a good deal one time, 'angin' about arter Miss Muriel," added the loquacious publican.

By the time Malcolm Sage had finished his meal, the landlord was well in his stride of scandalous reminiscence. It was with obvious reluctance that he allowed so admirable a listener to depart, and it was with manifest regret that he watched Malcolm Sage's car disappear round the curve in the road.

A little way beyond the vicarage, an admonitory triangle caused Tims to slow up. Just by the bend Malcolm Sage observed a youth and a girl standing in the recess of a gate giving access to a meadow. Although they were in the shadow cast by the hedge, Malcolm Sage's quick eyes recognised in the girl the vicar's daughter. The youth looked as if he might be one of the lads of the village.

In the short space of two or three seconds Malcolm Sage noticed the change in the girl. Although he could not see her face very clearly, the vivacity of her bearing and the ready laugh were suggestive of a gaiety contrasting strangely with the tragic figure he had seen in the afternoon.

Muriel Crayne was obviously of a very mercurial temperament, he decided, as the car swung round the bend.

The next morning, in response to a telephone message, Inspector Murdy called on Malcolm Sage.

"Well, Mr. Sage," he cried, as he shook hands, "going to have another try to teach us our job," and his blue eyes twinkled good-humouredly.

The inspector had already made up his mind. He was a man with many successes to his record, achieved as a result of undoubted astuteness in connection with the grosser crimes, such as train-murders, post-office hold-ups and burglaries. He was incapable, however, of realising that there existed a subtler form of law-breaking, arising from something more intimately associated with the psychic than the material plane.

"Did you see Mr. Blade?" enquired Malcolm Sage.

"Saw the whole blessed lot," was the cheery reply. "It's all as clear as milk," and he laughed.

"What did Mr. Blade say?" enquired Malcolm Sage, looking keenly across at the inspector.

"Just that he had nothing to say."

"His exact words. Can you remember them?" queried Malcolm Sage.

"Oh, yes!" replied the inspector. "He said, 'Inspector Murdy, I have nothing to say,' and then he shut up like a real Whitstable."

"He was away yesterday," remarked Malcolm Sage, who then told the inspector of his visit. "How about John Gray, the schoolmaster?" he queried.

"He practically told me to go to the devil," was the genial reply. Inspector Murdy was accustomed to rudeness; his profession invited it, and to his rough-and-ready form of reasoning, rudeness meant innocence; politeness guilt.

He handed to Malcolm Sage a copy of a list of people who purchased "Olympic Script" from Mr. Grainger, the local Whiteley, volunteering the information that the curate was the biggest consumer, as if that settled the question of his guilt.

"And yet the vicar would not hear of the arrest of Blade," murmured Malcolm Sage, turning the copper ash-tray round with his restless fingers.

The inspector shrugged his massive shoulders.

"Sheer good nature and kindliness, Mr. Sage," he said. "He's as gentle as a woman."

"I once knew a man," remarked Malcolm Sage, "who said that in the annals of crime lay the master-key to the world's mysteries, past, present and to come."

"A dreamer, Mr. Sage," smiled the inspector. "We haven't time for dreaming at the Yard," he added good-temperedly, as he rose and shook himself like a Newfoundland dog.

"I suppose it never struck you to look elsewhere than at the curate's lodgings for the writer of the letters?" enquired Malcolm Sage quietly.

"It never strikes me to look about for someone when I'm sitting on his chest," laughed Inspector Murdy.

"True," said Malcolm Sage. "By the way," he continued, without looking up, "in future can you let me see every letter as it is received? You might also keep careful record of how they are delivered."

"Certainly, Mr. Sage. Anything that will make you happy."

"Later I may get you to ask the vicar to seal up any subsequent anonymous letters that reach him without allowing anyone to see the contents. Do you think he would do that?"

"Without doubt if I ask him," said the inspector, surprise in his eyes as he looked down upon the cone of baldness beneath him, realising what a handicap it is to talk to a man who keeps his eyes averted.

"He must then put the letters in a place where no one can possibly obtain access to them. One thing more," continued Malcolm Sage, "will you ask Miss Crayne to write out the full story of the letters as far as she personally is acquainted with it?"

"Very well, Mr. Sage," said the inspector, with the air of one humouring a child. "Now I'll be going." He walked towards the door, then suddenly stopped and turned.

"I suppose you think I'm wrong about the curate?"

"I'll tell you later," was the reply.

"When you find the master-key?" laughed the inspector, as he opened the door.

"Yes, when I find the master-key," said Malcolm Sage quietly and, as the door closed behind Inspector Murdy, he continued to finger the copper ash-tray as if that were the master-key.

MALCOLM SAGE was seated at a small green-covered table playing solitaire. A velvet smoking-jacket and a pair of wine-coloured morocco slippers suggested that the day's work was done.

Patience, chess, and the cinema were his unfailing sources of inspiration when engaged upon a more than usually difficult case. He had once told Sir James Walton that they clarified his brain and co-ordinated his thoughts, the cinema in particular. The fact that in the surrounding darkness were hundreds of other brains, vital and active, appeared to stimulate his own imagination.

Puffing steadily at a gigantic meerschaum, he moved the cards with a deliberation which suggested that his attention rather than his thoughts was absorbed in the game.

Nearly a month had elapsed since he had agreed to take up the enquiry into the authorship of the series of anonymous letters with which Gylston and the neighbourhood had been flooded; yet still the matter remained a mystery.

A celebrated writer of detective stories had interested himself in the affair, with the result that the Press throughout the country had "stunted" Gylston as if it had been a heavy-weight championship, or a train murder.

For a fortnight Malcolm Sage had been on the Continent in connection with the theft of the Adair Diamonds. Two days previously, after having restored the famous jewels to Lady Adair, he had returned to London, to find that the Gylston affair had developed a new and dramatic phase. The curate had been arrested for an attempted assault upon Miss Crayne and, pleading "not guilty," had been committed for trial.

The incident that led up to this had taken place on the day that Malcolm Sage left London. Late that afternoon Miss Crayne had arrived at the vicarage in a state bordering on collapse. On becoming more collected, she stated that on returning from paying a call, and when half-way through a copse, known locally as "Gipsies Wood," Blade had sprung out upon her and violently protested his passion. He had gripped hold of her wrists, the mark of his fingers was to be seen on the delicate skin, and threatened to kill her and himself. She had been terrified, thinking he meant to kill her. The approach of a farm labourer had saved her, and the curate had disappeared through the copse.

This story was borne out by Joseph Higgins, the farm labourer in question. He had arrived to find Miss Crayne in a state of great alarm and agitation, and he had walked with her as far as the vicarage gate. He did not, however, actually see the curate.

On the strength of this statement the police had applied for a warrant, and had subsequently arrested the curate. Later he appeared before the magistrates, had been remanded, and finally committed for trial, bail being allowed.

Blade protested his innocence alike of the assault and the writing of the letters; but two handwriting experts had testified to the similarity of the handwriting of the anonymous letters with that of the curate. Furthermore, they were all written upon "Olympic Script," the paper that Blade used for his sermons.

Malcolm Sage had just started a new deal when the door opened, and Rogers showed in Robert Freynes. With a nod, Malcolm Sage indicated the chair opposite. His visitor dropped into it and, taking a pipe from his pocket, proceeded to fill and light it.

Placing his meerschaum on the mantelpiece, Malcolm Sage produced a well-worn briar from his pocket, which, having got into commission, he proceeded once more with the game.

"It's looking pretty ugly for Blade," remarked Freynes, recognising by the substitution of the briar for the meerschaum that Malcolm Sage was ready for conversation.

"Tell me."

"It's those damned handwriting experts," growled Freynes. "They're the greatest anomaly of our legal system. The judge always warns the jury of the danger of accepting their evidence; yet each side continues to produce them. It's an insult to intelligence and justice."

"To hang a man because his 's' resembles that of an implicating document," remarked Malcolm Sage, as he placed a red queen on a black knave, "is about as sensible as to imprison him because he has the same accent as a footpad."

"Then there's Blade's astonishing apathy," continued Freynes. "He seems quite indifferent to the gravity of his position. Refuses to say a word. Anyone might think he knew the real culprit and was trying to shield him," and he sucked moodily at his pipe.

"The handwriting expert," continued Malcolm Sage imperturbably, "is too concerned with the crossing of a 't,' the dotting of an 'i,' or the tail of a 'g,' to give time and thought to the way in which the writer uses, for instance, the compound tenses of verbs. Blade was no more capable of writing those letters than our friend Murdy is of transliterating the Rosetta Stone."

"Yes; but can we prove it?" asked Freynes gloomily, as with the blade of a penknife he loosened the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. "Can we prove it?" he repeated and, snapping the knife to, he replaced it in his pocket.

"Blade's sermons," Malcolm Sage continued, "and such letters of his as you have been able to collect, show that he adopted a very definite and precise system of punctuation. He frequently uses the colon and the semicolon, and always in the right place. In a parenthetical clause preceded by the conjunction 'and,' he uses a comma after the 'and,' not before it as most people do. Before such words as 'yet' and 'but,' he without exception uses a semicolon. The word 'only,' he always puts in its correct place. In short, he is so academic as to savour somewhat of the pomposity of the eighteenth century."

"Go on," said Freynes, as Malcolm Sage paused, as if to give the other a chance of questioning his reasoning.

"Turning to the anonymous letters," continued Malcolm Sage, "it must be admitted that the handwriting is very similar; but there all likeness to Blade's sermons and correspondence ends. Murdy has shown me nearly all the anonymous letters, and in the whole series there is not one instance of the colon or the semicolon being used. The punctuation is of the vaguest, consisting largely of the dash, which after all is a literary evasion.

"In these letters the word 'but' frequently appears without any punctuation mark before it. At other times it has a comma, a dash, or a full stop."

He paused and for the next two minutes devoted himself to the game before him. Then he continued:

"Such phrases as 'If only you knew,' 'I should have loved to have been,' 'different than,' which appear in these letters, would have been absolutely impossible to a man of Blade's meticulous literary temperament.

As Malcolm Sage spoke, Robert Freynes's brain had been working rapidly. Presently he brought his hand down with a smack upon his knee.

"By heavens, Sage!" he cried, "This is a new pill for the handwriting expert. I'll put you in the box. We've got a fighting chance after all."

"The most curious factor in the whole case," continued Malcolm Sage, "is the way in which the letters were delivered. One was thrown into a fly on to Miss Crayne's lap, she tells us, when she and her father were driving home after dining at the Hall. Another was discovered in the vicarage garden. A third was thrown through Miss Crayne's bedroom window. A few of the earlier group were posted in the neighbouring town of Whitchurch, some on days that Blade was certainly not there."

"That was going to be one of my strongest points," remarked Freynes.

"The letters always imply that there is some obstacle existing between the writer and the girl he desires. What possible object could Blade have in writing letters to various people suggesting an intrigue between his vicar's daughter and himself; yet these letters were clearly written by the same hand that addressed those to the girl, her father and her mother."

Freynes nodded his head comprehendingly.

"If Blade were in love with the girl," continued Malcolm Sage, "what was there to prevent him from pressing his suit along legitimate and accepted lines. Murdy frankly acknowledges that there has been nothing in Blade's outward demeanour to suggest that Miss Crayne was to him anything more than the daughter of his vicar."

"What do you make of the story of the assault?"

"As evidence it is worthless," replied Malcolm Sage, "being without corroboration. The farm-hand did not actually see Blade."

Freynes nodded his agreement.

"Having convinced myself that Blade had nothing to do with the writing of the letters, I next tried to discover if there were anything throwing suspicion on others in the neighbourhood, who were known to use "Olympic Script" as note-paper.

"The schoolmaster, John Gray, was one. He is an admirer of Miss Crayne, according to local gossip; but it was obvious from the first that he had nothing to do with the affair. One by one I eliminated all the others, until I came back once more to Blade.

"It was clear that the letters were written with a fountain-

pen, and Blade always uses one. That, however, is not evidence, as millions of people use fountain-pens. By the way, what is your line of defence?" he enquired.

"Smashing the handwriting experts," was the reply. "I was calling four myself, on the principle that God is on the side of the big battalions; but now I shall depend entirely on your evidence."

"The assault?" queried Malcolm Sage.

"There I'm done," said Freynes, "for although Miss Crayne's evidence is not proof, it will be sufficient for a jury. Besides, she's a very pretty and charming girl. I suppose," he added, "Blade must have made some sort of declaration, which she, in the light of the anonymous letters, entirely misunderstood."

"What does he say?"

"Denies it absolutely, although he admits being in the neighbourhood of the 'Gypsies Wood,' and actually catching sight of Miss Crayne in the distance; but he says he did not speak to her."

"Is he going into the witness-box?"

"Certainly," then after a pause he added, "Kelton is prosecuting, and he's as moral as a swan. He'll appeal to the jury as fathers of daughters, and brothers of sisters."

Malcolm Sage made no comment; but continued smoking mechanically, his attention apparently absorbed in the cards before him.

"If you can smash the handwriting experts," continued the K.C., "I may be able to manage the girl's testimony."

"It will not be necessary," said Malcolm Sage, carefully placing a nine of clubs upon an eight of diamonds.

"Not necessary?'

"I have asked Murdy to come round," continued Malcolm Sage, still intent upon his game. "I think that was his ring."

A minute later the door opened to admit the burly inspector, more blue-eyed and genial than ever, and obviously in the best of spirits.

"Good evening, Mr. Sage," he cried cheerfully. "Congratulations on the Adair business. Good evening, sir," he added, as he shook hands with Freynes.

He dropped heavily into a seat, and taking a cigar from the box on the table, which Malcolm Sage had indicated with a nod, he proceeded to light it. No man enjoyed a good cigar more than Inspector Murdy.

"Well, what do you think of it?" he enquired, looking from Malcolm Sage to Freynes. "It's a clear case now, I think." He slightly stressed the word "now."

"You mean it's Blade?' enquired Malcolm Sage, as he proceeded to gather up the cards.

