Past Msters 142
Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: Just over 100,000 words of short stories in the Life+70 years public domain, gathered from newspapers, magazines, and other dusty sources. Some famous names such as Ethel M Dell, queen of romance, Max Brand, king of the Western; American Irvin S Cobb, Australian Harold Mercer, British E F Benson... the usual eclectic mix of authors typical of this series of anthologies. 1: The Amber Formula / Norman Blois Shalders 2: A Water-Nymph / Maud Shields 3: The Disappearance of Crispina Umberleigh / "Saki" 4: The Murder at Jex Farm / Oswald Crawfurd 5: The Ghost at Laburnum Villa / Anonymous 6: A Chris

PAST MASTERS 142

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

15 October 2023

Contents

1: The Amber Formula / Norman Blois Shalders

2: A Water-Nymph / Maud Shields

3: The Disappearance of Crispina Umberleigh / "Saki"

4: The Murder at Jex Farm / Oswald Crawfurd

5: The Ghost at Laburnum Villa / Anonymous

6: A Christmas Ghost Story / Ida Deahl

7: Discharging Martha / Carroll Watson Rankin

8: The Allard Burglars / George Hibbard

9: The Eyes / Edith Wharton

10: The Magic Circle / Ethel M. Dell

11: The Curse of True Love / Harold Mercer

12: A Schoolmaster Abroad / E. W. Hornung

13: Jack's as Good as His Master / Sumner Locke

14: And the Dead Spake / E. F. Benson

15: The Ghost / Max Brand

16: "Seven, Seven, Seven— City" / Julius Chambers

17: The Mystery Of King's Bench Walk / Britiffe Constable Skottowe

18: Blue Mountain Blue / D. H. Souter

19: John J. Coincidence / Irvin S. Cobb

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1: The Amber Formula

Norman Blois Shalders
fl 1920-30s

Sunday Mail (Brisbane), 1 Sep 1935

This story is certainly a reprint from a British magazine. All I can find out about the author is that he had been in the British Navy. His only other story I could find is "Prize Money," Sea Stories, Oct 1929.

'WE require some more money.'

Bernard B. Beresford, confidence trickster and man-about-town, threw down his bank book, and settled his fourteen stone more comfortably in the depth of the plush-covered armchair.

'Yes, dear?' enquired his wife, looking with concealed admiration upon the Pickwickian form of her husband. She usually spoke in monosyllables.

'Yes, dear,' echoed Bernard B., 'we require some more money.'

He picked up the little book again and studied Its contents.

'At the time ot going to press,' he announced, nipping the end of a five-shilling cigar between his even white teeth, 'the exchequer stands at exactly £18,402/16/-, which sum, as you are aware, my dear, is below my minimum limit of £20,000. Something must be done about it.'

He lit the cigar and lapsed into thought.

Bernard B. Beresford, whom the police of six countries had failed to land in their net, lived in an expensive Park Lane flat, surrounded by all the luxuries usually associated with men whose fortunes run into six and sometimes seven figures. Born in America in 1888, he had passed through Yale University and embarked on a commercial career. But commerce didn't appeal to Bernard B. It was too slow, and one had to work too hard for one's money. What he wanted was a comfortable arm chair occupation, which would bring in the maximum of money with the minimum amount of labour. And so, packing his bags one day, he shook the dust of New York from his feet, and descended upon unsuspecting England.

That was twenty years ago.

'I've got it.' he suddenly exclaimed, jumping to his feet and flinging the half-smoked cigar into the fireplace. 'We'll have £25,000 to add to our balance before the week is out, or my name isn't Bernard B. Beresford.'

'Yes, dear?'

'Yes, dear. I commence work tomorrow. It's a cinch. It can't fail. The Rolls at 10 a.m., dear, if you please.'

Sharp to time, Beresford's magnificent car drew up outside the door. His first visit was to his bank, where he withdrew £1000 In notes. Then he visited the finest and most exclusive jeweller's shop in Bond Street and purchased ten of the most exquisite amber cigarette cases he could find. They cost him £845. Bernard B. never believed in spoiling the ship for a half-penny-worth of tar. If they had cost him three times that amount be would have paid the sum without turning a hair. A visit to the Rltz for lunch concluded his West End activities for that day, and shortly before 3 o'clock be returned to his flat.