"Who else?" enquired the inspector, through a cloud of smoke.

"That is the question which involves your being here now, Murdy," said Malcolm Sage dryly.

"We've got three handwriting experts behind us," said the inspector complacently.

"That is precisely where they should be," retorted Malcolm Sage quietly. "In the biblical sense," he added.

Freynes laughed, whilst Inspector Murdy looked from one to the other. He did not quite catch the allusion.

"You have done as I suggested?" enquired Malcolm Sage, when he had placed the cards in their box and removed the card-table.

"Here are all the letters received up to a fortnight ago," said the inspector, holding out a bulky packet. "Those received since have each been sealed up separately by the vicar, who is keeping half of them, whilst I have the other half; but really, Mr. Sage, I don't understand—"

"Thank you, Murdy," said Malcolm Sage, as he took the packet. "It is always a pleasure to work with Scotland Yard. It is so thorough."

The inspector beamed; for he knew the compliment was sincere.

Without a word Malcolm Sage left the room, taking the packet with him.

"A bit quaint at times, ain't he, sir?" remarked Inspector Murdy to Freynes; "but one of the best. I'd trust him with anything."

Freynes nodded encouragingly.

"There are some of them down at the Yard that don't like him," he continued. "They call him 'Sage and Onions'; but most of us who have worked with him swear by Mr. Sage. He's never out for the limelight himself, and he's always willing to give another fellow a leg-up. After all, it's our living," he added, a little inconsequently.

Freynes appreciated the inspector's delicacy in refraining from any mention of the Gylston case during Malcolm Sage's absence. After all, they represented respectively the prosecution and the defence. For nearly half an hour the two talked together upon unprofessional subjects. When Malcolm Sage returned, he found them discussing the prospects of Dempsey against Carpentier.

Handing back the packet of letters to Inspector Murdy, Malcolm Sage resumed his seat, and proceeded to re-light his pipe.

"Spotted the culprit, Mr. Sage?" enquired the inspector, with something that was very much like a wink in the direction of Freynes.

"I think so," was the quiet reply. "You might meet me at Gylston Vicarage to-morrow at three. I'll telegraph to Blade to be there too. You had better bring the schoolmaster also."

"You mean—" began the inspector, rising.

"Exactly," said Malcolm Sage. "It's past eleven, and we all require sleep."

THE NEXT AFTERNOON the study of the vicar of Gylston presented a strange appearance.

Seated at Mr. Crayne's writing-table was Malcolm Sage, a small attaché-case at his side, whilst before him were several piles of sealed packets. Grouped about the room were Inspector Murdy, Robert Freynes, Mr. Gray, and the vicar.

All had their eyes fixed upon Malcolm Sage; but with varying expressions. Those of the schoolmaster were frankly cynical. The inspector and Freynes looked as if they expected to see produced from the attaché-case a guinea-pig or a white rabbit, pink-eyed and kicking; whilst the vicar had obviously not yet recovered from his surprise at discovering that the stranger, who had shown such a remarkable knowledge of monumental brasses and Norman architecture, was none other than the famous investigator about whom he had read so much in the newspapers.

With quiet deliberation Malcolm Sage opened the attaché-case and produced a spirit lamp, which he lighted. He then placed a metal plate upon a rest above the flame. On this he imposed a thicker plate of a similar metal that looked like steel; but it had a handle across the middle, rather resembling that of a tool used by plasterers.

He then glanced up, apparently unconscious of the almost feverish interest with which his every movement was being watched.

"I should like Miss Crayne to be present," he said.

As he spoke the door opened and the curate entered, his dark, handsome face lined and careworn. It was obvious that he had suffered. He bowed, and then looked about him, without any suggestion of embarrassment.

Malcolm Sage rose and held out his hand, Freynes followed suit.

"Ask Miss Muriel to come here," said the vicar to the maid as she was closing the door.

The curate took the seat that Malcolm Sage indicated beside him. Silently the six men waited.

A few minutes later Miss Crayne entered, pale but self-possessed. She closed the door behind her. Suddenly she caught sight of the curate. Her eyes widened, and her paleness seemed to become accentuated. A moment later it was followed by a crimson flush. She hesitated, her hands clenched at her side, then with a manifest effort she appeared to control herself and, with a slight smile and inclination of her head, took the chair the schoolmaster moved towards her. Instinctively she turned her eyes toward Malcolm Sage.

"Inspector Murdy," he said, without raising his eyes, "will you please open two of those packets." He indicated the pile upon his left. "I should explain," he continued, "that each of these contains one of the most recent of the series of letters with which we are concerned. Each was sealed up by Mr. Crayne immediately it reached him, in accordance with Inspector Murdy's request. Therefore, only the writer, the recipient and the vicar have had access to these letters."

Malcolm Sage turned his eyes interrogatingly upon Mr. Crayne, who bowed.

Meanwhile the inspector had cut open the two top envelopes, unfolded the sheets of paper they contained, and handed them to Malcolm Sage.

All eyes were fixed upon his long, shapely fingers as he smoothed out one of the sheets of paper upon the vicar's blotting-pad. Then, lifting the steel plate by the handle, he placed it upon the upturned sheet of paper.

The tension was almost unendurable. The heavy breathing of Inspector Murdy seemed like the blowing of a grampus. Mr. Gray glanced across at him irritably. The vicar coughed slightly, then looked startled that he had made so much noise.

Everyone bent forward, eagerly expecting something; yet without quite knowing what. Malcolm Sage lifted the metal plate from the letter. There in the centre of the page, in bluish-coloured letters, which had not been there when the paper was smoothed out upon the blotting-pad, appeared the words:—

Malcolm Sage,

August 12th, 1919.

No. 138.

For some moments they all gazed at the paper as if the mysterious blue letters exercised upon them some hypnotic influence.

"Secret ink!"

It was Robert Freynes who spoke. Accustomed as he was to dramatic moments, he was conscious of a strange dryness at the back of his throat, and a consequent huskiness of voice.

His remark seemed to break the spell. Instinctively everyone turned to him. The significance of the bluish-coloured characters was slowly dawning upon the inspector; but the others still seemed puzzled to account for their presence.

Immediately he had lifted the plate from the letter, Malcolm Sage had drawn a sheet of plain sermon paper from the rack before him. This he subjected to the same treatment as the letter. When a few seconds later he exposed it, there in the centre appeared the same words:—

Malcolm Sage,

August 12th, 1919.

but on this sheet the number was 203.

Then the true significance of the two sheets of paper seemed to dawn upon the onlookers.

Suddenly there was a scream, and Muriel Crayne fell forward on to the floor.

"Oh! father, father, forgive me!" she cried, and the next moment she was beating the floor with her hands in violent hysterics.

"FROM THE FIRST I suspected the truth," remarked Malcolm Sage, as he, Robert Freynes and Inspector Murdy sat smoking in the car that Tims was taking back to London at its best pace. "Eighty-five years ago a somewhat similar case occurred in France, that of Marie de Morel, when an innocent man was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, and actually served eight before the truth was discovered."

The inspector whistled under his breath.

"This suspicion was strengthened by the lengthy account of the affair written by Miss Crayne, which Murdy obtained from her. The punctuation, the phrasing, the inaccurate use of auxiliary verbs, were identical with that of the anonymous letters.

"Another point was that the similarity of the handwriting of the anonymous letters to Blade's became more pronounced as the letters themselves multiplied. The writer was becoming more expert as an imitator."

Freynes nodded his head several times.

"The difficulty, however, was to prove it," continued Malcolm Sage. "There was only one way; to substitute secretly marked paper for that in use at the vicarage.

"I accordingly went down to Gylston, and the vicar found me keenly interested in monumental brasses, his pet subject, and Norman architecture. He invited me to the vicarage. In his absence from his study I substituted a supply of marked Olympic Script in place of that in his letter-rack, and also in the drawer of his writing-table. As a further precaution, I arranged for my fountain-pen to run out of ink. He kindly supplied me with a bottle, obviously belonging to his daughter. I replenished my pen, which was full of a chemical that would enable me, if necessary, to identify any letter in the writing of which it had been used. When I placed my pen, which is a self-filler, in the ink, I forced this liquid into the bottle."

The inspector merely stared. Words had forsaken him for the moment.

"It was then necessary to wait until the ink in Miss Crayne's pen had become exhausted, and she had to replenish her supply of paper from her father's study. After that discovery was inevitable."

"But suppose she had denied it?" questioned the inspector.

"There was the ink which she alone used, and which I could identify," was the reply.

"Why did you ask Gray to be present?" enquired Freynes.

"As his name had been associated with the scandal it seemed only fair," remarked Malcolm Sage, then turning to Inspector Murdy he said, "I shall leave it to you, Murdy, to see that a proper confession is obtained. The case has had such publicity that Mr. Blade's innocence must be made equally public."

"You may trust me, Mr. Sage," said the inspector. "But why did the curate refuse to say anything?"

"Because he is a high-minded and chivalrous gentleman," was the quiet reply.

"He knew?" cried Freynes.

"Obviously," said Malcolm Sage. "It is the only explanation of his silence. I taxed him with it after the girl had been taken away, and he acknowledged that his suspicions amounted almost to certainty."

"Yet he stayed behind," murmured the inspector with the air of a man who does not understand. "I wonder why?"

"To minister to the afflicted, Murdy," said Malcolm Sage. "That is the mission of the Church."

"I suppose you meant that French case when you referred to the 'master-key,' " remarked the inspector, as if to change the subject.

Malcolm Sage nodded.

"But how do you account for Miss Crayne writing such letters about herself," enquired the inspector, with a puzzled expression in his eyes. "Pretty funny letters some of them for a parson's daughter."

"I'm not a pathologist, Murdy," remarked Malcolm Sage drily, "but when you try to suppress hysteria in a young girl by sternness, it's about as effectual as putting ointment on a plaguespot."

"Sex-repression?" queried Freynes.

Malcolm Sage shrugged his shoulders; then after a pause, during which he lighted the pipe he had just re-filled, he added:

"When you are next in Great Russell Street, drop in at the British Museum and look at the bust of Faustina. You will see that her chin is similar in modelling to that of Miss Crayne. The girl was apparently very much attracted to Blade, and proceeded to weave what was no doubt to her a romance, later it became an obsession. It all goes to show the necessity for pathological consideration of certain crimes."

"But who was Faustina?" enquired the inspector, unable to follow the drift of the conversation.

"Faustina," remarked Malcolm Sage, "was the domestic fly in the philosophical ointment of an emperor," and Inspector Murdy laughed; for, knowing nothing of the marriage or the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, it seemed to him the only thing to do.

________________

14: The Demoiselle d'Ys

Robert W. Chambers

1865-1933

In: The King in Yellow, 1895

Robert William Chambers

Mais je croy que je

Suis descendu on puiz

Tenebreux onquel disoit

Heraclytus estre Verité cachée.

THERE BE three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, for which I know not:

The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.

THE UTTER DESOLATION of the scene began to have its effect; I sat down to face the situation and, if possible, recall to mind some landmark which might aid me in extricating myself from my present position. If I could only find the ocean again all would be clear, for I knew one could see the island of Groix from the cliffs.

I laid down my gun, and kneeling behind a rock lighted my pipe. Then I looked at my watch. It was nearly four o'clock. I might have wandered far from Kerselec since daybreak.

Standing the day before on the cliffs below Kerselec with Goulven, looking out over the sombre moors among which I had now lost my way, these downs had appeared to me level as a meadow, stretching to the horizon, and although I knew how deceptive is distance, I could not realize that what from Kerselec seemed to be mere grassy hollows were great valleys covered with gorse and heather, and what looked like scattered boulders were in reality enormous cliffs of granite.

"It's a bad place for a stranger," old Goulven had said; "you'd better take a guide;" and I had replied, "I shall not lose myself." Now I knew that I had lost myself, as I sat there smoking, with the sea-wind blowing in my face. On every side stretched the moorland, covered with flowering gorse and heath and granite boulders. There was not a tree in sight, much less a house. After a while, I picked up the gun, and turning my back on the sun tramped on again.

There was little use in following any of the brawling streams which every now and then crossed my path, for, instead of flowing into the sea, they ran inland to reedy pools in the hollows of the moors. I had followed several, but they all led me to swamps or silent little ponds from which the snipe rose peeping and wheeled away in an ecstasy of fright. I began to feel fatigued, and the gun galled my shoulder in spite of the double pads. The sun sank lower and lower, shining level across yellow gorse and the moorland pools.

As I walked my own gigantic shadow led me on, seeming to lengthen at every step. The gorse scraped against my leggings, crackled beneath my feet, showering the brown earth with blossoms, and the brake bowed and billowed along my path. From tufts of heath rabbits scurried away through the bracken, and among the swamp grass I heard the wild duck's drowsy quack.

Once a fox stole across my path, and again, as I stooped to drink at a hurrying rill, a heron flapped heavily from the reeds beside me. I turned to look at the sun. It seemed to touch the edges of the plain. When at last I decided that it was useless to go on, and that I must make up my mind to spend at least one night on the moors, I threw myself down thoroughly fagged out.

The evening sunlight slanted warm across my body, but the sea-winds began to rise, and I felt a chill strike through me from my wet shooting-boots. High overhead gulls were wheeling and tossing like bits of white paper; from some distant marsh a solitary curlew called. Little by little the sun sank into the plain, and the zenith flushed with the after-glow. I watched the sky change from palest gold to pink and then to smouldering fire. Clouds of midges danced above me, and high in the calm air a bat dipped and soared. My eyelids began to droop. Then as I shook off the drowsiness a sudden crash among the bracken roused me. I raised my eyes. A great bird hung quivering in the air above my face. For an instant I stared, incapable of motion; then something leaped past me in the ferns and the bird rose, wheeled, and pitched headlong into the brake.