'You haven't forgotten, I hope, we are dining with Lord Westmacott tonight,' Mrs. Beresford reminded him over afternoon tea.

Beresford smiled.

'My dear. What on earth do you think I was doing in the West End this morning? You know I avoid Bond Street like the plague when I am not working. This evening, at dinner Lord Westmacott and his guests will replenish the Beresford coffers.'

'Will they?'

'Have I not just said so,' he replied testily. 'Don't you know by now that Bernard B. Beresford's word is his bond? Have: you ever known me fail? No, never, have you?'

'No, dear,' admitted his monosyllabic wife.

'I'm sorry.' He patted her hand reassuringly. 'That's all right. Forget about it.'

Bernard B. always made a point of never allowing his wife to share the , details and secrets of his confidence work. She knew, of course, how he made his money; but that was all she did know. Otherwise, his profession was a closed book. It was far better for her, he had reassured her on more than one occasion, that she should be kept in i gnorance. Not only would her lack of knowledge prove a safeguard In the event of. his making a slip, but she would be able more easily to play her natural part as the wife of a wealthy American without exciting suspicion.

Bernard B. was In his best form that night. He had met Lord Westmacott, he told the guests, homeward bound from South America, and his stories of how they went ashore together at every port the liner visited brought shrieks ol laughter from ttoe company. Yes, Bernard B. Beresford was extremely popular.

'Cigar or cigarette, Beresford?'

The host pushed a cigar box and a gold dgarette case aci-ost .the table towards his guest.

'Cigarette, please. But I would prefer to smoke my own, if you have no objection, Westmacott. He produced a well-stocked amber case, which he opened and offered to his host. 'Try one of these. They're specially made for me, and I think you'll like them.' '

'By jove! Beresfoid! Wlial a magnificent case!' The peer took it from Bernard B.'s outstretched hand. 'Exquisite! Perfectly marvellous! One of the finest I have seen!' He turned it over and over in his hands, fingering it with the air of a connoisseur. 'Perfectly beautiful, isn't it. Pollard?' he asked, handing it to one of the guests.

Pollard examined it closely, and then passed it round the table.

'I feel honoured that you should consider it such a beautiful case, Westmacott.' said Beresford, 'for it is a glowing tribute to my workmanship!' A smile flitted across his Pickwickian features.

Lord Westmacott looked at him incredulously.

'You don't mean...' he gasped.

'....that I made it myself?' Beresford completed the question for him. 'Yes. that's exactly what I do mean. That case cost me exactly three shillings and ten and threetenths pence to make. I discovered the secret of making amber, quite by accident. Chemistry is a hobby of mine, and I have spent hours since the discovery perfecting the formula. Now, three months afterwards, I can produce amber so perfect in every way that the finest experts in the trade cannot detect the difference. I've tested them, so I know.'

Bernard B. Beresford's gaze wandered from face to face. His quick brain told him that it was but a matter of time before his bank account was swelled by £25,000. Suckers.... all of them!

'Yes,' he went en. 'When I discovered the formula I had a case made. Then I took it round the Bond Street area and had it valued. Fifteen valuations were placed on it, and in not one single instance did any jeweller estimate its value at less than £50!'

There was a gasp of astonishment as Beresford ended on this triumphant note.

'Westmacott. I wonder if you would mind sending your butler for my overcoat? I have, I believe, eight or nine cases in the pockets which I would like to distribute to your guests. Better still, just tell him to bring in the cases. Perhaps you'll keep the one you have in your hand?'

The butler returned, two minutes later, bearing on a silver salver nine cases, each carefully wrapped in tissue paper. He laid them on the table in front of Beresford.

'Jove! that's lucky!' he said after he had counted them. 'Excluding my wife and myself, there are exactly ten persons present, so every one will be able to have a case.'

'You will note,' he continued, as he stripped the cases of their paper coverings, 'that no two are exactly alike Yet each has the appearance of the finest amber.'

He distributed the cases round the table. 'Now, my friends, I ask just one small favour of each one of you. Tomorrow morning, or whenever convenient to yourselves, I would like each one of you to take his or her case to various first-class jewellers and have it valued, just as I did. Perhaps it would be better if you all arranged between yourselves to try different neighbourhoods; otherwise, if ten people start trooping into the same Bond Street shop with the idea of having their cases valued, the jewellers will get tired of wasting their time.'