I was on my feet in an instant peering through the gorse. There came the sound of a struggle from a bunch of heather close by, and then all was quiet. I stepped forward, my gun poised, but when I came to the heather the gun fell under my arm again, and I stood motionless in silent astonishment. A dead hare lay on the ground, and on the hare stood a magnificent falcon, one talon buried in the creature's neck, the other planted firmly on its limp flank. But what astonished me, was not the mere sight of a falcon sitting upon its prey. I had seen that more than once. It was that the falcon was fitted with a sort of leash about both talons, and from the leash hung a round bit of metal like a sleigh-bell. The bird turned its fierce yellow eyes on me, and then stooped and struck its curved beak into the quarry. At the same instant hurried steps sounded among the heather, and a girl sprang into the covert in front. Without a glance at me she walked up to the falcon, and passing her gloved hand under its breast, raised it from the quarry.

Then she deftly slipped a small hood over the bird's head, and holding it out on her gauntlet, stooped and picked up the hare.

She passed a cord about the animal's legs and fastened the end of the thong to her girdle. Then she started to retrace her steps through the covert. As she passed me I raised my cap and she acknowledged my presence with a scarcely perceptible inclination. I had been so astonished, so lost in admiration of the scene before my eyes, that it had not occurred to me that here was my salvation. But as she moved away I recollected that unless I wanted to sleep on a windy moor that night I had better recover my speech without delay. At my first word she hesitated, and as I stepped before her I thought a look of fear came into her beautiful eyes. But as I humbly explained my unpleasant plight, her face flushed and she looked at me in wonder.

"Surely you did not come from Kerselec!" she repeated.

Her sweet voice had no trace of the Breton accent nor of any accent which I knew, and yet there was something in it I seemed to have heard before, something quaint and indefinable, like the theme of an old song.

I explained that I was an American, unacquainted with Finistère, shooting there for my own amusement.

"An American," she repeated in the same quaint musical tones. "I have never before seen an American."

For a moment she stood silent, then looking at me she said: "If you should walk all night you could not reach Kerselec now, even if you had a guide."

This was pleasant news.

"But," I began, "if I could only find a peasant's hut where I might get something to eat, and shelter.".The falcon on her wrist fluttered and shook its head. The girl smoothed its glossy back and glanced at me.

"Look around," she said gently. "Can you see the end of these moors? Look, north, south, east, west. Can you see anything but moorland and bracken?"

"No," I said.

"The moor is wild and desolate. It is easy to enter, but sometimes they who enter never leave it. There are no peasants' huts here."

"Well," I said "if you will tell me in which direction Kerselec lies, tomorrow it will take me no longer to go back than it has to come."

She looked at me again with an expression almost like pity.

"Ah," she said, "to come is easy and takes hours; to go is different— and may take centuries."

I stared at her in amazement but decided that I had misunderstood her. Then before I had time to speak she drew a whistle from her belt and sounded it.

"Sit down and rest," she said to me; "you have come a long distance and are tired."

She gathered up her pleated skirts and motioning me to follow picked her dainty way through the gorse to a flat rock among the ferns.

"They will be here directly," she said, and taking a seat at one end of the rock invited me to sit down on the other edge. The after-glow was beginning to fade in the sky and a single star twinkled faintly through the rosy haze. A long wavering triangle of water-fowl drifted southward over our heads and from the swamps around plover were calling.

"They are very beautiful— these moors," she said quietly.

"Beautiful, but cruel to strangers." I answered.

"Beautiful and cruel," she repeated dreamily, "beautiful and cruel."

"Like a woman," I said stupidly.

"Oh," she cried with a little catch in her breath and looked at me. Her dark eyes met mine and I thought she seemed angry or frightened.

"Like a woman," she repeated under her breath, "how cruel to say so!" Then after a pause, as though speaking aloud to herself, "how cruel for him to say that."

I don't know what sort of an apology I offered for my inane, though harmless speech, but I know that she seemed so troubled about it that I began to think I had said something very dreadful without knowing it, and remembered with horror the pitfalls and snares which the French language sets for foreigners. While I was trying to imagine what I might have said, a sound of voices came across the moor and the girl rose to her feet.

"No," she said, with a trace of a smile on her pale face, "I will not accept your apologies, Monsieur, but I must prove you wrong and that shall be my revenge. Look. Here come Hastur and Raoul."

Two men loomed up in the twilight. One had a sack across his shoulders and the other carried a hoop before him as a waiter carries a tray. The hoop was fastened with straps to his shoulders and around the edge of the circler sat three hooded falcons fitted with tinkling bells. The girl stepped up to the falconer, and with a quick turn of her wrist transferred her falcon to the hoop where it quickly sidled off and nestled among its mates who shook their hooded heads and ruffled their feathers till the belled jesses tinkled again. The other man stepped forward and bowing respectfully took up the hare and dropped it into the game-sack.

"These are my piqueurs," said the girl turning to me with a gentle dignity. "Raoul is a good fauconnier and I shall some day make him grand veneur. Hastur is incomparable."

The two silent men saluted me respectfully.

"Did I not tell you, Monsieur, that I should prove you wrong?" she continued. "This then is my revenge, that you do me the courtesy of accepting food and shelter at my own house."

Before I could answer she spoke to the falconers who started instantly across the heath, and with a gracious gesture to me she followed. I don't know whether I made her understand how profoundly grateful I felt, but she seemed pleased to listen, as we walked over the dewy heather.

"Are you not very tired?" she asked.

I had clean forgotten my fatigue in her presence and I told her so.

"Don't you think your gallantry is a little old-fashioned," she said; and when I looked confused and humbled, she added quietly, "Oh, I like it, I like everything old-fashioned, and it is delightful to hear you say such pretty things."

The moorland around us was very still now under its ghostly sheet of mist. The plover had ceased their calling; the crickets and all the little creatures of the fields were silent as we passed, yet it seemed to me as if I could hear them beginning again far behind us. Well in advance the two tall falconers strode across the heather and the faint jingling of the hawk's bells came to our ears in distant murmuring chimes.

Suddenly a splendid hound dashed out of the mist in front, followed by another and another until half a dozen or more were bounding and leaping around the girl beside me. She caressed and quieted them with her gloved hand, speaking to them in quaint terms which I remembered to have seen in old French manuscripts.

Then the falcons on the circlet borne by the falconer ahead began to beat their wings and scream, and from somewhere out of sight the notes of a hunting-horn floated across the moor.

The hounds sprang away before us and vanished in the twilight, the falcons flapped and squealed upon their perch and the girl taking up the song of the horn began to hum. Clear and mellow her voice sounded in the night air.

"Chasseur, chasseur, chassez encore,

Quittez Rosette et Jeanneton,

Tonton, tonton, tontaine, tonton,

Ou, pour, rabattre, dês l'aurore,

Que les Amours soient de planton,

Tonton, tontaine, tonton."

As I listened to her lovely voice a gray mass which rapidly grew more distinct loomed up in front, and the horn rang out joyously through the tumult of the hounds and falcons. A torch glimmered at a gate, a light streamed through an opening door, and we stepped upon a wooden bridge which trembled under our feet and rose creaking and straining behind us as we passed over the moat and into a small stone court, walled on every side. From an open doorway a man came and bending in salutation presented a cup to the girl beside me. She took the cup and touched it with her lips, then lowering it turned to me and said in a low voice, "I bid you welcome."

At that moment one of the falconers came with another cup, but before handing it to me, presented it to the girl, who tasted it. The falconer made a gesture to receive it, but she hesitated a moment and then stepping forward offered me the cup with her own hands. I felt this to be an act of extraordinary graciousness, but hardly knew what was expected of me, and did not raise it to my lips at once. The girl flushed crimson. I saw that I must act quickly.

"Mademoiselle," I faltered, "a stranger whom you have saved from dangers he may never realize, empties this cup to the gentlest and loveliest hostess of France."

"In His name," she murmured, crossing herself as I drained the cup. Then stepping into the doorway she turned to me with a pretty gesture and taking my hand in hers, led me into the house, saying again and again: "You are very welcome, indeed you are welcome to the Château d'Ys."

ii

I AWOKE next morning with the music of the horn in my ears, and leaping out of the ancient bed, went to a curtained window where the sunlight filtered through little deep-set panes. The horn ceased as I looked into the court below.

A man who might have been brother to the two falconers of the night before stood in the midst of a pack of hounds. A curved horn was strapped over his back, and in his hand he held a long-lashed whip. The dogs whined and yelped, dancing around him in anticipation; there was the stamp of horses too in the walled yard.

"Mount!" cried a voice in Breton, and with a clatter of hoofs the two falconers, with falcons upon their wrists, rode into the courtyard among the hounds. Then I heard another voice which sent the blood throbbing through my heart: "Piriou Louis, hunt the hounds well and spare neither spur nor whip. Thou Raoul and thou Gaston, see that the epervier does not prove himself niais, and if it be best in your judgment, faites courtoisie à l'oiseau. Jardiner un oiseau like the mué there on Hastur's wrist is not difficult, but thou, Raoul, mayest not find it so simple to govern that hagard. Twice last week he foamed au vif and lost the beccade although he is used to the leurre. The bird acts like a stupid branchier. Paître un hagard n'est pas si facile."

Was I dreaming? The old language of falconry which I had read in yellow manuscripts— the old forgotten French of the middle ages was sounding in my ears while the hounds bayed and the hawk's bells tinkled accompaniment to the stamping horses. She spoke again in the sweet forgotten language:

"If you would rather attach the longe and leave thy hagard au bloc, Raoul, I shall say nothing; for it were a pity to spoil so fair a day's sport with an ill-trained sors. Essimer abaisser,— it is possibly the best way. Ça lui donnera des reins. I was perhaps hasty with the bird. It takes time to pass à la filière and the exercises d'escap."

Then the falconer Raoul bowed in his stirrups and replied: "If it be the pleasure of Mademoiselle, I shall keep the hawk."

"It is my wish," she answered. "Falconry I know, but you have yet to give me many a lesson in Autourserie, my poor Raoul. Sieur Piriou Louis, mount!"

The huntsman sprang into an archway and in an instant returned, mounted upon a strong black horse, followed by a piqueur also mounted.

"Ah!" she cried joyously, "speed Glemarec René! speed! speed all! Sound thy horn Sieur Piriou!"

The silvery music of the hunting-horn filled the courtyard, the hounds sprang through the gateway and galloping hoof-beats plunged out of the paved court; loud on the drawbridge, suddenly muffled, then lost in the heather and bracken of the moors. Distant and more distant sounded the horn, until it became so faint that the sudden carol of a soaring lark drowned it in my ears. I heard the voice below responding to some call from within the house.

"I do not regret the chase, I will go another time. Courtesy to the stranger, Pelagie, remember!" And a feeble voice came quavering from within the house, "Courtoisie."

I stripped, and rubbed myself from head to foot in the huge earthen basin of icy water which stood upon the stone floor at the foot of my bed. Then I looked about for my clothes. They were gone, but on a settle near the door lay a heap of garments which I inspected with astonishment.

As my clothes had vanished I was compelled to attire myself in the costume which had evidently been placed there for me to wear while my own clothes dried. Everything was there, cap, shoes, and hunting doublet of silvery gray homespun; but the close-fitting costume and seamless shoes belonged to another century, and I remembered the strange costumes of the three falconers in the courtyard. I was sure that it was not the modern dress of any portion of France or Brittany; but not until I was dressed and stood before a mirror between the windows did I realize that I was clothed much more like a young huntsman of the middle ages than like a Breton of that day. I hesitated and picked up the cap. Should I go down and present myself in that strange guise?

There seemed to be no help for it, my own clothes were gone and there was no bell in the ancient chamber to call a servant, so I contented myself with removing a short hawk's feather from the cap, and opening the door went downstairs.

By the fireplace in the large room at the foot of the stairs an old Breton woman sat spinning with a distaff. She looked up at me when I appeared, and smiling frankly, wished me health in the Breton language, to which I laughingly replied in French. At the same moment my hostess appeared and returned my salutation with a grace and dignity that sent a thrill to my heart. Her lovely head with its dark curly hair was crowned with a head-dress which set all doubts as to the epoch of my own costume at rest. Her slender figure was exquisitely set off in the homespun hunting-gown edged with silver, and on her gauntlet-covered wrist she bore one of her petted hawks. With perfect simplicity she took my hand and led me into the garden in the court, and searing herself before a table invited me very sweetly to sit beside her. Then she asked me in her soft quaint accent how I had passed the night and whether I was very much inconvenienced by wearing the clothes which old Pelagie had put there for me while I slept. I looked at my own clothes and shoes, drying in the sun by the garden-wall, and hated them. What horrors they were compared with the graceful costume which I now wore! I told her this laughing, but she agreed with me very seriously.

"We will throw them away," she said in a quiet voice. In my astonishment I attempted to explain that I not only could not think of accepting clothes from anybody, although for all I knew it might be the custom of hospitality in that part of the country, but that I should cut an impossible figure if I returned to France clothed as I was then.

She laughed and tossed her pretty head, saying something in old French which I did not understand, and the Pelagie trotted out with a tray on which stood two bowls of milk, a loaf of white bread, fruit, a platter of honeycomb, and a flagon of deep red wine. "You see I have not yet broken my fast because I wished you to eat with me. But I am very hungry." she smiled.

"I would rather die than forget one word of what you have said!" I blurred out while my cheeks burned. "She will think me mad," I added to myself, but she turned to me with sparking eyes.

"Ah!" she murmured. "Then Monsieur knows all that there is of chivalry— "

She crossed herself and broke bread— I sat and watched her white hands, not daring to raise my eyes to hers.

"Will you not eat," she asked; "why do you look so troubled?"

Ah, why? I knew it now. I knew I would give my life to touch with my lips those rosy palms I understood now that from the moment when I looked into her dark eyes there on the moor last night I had loved her. My great and sudden passion held me speechless.

"Are you ill at ease?" she asked again.

Then like a man who pronounces his own doom I answered in a low voice: "Yes, I am ill at ease for love of you." And as she did not stir nor answer, the same power moved my lips in spite of me and I said, "I, who am unworthy of the lightest of your thoughts, I who abuse hospitality and repay your gently courtesy with bold presumption, I love you."

She leaned her head upon her hands, and answered softly, "I love you. Your words are very dear to me. I love you."

"Then I shall win you."

"Win me," she replied.

But all the time I had been sitting silent, my face turned toward her. She also silent, her sweet face resting on her upturned palm, sat facing me, and as her eyes looked into mine, I knew that neither she nor I had spoken human speech; but I knew that her soul had answered mine, and I drew myself up feeling youth and joyous love coursing through every vein. She, with a bright color in her lovely face, seemed as one awakened from a dream, and her eyes sought mine with a questioning glance which made me tremble with delight. We broke our fast, speaking of ourselves. I told her my name and she told me hers, the Demoiselle Jeanne d'Ys.

She spoke of her father and mother's death, and how the nineteen of her years had been passed in the little fortified farm alone with her nurse Pelagie. Glemarec Renè the piqueur, and the four falconers, Raoul, Gaston, Hastur, and the Sieur Piriou Louis, who had served her father. She had never been outside the moorland— never even had seen a human soul before, except the falconers and Pelagie. She did not know how she had heard of Kerselec; perhaps the falconers had spoken of it. She knew the legends of Loup Garou and Jeanne la Flamme from her nurse Pelagie. She embroidered and spun flax. Her hawks and hounds were her only distraction. When she had met me there on the moor she had been so frightened that she almost dropped at the sound of my voice. She had, it was true, seen ships at sea from the cliffs, but as far as the eye could reach the moors over which she galloped were destitute of any sign of human life. There was a legend which old Pelagie told, how anybody once lost in the unexplored moorland might never return, because the moors were enchanted. She did not know whether it was true, she never had thought about it until she met me. She did not know whether the falconers had even been outside or whether they could go if they would. The books in the house which Pelagie the nurse had taught her to read were hundreds of years old.

All this she told me with a sweet seriousness seldom seen in any one but children. My own name she found easy to pronounce and insisted, because my first name was Philip, I must have French blood in me. She did not seem curious to learn anything about the outside world, and I thought perhaps she considered it had forfeited her interest and respect from the stories of her nurse.

We were still sitting at the table and she was throwing grapes to the small field birds which came fearlessly to our very feet.

I began to speak in a vague way of going, but she would not hear of it, and before I knew it I had promised to stay a week and hunt with hawk and hound in their company. I also obtained permission to come again from Kerselec and visit her after my return.

"Why," she said innocently, "I do not know what I should do if you never came back." and I, knowing that I had no right to awaken her with the sudden shock which the avowal of my own love would bring to her, sat silent, hardly daring to breathe.

"You will come very often?" she asked.

"Very often," I said.

"Every day?"

"Every day."

"Oh," she sighed, "I am very happy— come and see my hawks."

She rose and took my hand again with a childlike innocence of possession, and we walked through the garden and fruit trees to a grassy lawn which was bordered by a brook. Over the lawn were scattered fifteen or twenty stumps of trees— partially imbedded in the grass— and upon all of these except two sat falcons. They were attached to the stumps by thongs which were in turn fastened with steel rivets to their legs just above the talons. A little stream of pure spring water flowed in a winding course within easy distance of each perch.

The birds set up a clamor when the girl appeared, but she went from one to another caressing some, taking others for an instant upon her wrist, or stooping to adjust their jesses.

"Are they not pretty?" she said. "See, here is a falcon-gentil. We call it 'ignoble,' because it takes the quarry in direct chase. This is a blue falcon. In falconry we call it 'noble' because it rises over the quarry, and wheeling, drops upon it from above. This white bird is a gerfalcon from the north. It is also 'noble!' Here is a merlin, and this tiercelet is a falcon-heroner."

I asked her how she had learned the old language of falconry. She did not remember, but thought her father must have taught it to her when she was very young.

Then she led me away and showed me the young falcons still in the nest. "They are termed niais in falconry," she explained. "A branchier is the young bird which is just able to leave the nest and hop from branch to branch. A young bird which has not yet moulted is called a sors, and a mué is a hawk which has moulted in captivity. When we catch a wild falcon which has changed its plumage we term it a hagard. Raoul first taught me to dress a falcon. Shall I teach you how it is done?"

She seated herself on the bank of the stream among the falcons and I threw myself at her feet to listen.

Then the Demoiselle d'Ys held up one rosy-tipped finger and began very gravely, "First one must catch the falcon."

"I am caught," I answered.

She laughed very prettily and told me my dressage would perhaps be difficult as I was noble.

"I am already tamed," I replied; "jessed and belled."

She laughed, delighted. "Oh, my brave falcon; then you will return at my call?"

"I am yours," I answered gravely.

She sat silent for a moment. Then the color heightened in her cheeks and she held up her finger again saying, "Listen; I wish to speak of falconry— "

"I listen, Countess Jeanne d'Ys."

But again she fell into the reverie, and her eyes seemed fixed on something beyond the summer clouds.

"Philip," she said at last.

"Jeanne," I whispered.

"That is all,— that is what I wished," she sighed,— "Philip and Jeanne."

She held her hand toward me and I touched it with my lips.

"Win me," she said, but this time it was the body and soul which spoke in unison.

After a while she began again: "Let us speak of falconry."

"Begin," I replied; "we have caught the falcon.".The Jeanne d'Ys took my hand in both of hers and told me how with infinite patience the young falcon was taught to perch upon the wrist, how little by little it became used to belled jesses and the chaperon à cornette.

"They must first have a good appetite," she said; "then little by little I reduce their nourishment which in falconry we call pât. When after many nights passed au bloc as these birds are now, I prevail upon the hagard to stay quietly on the wrist, then the bird is ready to be taught to come for its food. I fix the pât to the end of a thong or leurre, and teach the bird to come to me as soon as I begin to whirl the cord in circles about my head. At first I drop the pât when the falcon comes, and he eats the food on the ground. After a little he will learn to seize the leurre in motion as I whirl it around my head, or drag it over the ground. After this it is easy to teach the falcon to strike at game, always remembering to 'faire courtoisie à l'oiseau,' that is, to allow the bird to taste the quarry."

A squeal from one of the falcons interrupted her, and she arose to adjust the longe which had become whipped about the bloc, but the bird still flapped its wings and screamed.

"What is the matter?" she said; "Philip, can you see?"

I looked around and at first saw nothing to cause the commotion which was now heightened by the screams and flapping of all the birds. Then my eye fell upon the flat rock beside the stream from which the girl had risen. A gray serpent was moving slowly across the surface of the bowlder, and the eyes in its flat triangular head sparkled like jet.

"A couleuvre," she said quietly.

"Is it harmless, is it nor?" I asked.

She pointed to the black V-shaped figure on the neck.

"It is certain death," she said; "it is a viper."

We watched the reptile moving slowly over the smooth rock to where the sunlight fell in a broad warm patch.

I started forward to examine it, but she clung to arm crying, "Don't, Philip, I am afraid."

"For me?"

"For you, Philip,— I love you."

Then I took her in my arms and kissed her on the lips, but all I could say was: "Jeanne, Jeanne, Jeanne." And as she lay trembling on my breast, something struck my foot in the grass below, but I did not heed it. Then again something struck my ankle, and a sharp pain shot through me. I looked into the sweet face of Jeanne d'Ys and kissed her, and with all my strength lifted her in my arms and flung her from me. Then bending, I tore the viper from my ankle and set my heel upon its head. I remember feeling weak and numb,— I remember falling to the ground. Through my slowly glazing eyes I saw Jeanne's white face bending close to mine, and when the light in my eyes went out I still felt her arms about my neck, and her soft cheek against my drawn lips.

WHEN I opened my eyes, I looked around in terror. Jeanne was gone. I saw the stream and the flat rock; I saw the crushed viper in the grass beside me, but the hawks and blocs had disappeared. I sprang to my feet. The garden, the fruit trees, the drawbridge and the walled court were gone. I stared stupidly at a heap of crumbling ruins, ivy-covered and gray, through which great trees had pushed their way. I crept forward, dragging my numbed foot, and as I moved, a falcon sailed from the tree-tops among the ruins, and soaring, mounting in narrowing circles, faded and vanished in the clouds above.

"Jeanne, Jeanne," I cried, but my voice died on my lips, and I fell on my knees among the weeds. And as God willed it, I, not knowing, had fallen kneeling before a crumbling shrine carved in stone for our Mother of Sorrows. I saw the sad face of the Virgin wrought in the cold stone. I saw the cross and thorns at her feet, and beneath it I read:

Pray for the soul of the

Demoiselle Jeanne d'Ys.

who died

in her youth for love of

Phillip, a Stranger

A.D. 1573.

But upon the icy slab lay a woman's glove still warm and fragrant.

__________________

15: The Other Woman

Sherwood Anderson

1876-1941

The Little Review,  May/June 1920

Sherwood Berton Anderson

"I AM IN LOVE with my wife," he said— a superfluous remark, as I had not questioned his attachment to the woman he had married. We walked for ten minutes and then he said it again. I turned to look at him. He began to talk and told me the tale I am now about to set down.

The thing he had on his mind happened during what must have been the most eventful week of his life. He was to be married on Friday afternoon. On Friday of the week before he got a telegram announcing his appointment to a government position. Something else happened that made him very proud and glad. In secret he was in the habit of writing verses and during the year before several of them had been printed in poetry magazines. One of the societies that give prizes for what they think the best poems published during the year put his name at the head of its list. The story of his triumph was printed in the newspapers of his home city and one of them also printed his picture.

As might have been expected he was excited and in a rather highly strung nervous state all during that week. Almost every evening he went to call on his fiancee, the daughter of a judge. When he got there the house was filled with people and many letters, telegrams and packages were being received. He stood a little to one side and men and women kept coming up to speak to him. They congratulated him upon his success in getting the government position and on his achievement as a poet. Everyone seemed to be praising him and when he went home and to bed he could not sleep. On Wednesday evening he went to the theatre and it seemed to him that people all over the house recognized him. Everyone nodded and smiled. After the first act five or six men and two women left their seats to gather about him. A little group was formed. Strangers sitting along the same row of seats stretched their necks and looked. He had never received so much attention before, and now a fever of expectancy took possession of him.

As he explained when he told me of his experience, it was for him an altogether abnormal time. He felt like one floating in air. When he got into bed after seeing so many people and hearing so many words of praise his head whirled round and round. When he closed his eyes a crowd of people invaded his room. It seemed as though the minds of all the people of his city were centred on himself. The most absurd fancies took possession of him. He imagined himself riding in a carriage through the streets of a city. Windows were thrown open and people ran out at the doors of houses. "There he is. That's him," they shouted, and at the words a glad cry arose. The carriage drove into a street blocked with people. A hundred thousand pairs of eyes looked up at him. "There you are! What a fellow you have managed to make of yourself!" the eyes seemed to be saying.

My friend could not explain whether the excitement of the people was due to the fact that he had written a new poem or whether, in his new government position, he had performed some notable act. The apartment where he lived at that time was on a street perched along the top of a cliff far out at the edge of his city, and from his bedroom window he could look down over trees and factory roofs to a river. As he could not sleep and as the fancies that kept crowding in upon him only made him more excited, he got out of bed and tried to think.

As would be natural under such circumstances, he tried to control his thoughts, but when he sat by the window and was wide awake a most unexpected and humiliating thing happened. The night was clear and fine. There was a moon. He wanted to dream of the woman who was to be his wife, to think out lines for noble poems or make plans that would affect his career. Much to his surprise his mind refused to do anything of the sort.

At a corner of the street where he lived there was a small cigar store and newspaper stand run by a fat man of forty and his wife, a small active woman with bright grey eyes. In the morning he stopped there to buy a paper before going down to the city. Sometimes he saw only the fat man, but often the man had disappeared and the woman waited on him. She was, as he assured me at least twenty times in telling me his tale, a very ordinary person with nothing special or notable about her, but for some reason he could not explain, being in her presence stirred him profoundly. During that week in the midst of his distraction she was the only person he knew who stood out clear and distinct in his mind. When he wanted so much to think noble thoughts he could think only of her. Before he knew what was happening his imagination had taken hold of the notion of having a love affair with the woman.

"I could not understand myself," he declared, in telling me the story. "At night, when the city was quiet and when I should have been asleep, I thought about her all the time. After two or three days of that sort of thing the consciousness of her got into my daytime thoughts. I was terribly muddled. When I went to see the woman who is now my wife I found that my love for her was in no way affected by my vagrant thoughts. There was but one woman in the world I wanted to live with and to be my comrade in undertaking to improve my own character and my position in the world, but for the moment, you see, I wanted this other woman to be in my arms. She had worked her way into my being. On all sides people were saying I was a big man who would do big things, and there I was. That evening when I went to the theatre I walked home because I knew I would be unable to sleep, and to satisfy the annoying impulse in myself I went and stood on the sidewalk before the tobacco shop. It was a two story building, and I knew the woman lived upstairs with her husband. For a long time I stood in the darkness with my body pressed against the wall of the building, and then I thought of the two of them up there and no doubt in bed together. That made me furious.

"Then I grew more furious with myself. I went home and got into bed, shaken with anger. There are certain books of verse and some prose writings that have always moved me deeply, and so I put several books on a table by my bed.

"The voices in the books were like the voices of the dead. I did not hear them. The printed words would not penetrate into my consciousness. I tried to think of the woman I loved, but her figure had also become something far away, something with which I for the moment seemed to have nothing to do. I rolled and tumbled about in the bed. It was a miserable experience.

"On Thursday morning I went into the store. There stood the woman alone. I think she knew how I felt. Perhaps she had been thinking of me as I had been thinking of her. A doubtful hesitating smile played about the corners of her mouth. She had on a dress made of cheap cloth and there was a tear on the shoulder. She must have been ten years older than myself. When I tried to put my pennies on the glass counter, behind which she stood, my hand trembled so that the pennies made a sharp rattling noise. When I spoke the voice that came out of my throat did not sound like anything that had ever belonged to me. It barely arose above a thick whisper. 'I want you,' I said. 'I want you very much. Can't you run away from your husband— Come to me at my apartment at seven tonight.'