Ten heads nodded their agreement.

'Then if you will tell me the result of your respective excursions I shall know whether or not my formula is flawless. Personally, I believe it is.'

'Why don't you commercialise tins formula?' asked Westmatott. 'There's a fortune in it for you.'

Beresford lit a cigar. 'I know, old boy,' he replied, 'but, honestly, I'm too darned lazy. Besides,' he added, 'I've got all the money I want. It's just a hobby, and I want it to remain so. Yes, I agree, Westmacott, there's a fonune in it. but I've got one fortune, so why bother about another? I'm not mercenary!'

'Well, you may be all right. Beresford.' laughed Pollard, 'but I could do with a fortune. What about selling the formula?'

'Sorry, old man! Nothing doing,' laughed Bernard B., flicking the ash from his cigar. 'Besides,' he added, wagging an admonishing finger at Pollard, 'if I sold you the formula you'd have all the amber dealers in the world down on you like a ton of bricks.'

'I'd risk that,' was the reply.

'I don't doubt it for a moment,' said Beresford drily. 'You'd be slow if you didn't! Still,' he concluded, winking at Wettmacott, 'I have been known to change my mind, haven't I?'

AT 10 o'clock the following morning Beresford was roused from his sleep by the steady ringing of the telephone by his bedside. He yawned a sleepy 'Hello' into the mouthpiece.

'That you, Beresford?'

'Yes, all of me that's awake, Westmacott,' he answered. 'What's the trouble?'

'Sorry to disturb your beauty sleep, old man,' apologised the voice at the other end of the line, 'but I rang you up to see if you would lunch with me at the Berkeley? I want to see you on urgent business. Say 1 o'clock. Will that suit you?'

'Admirably, Westmacott... but on one condition,' replied Beresford.

'And what's that?'

'That you are my guest. I won't ask the nature of the urgent business, though I can make a pretty shrewd guess!'

'You old devil!' laughed Westmacott, and rang off.

'NOW, look here, Beresford,' said the peer when the waiter had brought the liqueurs. 'Be a good scout, and sell me that formula.'

'I knew that was coming,' replied Bernard B., clipping his cigar and reaching for the matchstand. 'Go on. Fire ahead! I feel amiable today, so you had better make the most of your opportunities.'

Reassured, Lord Westmacott opened his verbal barrage. He told Beresford of the tremendous difficulties that faced a man of his position, and of the heavy expenses incurred in running a town house and two country estates.

'But one must do it, Beresford. If I don't I'm only ostracising myself from society. Not that I care a damn for society, but I must think of my wife and children, mustn't I?'

'Quite. Oh, quite,' agreed Beresford, imperturbably sipping his liqueur. 'It is a tremendous expense, to be sure. I'm sorry, old man. I hadn't regarded it in that light. Besides, you know, you've never before told me that you are financially embarrassed.'

'Well, I wouldn't say that,' said the peer.

'I'm a comparatively rich man on paper, but there are times when a few extra thousands on the credit side wouldn't come amiss. 'Oh! By the way,' he continued, changing the subject, 'I ran into Pollard and two more of last night's party on my way down here. They took your cases round this morning, and the average valuation was in the neighbourhood of sixty quid.'

'Then, that proves that the formula is flawless!' cried Beresford triumphantly. 'We must have another to celebrate the good news,'

'And now let's get down to business.' said the peer when their glasses had been replenished. 'Pollard and I, and two others, have formed a syndicate. We are prepared to pay you £10,000 for your formula. What about it?'

'£10,000,' Beresford scoffed. 'Why, man, you'd gel your money back in a week. No, Westmacott. £25,000 is the least I would consider. Damn it, what's £25,000 when you have the world's amber trade in the palm of your hand? Dont be so paltry, Westmacott! Why, you're not so impoverished that you can't raise £25,000 between you, are you?' The peer drained his liqueur.

'I'll have a chat with Pollard and the others this afternoon and see what they have to say about it. Is £25,000 your absolute minimum?'

'For to-day... yes. To-morrow, it may be £50,000. That depends entirely on how I feel. If I've got a liver, it may be even more!' He gave Westmacott a sly dig in the ribs. 'The formula is cheap at the price. Had it been anyone but you. the price would have been six figures.'