"The woman did come to my apartment at seven. That morning she didn't say anything at all. For a minute perhaps we stood looking at each other. I had forgotten everything in the world but just her. Then she nodded her head and I went away. Now that I think of it I cannot remember a word I ever heard her say. She came to my apartment at seven and it was dark. You must understand this was in the month of October. I had not lighted a light and I had sent my servant away.

"During that day I was no good at all. Several men came to see me at my office, but I got all muddled up in trying to talk with them. They attributed my rattle-headedness to my approaching marriage and went away laughing.

"It was on that morning, just the day before my marriage, that I got a long and very beautiful letter from my fiancee. During the night before she also had been unable to sleep and had got out of bed to write the letter. Everything she said in it was very sharp and real, but she herself, as a living thing, seemed to have receded into the distance. It seemed to me that she was like a bird, flying far away in distant skies, and that I was like a perplexed bare-footed boy standing in the dusty road before a farm house and looking at her receding figure. I wonder if you will understand what I mean—

"In regard to the letter. In it she, the awakening woman, poured out her heart. She of course knew nothing of life, but she was a woman. She lay, I suppose, in her bed feeling nervous and wrought up as I had been doing. She realized that a great change was about to take place in her life and was glad and afraid too. There she lay thinking of it all. Then she got out of bed and began talking to me on the bit of paper. She told me how afraid she was and how glad too. Like most young women she had heard things whispered. In the letter she was very sweet and fine. 'For a long time, after we are married, we will forget we are a man and woman,' she wrote. 'We will be human beings. You must remember that I am ignorant and often I will be very stupid. You must love me and be very patient and kind. When I know more, when after a long time you have taught me the way of life, I will try to repay you. I will love you tenderly and passionately. The possibility of that is in me or I would not want to marry at all. I am afraid but I am also happy. O, I am so glad our marriage time is near at hand!'

"Now you see clearly enough what a mess I was in. In my office, after I had read my fiancee's letter, I became at once very resolute and strong. I remember that I got out of my chair and walked about, proud of the fact that I was to be the husband of so noble a woman. Right away I felt concerning her as I had been feeling about myself before I found out what a weak thing I was. To be sure I took a strong resolution that I would not be weak. At nine that evening I had planned to run in to see my fiancee. 'I'm all right now,' I said to myself. 'The beauty of her character has saved me from myself. I will go home now and send the other woman away.' In the morning I had telephoned to my servant and told him that I did not want him to be at the apartment that evening and I now picked up the telephone to tell him to stay at home.

"Then a thought came to me. 'I will not want him there in any event,' I told myself. 'What will he think when he sees a woman coming in my place on the evening before the day I am to be married—' I put the telephone down and prepared to go home. 'If I want my servant out of the apartment it is because I do not want him to hear me talk with the woman. I cannot be rude to her. I will have to make some kind of an explanation,' I said to myself.

"The woman came at seven o'clock, and, as you may have guessed, I let her in and forgot the resolution I had made. It is likely I never had any intention of doing anything else. There was a bell on my door, but she did not ring, but knocked very softly. It seems to me that everything she did that evening was soft and quiet, but very determined and quick. Do I make myself clear— When she came I was standing just within the door where I had been standing and waiting for a half hour. My hands were trembling as they had trembled in the morning when her eyes looked at me and when I tried to put the pennies on the counter in the store. When I opened the door she stepped quickly in and I took her into my arms. We stood together in the darkness. My hands no longer trembled. I felt very happy and strong.

"Although I have tried to make everything clear I have not told you what the woman I married is like. I have emphasized, you see, the other woman. I make the blind statement that I love my wife, and to a man of your shrewdness that means nothing at all. To tell the truth, had I not started to speak of this matter I would feel more comfortable. It is inevitable that I give you the impression that I am in love with the tobacconist's wife. That's not true. To be sure I was very conscious of her all during the week before my marriage, but after she had come to me at my apartment she went entirely out of my mind.

"Am I telling the truth— I am trying very hard to tell what happened to me. I am saying that I have not since that evening thought of the woman who came to my apartment. Now, to tell the facts of the case, that is not true. On that evening I went to my fiancee at nine, as she had asked me to do in her letter. In a kind of way I cannot explain the other woman went with me. This is what I mean-you see I had been thinking that if anything happened between me and the tobacconist's wife I would not be able to go through with my marriage. 'It is one thing or the other with me,' I had said to myself.

"As a matter of fact I went to see my beloved on that evening filled with a new faith in the outcome of our life together. I am afraid I muddle this matter in trying to tell it. A moment ago I said the other woman, the tobacconist's wife, went with me. I do not mean she went in fact. What I am trying to say is that something of her faith in her own desires and her courage in seeing things through went with me. Is that clear to you— When I got to my fiancee's house there was a crowd of people standing about. Some were relatives from distant places I had not seen before. She looked up quickly when I came into the room. My face must have been radiant. I never saw her so moved. She thought her letter had affected me deeply, and of course it had. Up she jumped and ran to meet me. She was like a glad child. Right before the people who turned and looked inquiringly at us, she said the thing that was in her mind. 'O, I am so happy,' she cried. 'You have understood. We will be two human beings. We will not have to be husband and wife.'

"As you may suppose everyone laughed, but I did not laugh. The tears came into my eyes. I was so happy I wanted to shout. Perhaps you understand what I mean. In the office that day when I read the letter my fiancee had written I had said to myself, 'I will take care of the dear little woman.' There was something smug, you see, about that. In her house when she cried out in that way, and when everyone laughed, what I said to myself was something like this: 'We will take care of ourselves.' I whispered something of the sort into her ears. To tell you the truth I had come down off my perch. The spirit of the other woman did that to me. Before all the people gathered about I held my fiancee close and we kissed. They thought it very sweet of us to be so affected at the sight of each other. What they would have thought had they known the truth about me God only knows!

"Twice now I have said that after that evening I never thought of the other woman at all. That is partially true but, sometimes in the evening when I am walking alone in the street or in the park as we are walking now, and when evening comes softly and quickly as it has come to-night, the feeling of her comes sharply into my body and mind. After that one meeting I never saw her again. On the next day I was married and I have never gone back into her street. Often however as I am walking along as I am doing now, a quick sharp earthy feeling takes possession of me. It is as though I were a seed in the ground and the warm rains of the spring had come. It is as though I were not a man but a tree.

"And now you see I am married and everything is all right. My marriage is to me a very beautiful fact. If you were to say that my marriage is not a happy one I could call you a liar and be speaking the absolute truth. I have tried to tell you about this other woman. There is a kind of relief in speaking of her. I have never done it before. I wonder why I was so silly as to be afraid that I would give you the impression I am not in love with my wife. If I did not instinctively trust your understanding I would not have spoken. As the matter stands I have a little stirred myself up. To-night I shall think of the other woman. That sometimes occurs. It will happen after I have gone to bed. My wife sleeps in the next room to mine and the door is always left open. There will be a moon to-night, and when there is a moon long streaks of light fall on her bed. I shall awake at midnight to-night. She will be lying asleep with one arm thrown over her head.

"What is it that I am now talking about— A man does not speak of his wife lying in bed. What I am trying to say is that, because of this talk, I shall think of the other woman to-night. My thoughts will not take the form they did during the week before I was married. I will wonder what has become of the woman. For a moment I will again feel myself holding her close. I will think that for an hour I was closer to her than I have ever been to anyone else. Then I will think of the time when I will be as close as that to my wife. She is still, you see, an awakening woman. For a moment I will close my eyes and the quick, shrewd, determined eyes of that other woman will look into mine. My head will swim and then I will quickly open my eyes and see again the dear woman with whom I have undertaken to live out my life. Then I will sleep and when I awake in the morning it will be as it was that evening when I walked out of my dark apartment after having had the most notable experience of my life. What I mean to say, you understand is that, for me, when I awake, the other woman will be utterly gone."

_____________________

16: A Spanish Ghost Story

Anon

In: The Great Book of Thrillers, 1935

IT is now about twenty years since I took honours in the examination qualifying me to teach in Hohere Tochterschulen. A week or two after the examination the Principal of the College called, asking me whether I would care to take a situation in Spain. He told me he had two Spanish boarders, Garcia by name, and that the mother of these boys had asked him to send her a governess for her daughters. The duties were light, and the salary good. I asked him whether he knew Mrs. Garcia?

"Personally, not at all," he answered; "but I know that she is wealthy, and of good position."

I should have liked to know more about her than that, but the situation was too good to be refused, so I said I would go, and three weeks after I found myself in Seville.

Mrs. Garcia received me very kindly, and introduced me to my pupils— Carmen, aged thirteen, and Concepcion, aged ten. After supper, she herself showed me my rooms, which were on the first floor, close to her own. The sitting-room opened off the bedroom, not off the corridor, so that it could only be reached by going through the bedroom. It had a door opening on the staircase, but Mrs. Garcia said that door was of no use, as the staircase was unused, and the door at the foot of it locked. It was an odd arrangement altogether; the staircase went no further than the first floor, and communicated only with two rooms— my sitting-room, and a room opposite, which Mrs. Garcia said was a lumber-room, and which was locked. This sitting-room was really a splendid room; it had a marble floor, and was upholstered in red silk with gold fringe. I wondered that so handsome a room should have been given up to me.

I was very comfortable with the Garcias, although I disliked two members of the household— an old witch of a servant, who had been Mrs. Garcia's nurse, and the father confessor. The old witch used to cross herself whenever she saw me, and mutter something which may have been a prayer for my conversion, but which sounded more like a curse. Father Avila, on the other hand, was very polite; in fact, I had an uncomfortable feeling that if I gave him any encouragement he would be too polite. I saw him constantly, for he passed at least half of every day at the Garcias.

One night I was awakened by the sound of footsteps in my sitting-room. I thought something was the matter, and my help was wanted, so I rose, lit my candle, and opened the door between the rooms. There was nobody there. I tried the door to the staircase. It was locked and the key was inside. Certainly if Mrs. Garcia wanted me she would not have thought of going down to the courtyard, opening the door of the disused staircase, and coming to my sitting-room. She would simply have crossed the corridor from her bedroom to mine. Besides, the door was locked. I must have been mistaken. Accordingly I went back to bed.

A night or two after this I had gone to bed later than usual, and, just as I was putting out my light, I heard some one moving about in the sitting-room. A chair was pushed back from the table, and some one began to walk up and down the room. This time there could be no mistake. I distinctly heard the footsteps on the marble. Again I rose and opened the door. No one was to be seen. There was no place in the room where one could hide, and no way of getting out of the room except down the staircase or through my bedroom. The staircase door was locked, and no one could have got into my bedroom without passing me. I could not understand it. I heard the same noises now and then for the next fortnight, and could find no explanation for them. At last I resolved to speak to Mrs. Garcia.

Next morning at breakfast I told my story, and Carmen exclaimed, "It is papa!" and began to talk quickly in Spanish. We always spoke French at meals, as Mrs. Garcia knew no German, and I knew only a few sentences of Spanish which I had picked up since I came to Seville. Most of what Carmen said was quite unintelligible to me, but I could make out that I was not the first person who had heard these noises, and that the children believed their father's ghost haunted that room. After breakfast Mrs. Garcia came to me and said that she would like to get Father Avila to say certain prayers in the sitting-room.

I said, "First tell me what it is you wish to exorcise."

She answered, "My husband died suddenly in that room, without having received the last rites of the church, and I believe that his soul cannot rest."

I felt that if I had to choose between Father Avila and the ghost, I decidedly preferred the ghost; but I could scarcely say so to Mrs. Garcia, so I said nothing, and Father Avila recited his prayers. All in vain. The noises continued. I believed it was some trick of the servants— possibly the old witch wanted to get rid of the heretic— and was resolved to catch the offender. I was becoming quite worn out by having my sleep so often broken, and Carmen, too, began to be troublesome. When told to do anything she disliked she would appeal to her mother; and if Mrs. Garcia took my part Carmen would say, "If you don't let me do as I wish, I will tell. I can tell, you know I saw; " and thereupon Mrs. Garcia would yield.

At last I thought of a plan. A great bell hung in the courtyard to be rung in case of fire. From the window of my room I could easily reach the bell rope. I told Mrs. Garcia that next time I heard the noises I would ring the bell and summon the household, and we should have the whole place searched. Mrs. Garcia agreed. Two or three nights after, I heard the noises again. This time the footsteps came up to my bedroom door, and the handle of the door turned. I opened the door quickly. No one there. Then I rushed to the window and pulled the bellrope with all my might. The whole household assembled. We began by examining the staircase. No one was there, and the door was locked, and fastened on the inside with a strong bolt. Then the lumber-room was opened and thoroughly searched, but we found no one. The lumber-room had no door but one opening from the staircase. At last we gave up the search, and went back to bed.

Next day was a festa, and we had a holiday. The German Consul's wife invited me to accompany her to the opera. I had brought letters of introduction to a good many Germans, and many of them had invited me to their houses; but Mrs. Garcia, though she never objected in words to my making friends, always wanted me to go somewhere with her, so that I had never been able to accept these invitations. To-day, however, I insisted on going to the opera, saying that I had been much agitated the night before, and that I must have some distraction; and Mrs. Garcia, after many objections, consented. There was another lady at the Consul's, a Mrs. Schroter, who had been in Seville for many years. She seemed to take a spanis h ghos t stor v q^ j rather a fancy to me, for she would talk to no one else, and after telling me all about her own affairs, she proceeded to ask about mine.

"And you are a governess, Fraulein Schaller? May I ask in what family?"

"In Mrs. Garcia's," answered I.

"What!" exclaimed the old lady. "Not Mrs. Garcia's? Widow of Pedro Garcia?"

"Yes," said I.