'Very well, Beresford. I'll ring you punctually at 7 o'clock.'

BERESFORD'S fingers were itching to take off the receiver.

'That you, Beresford?'

'Right first time! What's the verdict, Westmacott?'

'We'll give you £25.000 for the formula. Are you agreeable?'

'Quite, old man. I said £25.000, and £25,000 it is. Beresford's word is his bond.' He winked at his wife. 'Post me a cheque to-night, Westmacott, and I'll post the formula. Will that do?'

'Perfectly,' came the reply. 'You'll have the cheque first post in the morning.'

'Don't post date it, Westmacott!'

Beresford posted his 'formula'— consisting of a mass of almost indecipherable words and figures— so that Lord Westmacott should receive it, by the first post the following morning. He posted it himself, to make sure.

'It is now 8.30 dear,' he announced, when he returned from the letter box. 'Can you be ready to leave for Italy at 10 o'clock to-morrow morning?'

After fourteen years of married life nothing surprised Mrs. Beresford— least of all his quick getaways.

'Of course, dear. I'll start packing right away.'

While his wife was packing, Beresford took the opportunity of informing his staff that their services would no longer be required. They, too, understood his eccentricities, and accepted the £100 each he gave them in lieu of notice without comment.

Beresford was up with the lark the following morning, and met the postman on the doorstep. Lord Westmacott had been as good as his word. The pink slip bearing the magic figures £25,000 sent a thrill down his spine. Punctually at 10 o'clock Beresford presented himself at his bank. At 10.8 he walked from the bank with £40,000 m his wallet. A taxi rushed him to Victoria Station, and at 10.40 Mr. and Mrs. Bernard B. Beresford were en route to the Continent.

'Bernard, you're wonderful!' breathed his devoted spouse, as she carefully folded the five £1000 notes which he had pushed into her handbag. 'But why are you giving me all this money?'

'For the part you played, dear,' he answered, slipping his arm through hers. 'You write so badly!'

'I don't quite understand you?'

'Well, dear,' he hastened to explain. 'You saved me the trouble of writing out a formula for Westmacott. I sent him one of your shopping lists instead!'

'Brute!' she laughed, and snuggled closer.

_________________

2: A Water-Nymph

Maud Shields
fl 1900s

Wyalong Star (NSW) 31 May 1901

Another virtually unknown author. The only other works I could discover were the short story  "At the Golden Key", Yes or No, 6 July 1907; and the song "The Green Hills of Ireland", 1909.

SHE STOOD silhouetted against the skyline, a lithe supple figure in an old lilac print frock barely reaching her slim ankles ; the golden gleam of the setting sun full in her sea-green eyes, and burnishing the pale yellow, of her hair. One brown hand was raised to partly shield her eyes from the glare of the sunset, and in the other she held a thin switch, more from custom than anything, for the cows needed no goading to persuade their homeward steps, albeit they took the Journey slowly enough. But she was in no hurry to-night, so they browsed unchecked while she stood and let her gaze wander over the broad expanse of Fen; a landscape she had had every opportunity of studying for the eighteen years she had lived in it, but until to-night she had taken its varying features as part or the day ; to-night they stood out and pictured themselves on her brain so that she always remembered the great plain as it looked on that June evening.

Before her stretched the long level acres of pasture land intersected with dykes, reflecting now every hue of the sunset where their placid bosom lay uncovered by the broad leaves of the yellow water-lily, or by the shadow of the tall iris, and giving no sign of the treacherous Mack mud un their quiet depths. Beyond stretched the river like a burnished sword blade, winding in and out among the pastures; in the far distance one or two homesteads reposed among a belt of trees ; beyond that again the uplands, belts of fir trees, a field of barley overgrown with charlock, and over all the faint sweet smell of hay, which lingers in the memory as nothing else can, recalling peaceful summertides, and the dreams of youth. A partridge rose suddenly with a whir-r-r, rousing her from her reverie, and with a word to the patient animals she continued her homeward way.

"I THINK it is perfectly barbarous to expect people to live in town in the summer, when the country is so picturesque and so much more desirable in every way!"

So spake Mr. Glaisby, who was nothing in particular, but wore an eyeglass, a frock coat, and varnished boots, and was generally to be found at Bohemian gatherings such as the one in progress at Mrs. Barry's flat in Victoria-street.