"But do you not know then, that you are in the house of a Lucrezia Borgia? Have you not heard her story?"

"I have heard no story about her," said I.

So she told me the story, and a horrible one it was. Mrs. Garcia had been the wife of Pedro Garcia, the senior partner of Garcia Brothers. They did not get on well together, and Mr. Garcia ended by becoming jealous of his own brother Carlos. One day Pedro and his wife had an unusually violent quarrel, and Pedro left the house in a rage. On his return his wife met him, all smiles and sweetness, and brought him coffee with her own hands. An hour or two later his valet, going into his sittingroom, found him sitting at the table, his head resting on his arms. Something in his master's attitude struck the man as peculiar; he spoke, got no answer, and touched him. He was stiff and nearly cold. The valet called the servants and ran for a doctor. When the doctor came he said Mr. Garcia had been dead for some time, and asked what he had eaten last. The cook said "coffee," and pointed to the cup still on the table.

"Let me see that," said the doctor, going towards the table. The old nurse jumped up, as though to hand him the cup, but managed to upset both cup and saucer, and break them.

"The matter was hushed up— people said by dint of bribery— and after a decent interval the widow married Carlos Garcia. The marriage had only lasted about a year when Carlos Garcia went mad. He accused himself of having caused his brother's death, and declared he both heard and saw the dead man continually. Six months afterwards he died. Mrs. Garcia was not well received by the Seville ladies, and was said to find her life very dull, though she consoled herself with the society of Father Avila, who had the reputation of being the worst priest in Spain.

Next day I gave Mrs. Garcia a quarter's notice. She was not well pleased and tried to persuade me to stay, but I would not. A week or two after, I went up to the music-room one evening to practise. I had to pass along a dimly-lit corridor, with recesses here and there. Suddenly a man rose from one of these recesses, and threw his arm round me, exclaiming, "My dearest,  my Visitacion!" It was Father Avila. (Mrs. Garcia's name was Visitacion.) I screamed, and tried to free myself. The moment Father Avila saw who I was he let me go, and I rushed off to my own room. I had been in a nervous state since I had heard Mrs. Garcia's story, and the fright I got made me really ill. I went to bed, and after some time fell asleep.

Some time later I awoke, to find my door open; a light in the passage showed me Father Avila and the old nurse standing in the doorway, and Mrs. Garcia at the foot of my bed with a cup in her hand. I sat up in bed, and asked, " What is the matter?"

Mrs. Garcia started, and the contents of the cup were spilled on the bed. Instantly the light went out, and a moment after I heard the door shut. I struck a light— there was no one in the room. I lay awake trembling for a long time, but at last fell asleep again. In the morning I tried to persuade myself it was fancy, and to convince myself I examined the bed-coverings, where the cup had been spilled, to see whether there was a stain. I found them burned into holes. Having dressed as quickly as possible, I went to the house of the German Consul, telling him what I had seen, and begging his assistance. He welcomed me warmly; and after much difficulty, and not without the use of threats of what might be revealed, induced Mrs. Garcia to hand over my things to him. I lived with the family for some time, until fortunately I got another situation in the house of a German merchant. Mrs. Garcia I never saw again. She left Seville with her family shortly afterwards, and though I declined to have any steps taken to punish her, the story got about, and she was shunned more than before. Where she went to I do not know, but those who hated her most whispered that it was to Santa Alba, whither Father Avila had been transferred by his ecclesiastical superiors.

_________________

17: An Insoluble Mystery

Alice O'Hanlon

1840-?

Belgravia Annual, 1890

ALL THE WORLD— that is, the small world of my personal acquaintance— considers me a lucky fellow. And not without reason, seeing that I possess nearly everything that the world most values. I am young, good-looking, well-born, wealthy and intellectually gifted.

But, alas, "every heart knoweth its own bitterness!" An exceptional experience has, during the past five years, poisoned for me the well-spring of every joy, and turned the summer of my life into a "winter of discontent." Save to three persons I have never yet revealed the strange facts which, under the cover of an assumed name, I am now about to lay before the public; and if the society whose object it is to collate and verify evidence of the apparently supernatural, or any individual authority on psychical subjects, can explain, by generalizing them, the phenomena of which I have been the victim, or can offer any reasonable solution whatever of the mystery which has, so far, seemed to set me apart from my fellows, they, or he, will earn my unfathomable and life-long gratitude. In the hope—a very faint one— of evoking some light on the matter, I now proceed to a brief, unvarnished narrative of facts.

In the summer of '84 I returned from Oxford to the paternal roof, flushed with the victory of a Double First. My father, Sir Aurelius Blanchard-Poole, one of the richest baronets in England and the best of men, received me with tears of pride glistening in his eyes. My mother (I was their only child) scrutinised my face with no less anxiety than joy, for beneath the aforesaid flush of victory she instantly recognised the ravening effects of the battle which had preceded it. As a matter of fact I was worn out with study, prostrated, as it soon became apparent, both mentally and physically.

A physician was called in, and, by his orders, I at once set off for a month's recruiting tour abroad. A month was the limit fixed for this holiday, because, at the end of that time, my mother was expecting a guest— one whom it would not only be my duty, but my delight, to be at home to welcome. This guest was a young lady from Boston, Mass., Madeline St. Claire by name, and my affianced bride. I had met the charming young American girl at Saratoga in the summer o f the preceding year and with the swift, but not, in my case, indiscriminating passion of twenty-one, had fallen deeply in love with her. An inquiry into matters of birth, position and antecedents having proved entirely satisfactory on both sides, we had become engaged, with the mutual sanction of our parents, and Madeline, who had no mother o f her own, was now coming, by the invitation of mine, to spend some four or five months at Elam Towers.

Switzerland had always been to me an Arcadia of delight. Already, for my age, I was a practised mountaineer, and some few months ago I had been proposed and elected a member of the Alpine Club. It was to Switzerland that I now repaired, but on the present occasion I eschewed the society of my former climbing companions, kept strictly by myself, and essayed none but the easiest passes. The doctor had said that I needed complete rest both of body and mind, and I felt that he was right.

A fortnight of my holiday had passed when, one brilliantly clear, sunny morning, I found myself seated on a lateral moraine to the right of the Rhone Glacier. I had walked down a zigzag road from the inn where I had been staying for several days, on the summit of the Furca Pass, and had then turned aside into a narrow footpath leading upwards by the side of the glacier, and had clambered, with some difficulty, to my present elevation. The view from where I sat was superb. Before me rose those grim giants of the Oberland, the Shreckhorn and the Finsteraarhorn, whilst a little further off extended the glorious Alpine Chain from Mont Leone to the Weisshom. Below me lay one of the finest sights in Switzerland, that magnificent frozen cascade, the Glacier du Rhone, fifteen miles long, breaking everywhere into huge billows and yawning crevasses. With the exception of an eagle, soaring far above my head in the sweet, pure air, not a living creature was within sight, and leaning my chin on my alpenstock, I sat drinking in the exquisite panorama, dreaming heavenly dreams the while of my love, feeling new health and vigour in every part of my frame— enjoying, in short one of those moments of unclouded hope and almost perfect bliss such as but rarely visit even the most highly favoured o f mortals.

All at once I became aware that my solitude had ,been invaded. Where she had sprung from I could not imagine, but immediately below me, climbing slowly up the glacier, appeared a female figure clad in a scarlet frieze cloak, the hood of which was drawn over her head. At the end of a few yards—and almost exactly opposite to where I sat— she paused— paused, I perceived, on the edge of a wide crevasse, into the depths of which she bent over to gaze. Shocked to think of the terrible peril she was incurring in wandering thus alone, without a guide, on a glacier of so notoriously dangerous a character as this, yet afraid to call out lest I might frighten her into a false step, I rose to my feet and held up my hand with a warning gesture.

The movement evidently attracted her attention, for she at once looked up. As she did so the hood fell back from her head, the cloak became unfastened at her throat and slipped to the ground. Disclosed thus to my view, stood a slender, girlish form attired in a curiously old-fashioned gown of light blue silk with leg-of-mutton sleeves. (I knew the description of these sleeves from their close resemblance to those of the portrait of my paternal grandmother in our picture gallery at home.) Crowning the graceful young figure appeared a cloud of pale yellow hair, which gleamed and shimmered in the sunshine, and below that I caught a vision of large, dark-blue, pathetic eyes and the loveliest features I had ever seen. It was indeed little more than a vision, for whilst I still held up my warning hand, those lovely features set themselves with a stony rigidity of purpose, a low despairing cry was borne to my ears across the frozen billows and with a sudden spring forward the girl disappeared down the crevasse, the red cloak, in which one foot seemed to have caught, sliding after her.

ii

FOR SEVERAL seconds I stood motionless— paralysed with horror. Then, with a loud cry for help, which I hoped might be heard at a chalet I had passed a little lower on the mountain side, I scrambled down the moraine, and made my way, clinging to ice-peaks and jumping over fissures, till I stood by the crevasse down which I had seen that suicidal plunge (I could not doubt but that the act had been intentional). About ten feet in width at its broadest point, the crevasse extended for nearly sixteen yards up and down the glacier, narrowing gradually at one end to less than a foot and at the other to only a few inches across. In frantic anxiety I scanned the opening so far as it would admit of a human body. But nothing was to be seen. The blue walls of jagged ice closed by degrees into impenetrable darkness, and from those awful depths below came no response to my wildly repeated shouts. Thrusting my alpenstock into the ice to mark the spot, I hastened, as fast as my trembling limbs would carry me, back to the chalet already referred to, overlooking the glacier a little lower down. Here I found a man, who proved to be a guide, asleep on a wooden settle— also a boy, whom I instantly despatched to summon further help from the Furca Hotel.

In spite, however, of the utmost urgency, it was nearly an hour before, with a sufficiency of men and ropes, I stood once more by the fatal crevasse. But our combined efforts were to prove useless. Four men— two at a time— were let down into the yawning gulf; then I, against the strongest remonstrance, insisted on descending myself. It was a terrible experience. With a rope round my waist, I was slowly lowered into the blue-green depths, till I slid between the narrowing walls and the cold ice seemed to close over my head, leaving me in darkness and with the noise as of a thousand mills ringing in my ears. Then, all at once, my feet were seized as by some living thing, and I was whirled round with dizzy rapidity, to find myself the next instant being drawn upwards to the light. As had been already reported to me, a large "moulin" existed at the bottom of this crevasse, a swirling pool of water gyrating round and round in a rocky basin and carrying with it huge boulder-stones, by the force of which any object so fragile as a human body must inevitably be crushed and ground to pieces. If the poor girl had fallen into that "Glacier Mill"— and how could she have escaped it?— her fate was sealed. Nevertheless, for days I haunted the place, and despite the blank hopelessness of the case, bribed people again and again to descend. It was only indeed, when I found myself beginning to be looked upon as a madman, that I at length desisted from these futile efforts.

As a matter of course, my alarming report had spread, and the strictest inquiries had been made far and near, but only to result in the discovery that not a soul was missing from the neighbourhood, certainly no one answering to the description I had given of the beautiful young lady with the golden hair. In the end, when these researches had been carried to Brieg on the one hand and to Goschenen on the other, I began — notwithstanding the vivid and protracted nature of my vision, and the fact that sound also had accompanied the sight— to believe that I must have been the subject of a mental delusion.

And so I might have thought still, but for subsequent events....

A week or more had been consumed in this painful manner, and now but a few days remained for the completion of my tour. Determined to dismiss, so far as I possibly could, the whole mysterious and perplexing matter from my mind, I now travelled rapidly from place to place, and having got over an incredible amount of ground in so short a space of time, found myself once more at home, just twenty-four hours before my dear Madeline was expected to arrive there.

In the opinion of both parents my trip had not done me much good. My mother, however, when she learned how far the last few days' wanderings had extended, happily attributed my pale and jaded aspect to over-fatigue. Not for worlds would I have told that dear, but nervous and fussy little woman, what had occurred.

To my father, howbeit a man with a mind constitutionally practical and sceptical, and who had cast off all superstition, even all belief in the supernatural, I described minutely every detail of my singular experience. His judgment, very forcibly expressed, confirmed the conviction into which I had already been driven, namely that (unlikely as it seemed that I should have been thus affected at that moment of renewed health and vigour) what I had seen was merely a subjective illusion, the trickery of an excited or fevered brain.

Still, impelled though I was to this conclusion, the impression of reality produced upon me had been so intense that, even in the society of the girl I loved, I could not altogether throw aside the effects. Again and again that haunting figure in the blue dress rose before me; again and again I started and trembled at recollection of that fatal plunge. By-and-bye, in spite of my ardent devotion to my promised wife, I felt that I must have some mental distraction, some occupation other than perpetual love-making. Accordingly, when she had been some three weeks at Elam Towers, I suggested to Madeline that I should employ myself for at least a couple of hours daily in study.

To this my sweet, sensible darling at once assented. She would be glad, for her own part, she declared with a smile, not to have "an idle young fellow dawdling about her all the day long," for even the most affectionate lovers might, she thought, "see just a little too much of each other." It was Madeline herself indeed, who, the very next morning, after breakfast, hurried me off to my private library. This room— my summer nursery in childhood, my favourite haunt as I grew up— was situated in a square tower which flanked the house to the right, and from which (incorrectly enough, for it was the only tower we had) the building took its name. Here, in this room, I had worked pretty diligently through some part, at any rate, of each long vacation during my college career, and here I had collected an extensive and valuable library of books. The apartment was a large, bright and airy one, lighted on three sides by wide mullioned windows, through one or other of which the sun, whenever there was any, sent his cheerful rays. On the fourth side was the door, opening on to a stone staircase which wound up from the basement of the house, and had no other means of access than that leading from the hall below. As will be understood, therefore, there was a sense of solitude in my airy sanctum, specially favourable to study. It is not, however, to explain this fact only that I have been thus particular in my description, nor, in truth, was the object with which I now sought this seclusion one that it is quite usual to speak of simply as "study." For a considerable time I had been nursing in secret the desire of writing a novel.