"Why don't you toddle off, Glaisby?" inquired his neighbour unfeelingly, in that I-don't- think-you'd- be-missed tone which is so irritating. "You're just the figure for haymaking."

The maid who was handing him cream with which to dilute his tea started, thereby arresting his attention; she remembered that they were carting the hay in the old meadow to-day.

"Did you ever make hay?" he inquired, Glaisby having turned to a more appreciative listener.

"Yes, sir," she replied quietly.

"So did I," helping himself liberally to cream. "It's jolly fun, too." His eyes wandered from her face to her sunburnt hand, and he remembered that she was his aunt's new fad, a real country girl, just imported ; and he watched her meditatively as she retraced her steps to the tea-table, contrasting her with the long line of French or Swiss maids her predecessors, then dwelling again on her pale yellow hair, and sea-green eyes— for he was an artist.

People were fast taking their leave, and in a short time he and Mrs. Barry were alone. She had bidden the last guest an effusive farewell, and sunk into a chair with a big sigh of relief, when she became conscious of her nephew's smooth, dark head, just visible above some amber cushions; for he had his back to her and was quietly waiting until she should recover sufficiently to enter Into conversation.

"Good gracious, Cress," she said, "I thought you went an hour ago."

"No," he replied;" I'm going to stay to dinner."

"Then you must want something or other, you wretched man ; you haven't dined here for six months. What is it?"

Sydney Cresswell rose, and took another chair near his aunt.

"A model."

"Want me for a model?"

"No— not exactly."

"Be plain, Cress. I'm only going to give you two minutes, I must lie down for half-an-hour before dinner, if I'm to hear Lohengrin to-night."

"You've got the water nymph I've been looking for."

"Where? You speak as if I kept an aquarium."

"She poured out tea and brought me cream which was as unlike the genuine article as any I ever tasted— you must change your milkman, my dear aunt."

"Never mind the milkman— he is very long-suffering— be explicit."

"You have a little country girl."

"Mary Emma Porter."

"Spare me! She should be called Undine."

"They don't do it in the part she comes from— what do you want with Porter?"

"To paint her."

"Ridiculous!" Mrs. Barry rose wearily. "Don't be absurd, Cress! I made myself responsible for her to her father, a very worthy farmer, who brought her up."

"Well, I don't suppose for a moment any one else's father brought her up."

"Peace! I mean to town."

"Also, I am not proposing to adopt her."

"It is the same thing."

"I must paint her."

"As a water sprite?"

"Nymph."

"But they don't wear—"

"H'm! Lend me her face. I'll be discretion itself."

"She may be frightened."

"Of me?"

"Possibly,"

"There— manage it for me, and I'll go now."

"Well, I'll see."

So he went, and Mrs. Barry dismissed the, matter from her mind ; but a, reminder came in a few days' time, so she approached the subject.

Mary Emma Porter listened respectfully ; she had an idea that some one wanted to take her portrait and was not displeased. So she 'was despatched to Cresswell's studio in Chelsea— a plain workmanlike place with the usual raised dais, a good north light, and the inevitable pot-pourrl of an artist's surroundings. He received her with evident satisfaction, and made her feel at home in five minutes, for he the natural little country maid he wanted to portray. She unbound her yellow hair at his bidding, letting it fall in thick masses round her shoulders, and then took her place on the dais while be sketched, and ere he had finished they were fast friends.

Now there are three things which befall an impressionable man easily—to Tall hi love at first Bight, to marry in haste, and to be disillusioned. Sydney Cresswell fell into the first error, and ere the picture was an accomplished fact the second presented itself to his imagination. He saw himself wedded to his water-nymph, defying convention, basking for ever in the tender light of her eyes.

There had been other models, but they were— well, models; the water-nymph was different Mrs. Barry had ceased to bother about the matter. As long as Porter went to the studio before she was up, and was back at noon in the regulation cap and apron to wait at the breakfast table, she dismissed the subject entirely.

Possibly she noticed that the girl was happier and better looking ; perhaps not, for she was a woman of many engagements and many interests. So that it came as a great shock when the impressionable Cresswell announced his calm determination to make Mary Emma Porter his wife.

"Have you told her so— you tiresome wretch?" she gasped.

"No. I thought I'd do the proper thing and tell you first."

"The proper thing! There is nothing proper about it."

"I thought yon would consider It very proper."

"Cresswell— you're a fool!"

She was both angry and in earnest, two phases through which she seldom passed. He had carried out his threat of dining with her, waiting until the coffee to launch the bomb.

"Are you surprised that I love her?" he asked.

"Love? Bah! It is madness."

"One and the same thing."

"I cannot accuse her of design, she is incapable of it. I thought when I engaged a raw country girl that I should be safe."

"Engage another— I cannot marry more than one, and country girls abound."

"But she suits me, you wretch!"

"Precisely my case."

"You will have to educate her."

"Fiddlesticks! Clever women are a drug in the market ; now every woman one meets is educated—besides—I hate women who know too much, they bore one with their views— I don't want to marry a woman with views."

"But your friends."

"Oh! I'll turn them over to you."

"Cresswell, you'll break my heart."

"Well, as long as it doesn't break theirs, too."

"But, seriously, have you thought what it means? Can you be serious?"

"I am always serious."

"Then I give it up."

"That's like a sensible woman."

"Are you sure she will marry you?"

"Not sure," lighting another cigarette, "but sanguine. So no more at present, as I used to write home from school ; and if you ere going on to the Lanes' I'd better go also. I'll just get you to buy my little maid's frocks and things."

"I shall do nothing of the kind."

"Then I must buy them— au revoir!"

"What on earth made me get a raw country girl," soliloquised Mrs. Barry. "I'd better have stuck to the French. Cress couldn't bear them. Dear, oh dear! What fools men are!"

However, the harm was done, and there was nothing for it but to face the music, the well-bred sneers, the raised eyebrows, she little stings that rankle— these things she dreaded. As yet Cresswell had said nothing to the girl herself, but perhaps she guessed his feelings with a woman's quick intuition, even though she had been brought up in the Fen, and was simple in accordance.

They stood together before the finished picture, which represented a girl reclining on a river bank, looking at her own reflection in the dear depths, and was the best thing he had ever done.

Mary Emma coloured with pleasure. "I'm sure it's much too good for me, sir," she said.

"It is you—idealised—as I see you, Mary."

She did not understand him.

"Father and mother'd be rarely proud o' that, sir ; happen some day they'll see it." She spoke with the Norfolk accent, but it struck his ear pleasantly— as yet— for the had a musical voice.

"Mary," he said gravely, "have you ever had a lover?"

She laughed. "There was one or two boys that worked on the farm— but I never thought a great sight o' any o' them."

He was satisfied that she had never had a lover, and felt glad that he should be the first to waken the love light in her sea-green eyes, whose varying depths so pleased his artistic fancy. She went into the small adjoining room to don hat and jacket, saying as she returned:

"You won't want me any more, I expect, sir?"

"Mary," he said, wondering how to frame the words, "I always want you now— I want you to be my wife."

She looked at him with wide, surprised eyes and slightly parted lips, and he laughed e little as he caught both her hands in his.

"Whatever would the mistress say?" she faltered. " Nothing that concerns us. What do yon say?"

She looked into his face like a child in doubt, and he drew her unresisting form into his arms and kissed her.

So they were married, and became a nine days' wonder to their friends— days that were spent in blissful ignorance of any one's opinion, roaming about the lanes in the Isle of Wight.

On their return they took a house in Bedford Park, among the Bohemians, and the young wife's troubles began. But as yet the magic of her youth and beauty was upon the man she had married, and he was blind to all else.

He painted her again, a study of the head and eyes, embodying Swinburne's lines:

Eyes coloured like a water-flower

And deeper than the green sea's glass.

The picture was hung on the line at the Academy, and fame smiled upon him. He began to go out more, generally alone, for Mary never got over her unconquerable shyness. Beautiful women flattered him, and one openly pitied him, and he— he listened, and the spirit of disillusion fell like a shadow on his path, for the woman who pitied him was both beautiful and well born.

"We will winter in Rome," he said, so they let the cottage in Bohemia. In Rome he met many people he knew— friends, acquaintances, artists, Bohemians; and Mary was left very much alone now. The disillusion was complete, he recognised that he had wrecked his life.

Returning one day to his hotel, after a week's absence with some yachting friends, he was accosted on entering by an English doctor staying in the hotel, who he knew by sight.

"Pardon me," the doctor said gravely. "Have you heard that your wife is ill?"