Already I had produced two or three short stories, which had been at once accepted by the editors of the first-class magazines to which I had sent them, and had been pronounced to shew much literary ability. Encouraged by this success my ambition had grown, and I now determined to set to work on this larger undertaking, but to say nothing about it until I should be in a fair way to judge whether or not it was likely to end in failure.

iii

SHUT up, then, in my tower chamber, I began my novel. At first, I confess, I had but a very hazy notion of what the plot was to be, and the opening chapter was written slowly and with difficulty. But, in this case, it was to prove literally "only the first step that cost." In a very short time my novel had become to me a true distraction indeed. In the interest of this work, I forgot all about my haunting vision. I even forgot, during the time that I was thus occupied, my Madeline and my love for her. The two hours which it had been arranged that I should spend in " study," grew, by degrees, to three, four, five and even six, Lost in my absorbing labour, I took no note of time. But could it be called labour? Hardly. At any rate, it was labour without effort. Over the planning and composing of those short stories to which I have referred, I had spent much time and trouble. I had written and re-written them several times over, and not a line of them but had cost me some thought.

Now, however, no thought seemed to be needed, at least, no conscious or painstaking deliberation. Ideas rose spontaneously in my mind. Scenes and situations were projected upon my mental vision, as though by some force outside myself, and with the most wonderful clearness and verisimilitude.

The characters, moreover, of my tale became to me vivid realities, moving and living before my eyes. And more especially was this the case with the principal character— my heroine. At first but a dim conception, this creation (as I supposed her) of my brain grew daily and hourly less ideal, more of an actual substantial existence. Her habits, her temper, her little idiosycrasies, her character altogether impressed itself upon my understanding so powerfully, that it became impossible for me any longer to regard her as an imaginary being, "the baseless fabric of a vision." On the contrary, Clarice Castello, for so I had named her, had grown to be more real to me than my flesh and blood sweetheart, more intimately known to me, more... No, for the moment I will reserve that confession.

In less than two months my novel was nearly completed. There were only a few chapters to add, when suddenly I laid down my pen, determined for a time to write no more, feeling, indeed, that just at present I neither could nor dare write any more. For two reasons, the first a singular one, to which I shall revert by-and-bye, the second that Madeline St. Claire had nearly quarrelled with me over my absorption in "study," and had threatened to break off our engagement.

Of a warm, spirited, and deeply affectionate nature, the poor girl had, very naturally, felt wounded by my growing neglect and coolness— a coolness which, I regret to say, was by no means simulated. Still, infatuated though I might be, I had not entirely ceased to love her, and, to save my honour and peace of mind, I now set about trying to convince her that my sentiments remained unchanged, and that her accusation of "caring for my books more than for her " was wholly groundless. Until she should herself send me back there, I would never, I declared, enter my tower-den again. Meanwhile, though I did not mention this fact— that den no longer contained the object which had so long and powerfully engrossed me.

My MS., my beloved manuscript, was now in the hands of a publisher, to whom I had forced myself, with not unaccountable reluctance, to send it for criticism. This publisher, the leading member of a leading London firm, and a very wealthy man, was a personal acquaintance of my own. His son, in fact, had been one of my chief chums at Oxford, and I had very often been a guest at the father's house.

Pending receipt, then, of the opinion that I had requested from Mr. A. B., I devoted myself with renewed assiduity to my fiancee, and presently had the satisfaction of seeing that she had fully forgiven me. It was fortunate for me, however, that just as I had succeeded in making my peace with her, Madeline left us for a few weeks' visit to a cousin of hers, who had married a Scotch-man with a large estate far north in the Highlands. Having accompanied her thither, and given a promise to her hosts that I would rejoin them, and spend a few days at their place later on, I returned home to find two letters awaiting me.

The first of these that I opened bore a foreign postmark and was a curious example of "English as She is Spoke." It was written by the landlord of the Furca Hotel, who, although he knew that I could speak and read his own language (German) perfectly well, had chosen to address me in mine. As the matter of this epistle was even more remarkable than the style, and as I wish to give as little personal colouring as possible to this narrative, I shall venture to transcribe it verbatim.

Very Esteemed Sir:

It is happed to us here a Thing of the most mysterious strange, which I haste me at once to let communicate You. A She-Domestic of our Hotel is, in this last Night, here arrived back from to visit her Father-house by the Lac Zug. At the Father-house lies a many-years-bedridden Grandfather which has two-and-eighty Years. Anna, the Spoken-of-Maid, think to amuse this Old with Tell-Story. Also, for this Reason, she relate of the Ghost-Spirit which You, very esteemed Sir, in the Fancy— as, till To-day, we always believed have—by the Glacier saw. Ah, strange! So soon as Fraulein Anna finished to describe of the red Cloak, and how he fell off and made naked the Gold Hair and the blue Silk Dress with the Gigot Sleeves, what did that Old? Sir, he rise himself to the Elbow, and outcry with a loudquick voice, "Mein Gott! Mein Gott!"

'What have you then, my Grandfather? What makes you hurt?' question Anna terrorfully.

"Ach! it must the beautiful Lady self to have been!" followed forth the Old.

To make short, very esteemed Sir, he continue to his daughterling the all-now-understated.

By the time he was a Youthful of about 20 years, the old Grandfather dwelled in Andermatt, which his Birth-Village was and the of his Father. The Father itself was a Guide-Farmer, and the Youthful also. For in those long-since-gone-by days came no Travellers but very seldom in the Aroundings. Only one late-in-the-eveningtime, as it therein nearly grown dark was and thereout Cold, Snow, and much Storm-Wind, came to the little Chalet of the Father-Guide three Persons which even then over the Mount St. Gothard had down-strided on the Foot. It was a Gentman, a Wife to the Gentman, and a Maid to the Wife, all bynearly freezed to the Bone.

Also the House-Mother make speed directly to before-set them some Eatings and likewise warm Drinkings. All then into the bed step. The Youthful forsake his to the Maid, Father and Mother theirs to those others. Ah! the Lady! The Youthful, now the Old, swear to memory her as yesterday. Never in the life before did he see a Thing so All-beautiful. Also, see then the Lady's Hair was shining Yellow, the dress, fair blue Silk, with Gigot Sleeves, the mantle, scarlet-red, with a Hood for the Head. Next comes the above-all mysterious-strange!

Very esteemed Sir, when the Morning arrive that Lady is no more in the Chalet. The Husband declare he know nothing, the Maid-female declare she know nothing; no Person know anything, only the Lady had vanish like Smoke in the Air and never, never to be seen once more.

(From this point the letter, it will be observed, becomes decidedly elliptical, as though the writer had grown weary of his linguistic efforts, and was in haste to conclude.)

Seekings was forth-follow, here, there, all-where. But how? No footstep. Snow still downfall. The House-Mother cross herself and think Angel, Devil, Witch, who knows? The Gentman weep and depart, the Maid also. But the Youthful, now the bed-ridden Old, memory that beautiful Jungfrau for so long years time. And as Anna finish to tellstory, he outcry once more, 'It must the same to have been!' Forget that he so old is, and the beautiful One, when alive, also In myself, honoured Sir, and outside me many others, we now quite sure feel that it is truly a Ghost-Spirit that you into the Crevasse saw to leap. The good God defend that to none others the frightening Thing visible.

I have the honour to remain, very esteemed Sir,

Your humble Servant,

Y ____ Y _____

How did this letter affect me? Did I, too, now feel satisfied that I had seen a spirit, a visitant from the dark unknown beyond the grave? A few months back I should have repelled this suggestion with scorn and ridicule. Embued by education with my father's scepticism, I had hitherto held somewhat materialistic views of the universe. If I had not absolutely denied the existence of the supernatural, I had, at all events, felt convinced that human knowledge was bounded by experience, that the laws o f nature were uniform and stable, and that nothing beyond sense-cognition was open to us. Personally I had been content to live in the present and for the present, and to ignore both dogmatic theology and transcendental metaphysics.

Now, however, my ideas and convictions had, I must confess, been thrown into considerable disorder. Like a man who has felt the solid earth rock beneath him, I was filled with an uneasy sense of insecurity, a bewildering loss of hold on the former realities of life. It is true that, as I have already stated, I had struggled to persuade myself that my vivid realistic vision on the Rhone Glacier had been merely an ocular delusion, produced by a supranormal or abnormal affection of my own mental functions. But I had never entirely succeeded in this effort; for, although in the absorption of my literary work I had been able to put aside all recollection of the vision, it had continued, at intervals, to recur to me in unoccupied moments, and especially in the silent watches o f the night, with such reflex force of presentment that I had again and again been tempted to question within myself whether, indeed, there might not be more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in my philosophy.

Quite recently, too, a further phenomenal experience (such as, formerly, I should have deemed it incredible that I could ever have been the subject of) had dealt a fresh shock to my faith in the uniformity and stability of nature as I had conceived it; and unable, as yet, to organize a new mental adjustment, I was suffering a sort of helpless perplexity, which the receipt of this letter helped to increase to a positive moral vertigo. Taken in conjunction with that which I have still to reveal, it seemed to me (at least in my first agitation) that the curiously close resemblance in person and dress between the old guide's lost lady and my apparition must be something more than a coincidence. Anyhow, indisposed as I had always believed myself to superstition, the fact must be owned that, after reading the letter, I was seized with an almost panic-like alarm, which, for the time being, paralysed the action of reason and judgment. Determined to throw off, if possible, the incubus of formless dread that oppressed me, I ordered my horse late in the afternoon and took a twenty miles' ride into the country, returning home only a little before midnight, physically exhausted but mentally much soothed and refreshed.

iv

IT WAS not until after breakfast the next morning that I remembered the second letter which had been handed to me along with that from the landlord of the Furca Hotel, and which, after perusing the latter, I had thrust unread into my pocket, and without even a glance at the superscription.

Drawing it forth now, I recognised the handwriting of Mr. A. B., the publisher and friend to whom I had sent my MS.

A flush of excitement rose to my brow, but I made no haste to open the letter. On the contrary, I sat turning it over and over for some time, in singular disinclination at once to acquaint myself with its contents. It was not, however, as might naturally be presumed, the nervous fears and hopes of a young literary aspirant which caused this hesitation.

I was neither afraid of a blow to my ambition nor a wound to my vanity. The sentiments wherewith I regarded my novel were far removed from these. Still, were I to give in my own words the gist of Mr. A. B.'s letter, or to record (save as quotation) the strong and flattering terms in which it was couched, I should, no doubt, draw upon myself the accusation of both vanity and exaggeration. T o avoid this unjust aspersion, and also because, as I said before, I am most anxious not to intrude my personality any more than can possibly be helped into my tale, I shall beg leave to copy this letter likewise.

Addressed to " R. Blanchard-Poole, Esquire," it ran as follows

"My dear Reginald. I have just finished reading your MS., and I now sit before it lost in amazement. I always knew, of course, that you were a clever fellow, but by Jove! this production has startled me. My dear boy, you will make a name for yourself with a vengeance! You have written the Novel of the Century. Henceforth even Thackeray, Dickens and George Eliot may be consigned to back seats, or shall we say lower shelves? I am not joking; I really mean what I say. Man alive! where did you get your heroine? Where did you meet her? She is no character in a novel merely; your Clarice is a living, walking creature. You must know her— for I do. And, mon Dieu! how she impresses me. She is a wicked wretch; I fear her. She is a lovely, fascinating, enchanting angel; I adore her. Yes, sir, I am positively and truly in love with your heroine— enamoured of her, and carried away by excitement as to her fate. Finish the book quickly, Reginald, and let us get it into print. I will send on the MS. to-morrow morning by special messenger. As to terms, money I know is no object to you, but I don't mind offering you £1,000 down for the copyright, with more to follow should the success prove equal to my anticipations. Get it done. Shall we advertize it at once? Send word by the messenger.

"A. B."

My answer to this question was a very decided negative, and fortunately so, both for my friend's sake and my own, for, despite that enthusiastic criticism, my novel never has and never will see the light of publication. But why? We now draw towards the strangest part, though not even yet do we reach the culminating strangeness, of my strange story.

I have said that, as I wrote of her, my heroine, Clarice Castello, had grown more and more real to me— that I had, as it were, so assimilated my conception of her person and character, that I had learned to know her as well, or even better, than my most intimate friends. This was true; and it was further true (and here is the confession which I held myself from making a. few pages back) that a strange, passionate admiration for this ideal of my own fancy had taken possession of me, and with such a strength of infatuation as absolutely to over-ride the affection I bore to my living lady-love. Does this assertion appear incredible? Is it less incredible then, that Mr. A. B, from merely reading the words in which I had painted her, should have been affected in the way he describes? Incredible or not, I can only state the simple fact— a fact that was all the more remarkable too, from the circumstance that, up to within a few weeks of sending my MS. to the publisher, I had never been able to call up for myself a perfectly clear picture of my heroine's face. That the features were very beautiful I knew and felt, and I had described them in glowing terms, but, somehow, a sort of mistiness—a more or less transparent veil— had always, to my annoyance, seemed to intervene between them and my mental vision.

One evening, however, finding myself dressed for dinner some three quarters of an hour before the time, I slipped up to my tower chamber, meaning to add a surreptitious page to my novel before the gong should sound. Having lighted the gas, for it was growing dusk, I drew forward my MS. But instead of beginning to write, I sat nibbling the end of my pen and striving to pierce the cobwebby mist which obscured from my eyes that idol of my (supposed) creation.... Had the wish for a clearer perception brought its own fulfilment? Suddenly looking up, I saw directly opposite me, on the other side of the table, and as though resting against the back of a chair which stood there, a female face— a face of the most delicate loveliness, yet informed with an underlying, but very unmistakable strength of character. A smile of somewhat cynical amusement parted the perfect mouth, disclosing a row of even, milk-white teeth; but the smile ended with the mouth, and was piteously contradicted by the expression of the large, dark-blue eyes, which, as they looked into my own, seemed full of a proud but passionate despair. Surrounding the face, like the aureole of a saint, appeared a halo of pale gold, whilst beneath it, obscuring the chair from my view, hung a sort of opaque bluish cloud. In an instant, whilst I still gazed at it, the face was gone. As a matter of course, I had not the slightest difficulty in recognizing the true nature of this appearance. It was a deceptio visus, a temporary hallucination caused by an internal stimulation of the nerve-centres of perception. Those features, lovely as a dream, had no objective basis outside my own consciousness. How, indeed, could I for one moment question this fact, or attribute external reality to a face without a body?

Nevertheless, though able thus to reason with myself, I was filled with a vague awe in presence of this unfamiliar and startling experience. My heart throbbed wildly against my side, and I felt myself trembling in every limb. It was only when I had left the room, hurried downstairs and out into the grounds, that my nervous excitement began to cool, and I was able to view the thing in what I thought was its true light.

About this illusion I did not speak even to my father. It appeared to me to be of a wholly distinct nature from that former one, my vivid realistic vision by the Rhone Glacier. For that I could not yet satisfactorily account; for this there seemed an easy physical and scientific explanation. As is well known, there are persons who can see or feel what they conceive vividly, and this mental representation, so intense as to become mental presentation, is a faculty of the mind especially apt to be met with among artists. Goethe and Balzac had both the power of making certain mental images sensible to the sight, whilst that eccentric genius, William Blake, used habitually to see his conceptions as actual images or visions. No doubt, by the intense direction of my mind to the idea, I could, I thought, again at any time call to view that phantom face shining out of its golden halo, the embodiment of my fairest fancy.

But though, more than once, I actually tried the experiment, I did not succeed for over a fortnight in again working up imagination to the state of vision. One morning, however, in broad daylight, and when I was making no effort to see it, that phantom face once more flashed upon my sight. This time it remained with me longer, and I saw it more distinctly. The features, with their vivid beauty, seemed more rounded and real and the golden halo had evolved itself now into a mass of tangled curls. Moreover, as I gazed, I was struck with a curious sense of familiarity in the face, an impression, I mean, that I had seen it somewhere else than in that former momentary glimpse. And I was right.

When the vision had vanished I made what, at the moment, seemed to me a really appalling discovery. It was the face, the very same face, that had looked at me across the frozen billows and ice-peaks of that Swiss glacier! How came that face to be haunting me here? How came I to have pictured it unconsciously as that of the heroine of my novel?

It was after this discovery that I gave up writing for a time and sent my MS. to my friend, and it was by reason of the same discovery that I felt so much more perplexed and disturbed by that letter from the Furca inn than would otherwise have been the case.

v

IF, HOWEVER, the climax of my extraordinary experiences had now been reached, this narrative of them would never have been laid before the public. For I should still have been able to persuade myself that all that had happened, curious and exceptional as it appeared, was capable of a rational explanation. As regards the old guide's story of his lost lady and the identity of description (so far, indeed, as his observation at the time, or his memory at this distant date, could be trusted) between her dress and appearance and that of my Swiss apparition, this I felt obliged, on reflection, to set down as a coincidence, remarkable certainly, but one to which it would be easy to find many parallels. For the rest— that is, to account for the uniformity of those visual deceptions to which I had been subjected, and their correlation with my imaginative heroine— I had built up a theory which seemed to supply a fitting key to the mystery. It would be useless, however, to weary the reader with the pathological or physiological arguments on which I had based this theory, because, as a matter-of-fact, the whole thing was knocked on the head by the sequel of events. Suffice it to say, therefore, that the hypothesis I had thought out so far satisfied and relieved my mind that, a few days after receiving Mr. A.B.'s letter, I felt equal to the effort of resuming my writing.

Naturally, I was determined to finish my novel. Who would not have been, considering the terms in which so competent a judge had spoken of it? But I was equally determined that I would never attempt another. Indeed, to tell the truth, I knew very well that I never could write another like this. It was an inspiration to which I felt implicitly convinced it would be impossible again to attain.

Meanwhile, the novel must be finished, and as quickly as possible. I was anxious to get it off my hands before rejoining Madeline in Scotland. At the same time, I laid down a rule for myself that I would not work more than a certain number o f hours a day, and I resolved further to keep my intense and exuberant imagination so within bounds that it should conjure up no more visible spectres to bewilder and perturb my senses.

Well, I recommenced writing (I had, I may parenthetically remark, obtained my fiancee's permission to resume my "studies" during her absence), and I found my task as light as ever. For fully a week the effort of composition was no effort at all. Thoughts and conceptions crowded into my brain more quickly than I could register them; words in which to clothe my ideas flowed as by inspiration from my pen. But at the end of that week came a striking change. I had now brought my heroine into a situation common enough in real life, and sufficiently commonplace in fiction. I must be allowed to protest, however, that hitherto neither the characters represented in my drama, nor my treatment of the subject, savoured in the slightest degree of the commonplace. Far from it. The situation in question was this.

Married to an old man whom she had accepted for his wealth and position, my Clarice had, since her marriage, met her "fate," in the shape of a young and handsome lover, who, in return for his own much weaker affection, had contrived to inspire in her a deep and consuming passion. Endowed with an inflexible will that could brook no opposition to its purposes, selfish, and, perhaps, even a little cruel (for, despite her fairness of complexion, she had a strain of Spanish blood in her veins), it was borne into my mind that Clarice would get rid of her unloved and unloveable old husband in order to marry her young lover— that, in short, she would poison him with arsenic. But, somehow, I could not bear to put this on paper. My ideal love could not, should not, must not stain her soul with this great wickedness. She was no saint; I had never represented her as such. Original and capricious, she had frequently transgressed against the conventional code of society, but never yet had she broken a moral law. Moreover, a certain softness and sweetness of temper, and a delicious fascination of manner, had, up to this point, served to conceal the strength of her iron will, as with a garland of flowers.

No, it could not be; I would end the tale, I resolved, in some other way than in the hideous one thus projected into my mind.

I thought out a plan which I considered might do. But what had come over me? My pen lingered and stumbled, my ideas ceased to flow, my mind had become almost a blank. I could not now write a single sentence without the most wearisome effort. And what poor, bald twaddle it was when produced! Line after line, and sentence after sentence I erased, but only to replace them with something equally tame and trivial. My inspiration had utterly departed. No one would credit it that these last pages had been written by the same person as the foregoing ones.

Still I persevered until, one afternoon— shall I ever forget that afternoon?— an engagement had prevented me working in the morning, but I had gone up to my tower immediately after luncheon, determined to have a few hours' good work. I sat down before my desk, but— not a single line could I write. I struggled to think, until the mental effort brought great drops of perspiration to my brow. At length I managed to frame a sentence, and, dipping my pen in the ink for the twentieth time, I began to put it down. What was the matter? I had a sense now of positive physical hindrance. Someone, I felt, was standing behind my chair. Someone— yes, a hand reached down from over my shoulder and touched mine—a hand and arm in a blue sleeve! I started up. There before me— believe it or not as you choose —stood the same beautiful girl, wearing the same old-fashioned gown of blue silk—just as I had seen her across the Rhone glacier. Her hand had fallen by her side now, but an angry frown contracted her brow. Distinctly I heard her utter the two words, "You fool!" Then I swooned away.

It must have been hours before I recovered consciousness, for when I did so, the sun had sunk low in the heavens and a flood o f golden light was streaming in at one of the large uncurtained windows. I was no longer at my desk, as I then found, but reclining in an easy chair at quite an opposite end of the room. How had I got there? I could not tell— nor for some time could I recover recollection of what had occurred before my swoon.

At last it all came back to me; and rising, in much perturbation, I approached my table. When I reached it I fell back with a cry of alarm, and very nearly fainted again. On the top of my MS. (I had just numbered and placed there a fresh sheet of foolscap) lay a page of handwriting.

It was not mine. My penmanship is masculine and bold. This was distinctly feminine, and in the old-fashioned, fine-pointed and sloping style affected by our grandmothers. Could someone have been playing me a trick? I ran to the door and turned the handle. It was locked inside. Cold and sick with dismay, I leaned back against the wall. I could not recollect having turned the key to-day, but I knew that it was my invariable custom so to do. I had begun the habit in the first week after commencing my novel, because, on one occasion, my solitude had been unexpectedly invaded by my mother and Madeline. On the carpeted stone staircase it was difficult to hear footsteps approaching, so, to guard against a repetition of the surprise (for it will be remembered that I had resolved to let no one know of my novel until it was completed), I had taken to locking my door.

And it was locked now. Besides, I knew— yes, I knew from the very first sight of it— that that page of foolscap had been penned by no mortal man or woman. When I could bring myself to read what was written there, I found more than sufficient internal evidence to confirm this view. And I did read it before I left the room that same afternoon— for I am no coward. I read it with my limbs quaking and my heart throbbing like a sledge-hammer. Then I buried it, together with my MS., at the bottom of a large ottoman-box filled with disused fishing-tackle and other reminiscences of my boyhood's days, and crawled below. By the following morning I was in the delirium of a brain-fever, from the effects of which I did not entirely recover for nearly three months...

Five years have passed since then; my father is dead; Elam Towers, as well as much other landed and funded property, has passed into my possession; Madeline has long been my wife— the dearest and best wife that ever lived; but she is not one of the three people who alone, so far, have known anything about my first and last novel, and the mysterious phenomena connected therewith. Having finished this plain record of those phenomena, I shall now disinter that so long unseen but never forgotten page of handwriting and let it speak for itself in a facsimile lithograph. That it by no means flatters me is a matter of small consequence.

"My biographer is a fool. I should like to use a stronger term. Does the absurd fellow really suppose that he has created Me?  Does he not know that every word he has written has been at my dictation? That it is my life, my history he has been recording? Does he flatter himself that the fire, the passion, the genius of these pages are his? Bah! I laugh at the notion. How flagrant is masculine egotism! How preposterous the self-delusions of masculine vanity! Yet he might have had the credit of it all—of the spontaneity and brilliancy of description, the fertility of idea, the marvellous felicity of expression which I have been able to project from my brain into his— had he not chosen to rebel against my inspiration. Simpleton! I am enraged against him; he has spoiled my story; I have lost my power over him; he refuses to tell the Truth as I dictate it. He will have falsehood, foolish, futile falsehood. Then I will finish the story myself. But no, I cannot, I cannot! It will be in my power to hold the pen for only ten minutes longer, and that at the cost of most agonising effort. I must tell the bare facts in the baldest, dryest fashion.

"Reginald, you goose, I did poison that wretched old man, and I did marry Paul Danvers. I loved him— Ah! how I loved him! But he— he was not what I thought— he was not worthy of me. Instead of the hot, rich blood of a valourous man, there flowed in his veins the poor, watery ichor of a poltroon. On our wedding-tour, six weeks after we were married, in the Hospice on the St. Gothard, I told him what I had done, what I had risked for him. But, oh, good Heavens! instead of adoring me with ten times his former fervour, I saw— yes, I saw it plainly— a look of horror steal over his handsome face, an expression of loathing rise to his eyes! And the next day it was there still; it was stronger than ever.

"Ha, my lost love! My bitter disappointment! My anguish o f pain! My breaking heart! My final despair! Reginald, I could have described it all through you, and to do so would have been a relief, but you would not— Ah, my hand grows thin and transparent, I lose my temporary power of retaining substantial existence. You know the rest, you know how my mental struggles ended. I could not, could not live! You know how I died. And, silly boy, why do you love me? I have no power to return your love, no capacity for further passion. Good-bye, I leave you for ever.

"Clarice Castello."

Here, then are my facts for the Psychical Research Society. Surely, if ever there was a clear case of supernatural visitation, it is this. Surely the evidence of that mysterious page, half comment, half letter, affords in itself "confirmation strong as Holy Writ." Yet, so sceptical is the age, that two out of my three confidants still insist on finding a natural explanation for all, including that mysterious page. One of the two clings to the suggestion of trickery, in regard to the latter phenomenon. He contends that my door could not have been locked on that memorable afternoon, that my protestation on the subject is not to be relied on, seeing that I was on the eve of brain-fever, as though, forsooth, the disturbance had been antecedent to, instead of occasioned by that shock.

My second confidant, Mr. A. B., on the other hand, is of opinion that I myself wrote that mysterious page in a condition of somnambulistic trance, and he has offered me double the sum first mentioned if I will let him publish my novel as it now stands, with that page for an ending. Nothing, however, that he can say shall induce me to consent to this proposition. But as regards another request which he has continually worried me with, I will prove more complaisant. He has asked me, times without number, to send the "feigned handwriting," as he calls it, to an expert for comparison with my own. Well, let the general public act as experts. Here is my autograph, name and address:

Sir Reginald Blanchard-Poole, Bart.,

Elam Towers,

Loamshire.

And if any person can detect the slightest resemblance between this handwriting and the other, he is at liberty to communicate the fact to me through the editor of this magazine.

In conclusion, I may state that the third individual who has all these years been cognisant of, and faithfully kept my secret, agrees with me that, taken all in all, the experience remains, if not an insoluble, at least an unsolved mystery.

________________

Table of Contents

1: Lighting Strikes Twice / Ethel Lina White

2: The Jigglesqueak / Paul Fitzgerald

3: The Skeleton of Paradise Island / Frank Reid

4: You'll Be Surprised / Ethel Lina White

5: The Secret of the Amulet / B. M. Croker

6: The Crime / Richard Marsh

7: A Priestess of Osiris / Edgar Wallace

8: The Bed by the Window / E. F. Benson

9: Over an Absinthe Bottle / William C Morrow

10: A Very Queer Inn / M. B. Archer

11: Our Mr. Smith / Oswald Crawfurd

12: Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff / Bret Harte

13: The Gylston Slander / Herbert Jenkins

14: The Demoiselle d'Ys / Robert W. Chambers

15: The Other Woman / Sherwood Anderson

16: A Spanish Ghost Story / Anon

17: An Insoluble Mystery / Alice O'Hanlon