"No! No ; she was well when I left. "

"And they did not communicate with you?"

"They had no address."

At this moment the manager, a little Frenchman, bustled forward with a great display of hands and shrugging shoulders:

"Alas! Madame was ill— it was the malaria— the fever. Everything had been done; two doctors and a nurse were in attendance ; he deplored M'sieu had left no address— no means to communicate."

Cresswell did not wait to hear the finish, but hurried upstairs to his wife's rooms, a curious pain at his heart The nurse met him, a brown-skinned Italian nun, wearing a large rosary and crucifix over her coarse gown, and with a word to insure silence led him to his wife's bedside.

"Mollie," he said softly, taking her little feverish hand in his, "I've come back, dear, don't yon know me?"

She looked at him with hollow, unmeaning eyes, withdrew her hand, and turned from him.

"The dyke to deep after the rain," she said in a slow, plaintive voice, "and the mud's rare dangerous— poor lassie's back was strained gettin' her out— her foal had strayed in, an' was drowned— an' she went in after it. She was never any sort o' use after."

The nun recited her rosary, and Cresswell listened with a pain-stricken face, while his wife babbled of her childhood's home, and the broad Fen land. The doctors came again, shook their heads, and retired as before; and the nun prayed— prayed incessantly. Towards morning a gleam of intelligence lit up the sea-green eyes as they wandered to Cresswell's face.

"Mollie," he whispered with a broken sob, "speak to me, dearest!"

"It's Mr. Cresswell!" she said with that look of childlike wonder— and so died.

______________

3: The Disappearance of Crispina Umberleigh

"Saki"

1870-1916

In: The Toys of Peace, and Other Papers, John Lane, 1919

H. H. Munro

IN A FIRST-CLASS carriage of a train speeding Balkanward across the flat, green Hungarian plain two Britons sat in friendly, fitful converse.  They had first foregathered in the cold grey dawn at the frontier line, where the presiding eagle takes on an extra head and Teuton lands pass from Hohenzollern to Habsburg keeping— and where a probing official beak requires to delve in polite and perhaps perfunctory, but always tiresome, manner into the baggage of sleep-hungry passengers.  After a day's break of their journey at Vienna the travellers had again foregathered at the trainside and paid one another the compliment of settling instinctively into the same carriage.  The elder of the two had the appearance and manner of a diplomat; in point of fact he was the well-connected foster-brother of a wine business.  The other was certainly a journalist.  Neither man was talkative and each was grateful to the other for not being talkative.  That is why from time to time they talked.

One topic of conversation naturally thrust itself forward in front of all others.  In Vienna the previous day they had learned of the mysterious vanishing of a world-famous picture from the walls of the Louvre.

"A dramatic disappearance of that sort is sure to produce a crop of imitations," said the Journalist.

"It has had a lot of anticipations, for the matter of that," said the Wine-brother.

"Oh, of course there have been thefts from the Louvre before."

"I was thinking of the spiriting away of human beings rather than pictures.  In particular I was thinking of the case of my aunt, Crispina Umberleigh."

"I remember hearing something of the affair," said the Journalist, "but I was away from England at the time.  I never quite knew what was supposed to have happened."

"You may hear what really happened if you will respect it as a confidence," said the Wine Merchant.  "In the first place I may say that the disappearance of Mrs. Umberleigh was not regarded by the family entirely as a bereavement.  My uncle, Edward Umberleigh, was not by any means a weak-kneed individual, in fact in the world of politics he had to be reckoned with more or less as a strong man, but he was unmistakably dominated by Crispina; indeed I never met any human being who was not frozen into subjection when brought into prolonged contact with her.  Some people are born to command; Crispina Mrs. Umberleigh was born to legislate, codify, administrate, censor, license, ban, execute, and sit in judgement generally.  If she was not born with that destiny she adopted it at an early age.  From the kitchen regions upwards every one in the household came under her despotic sway and stayed there with the submissiveness of molluscs involved in a glacial epoch.  As a nephew on a footing of only occasional visits she affected me merely as an epidemic, disagreeable while it lasted, but without any permanent effect; but her own sons and daughters stood in mortal awe of her; their studies, friendships, diet, amusements, religious observances, and way of doing their hair were all regulated and ordained according to the august lady's will and pleasure.  This will help you to understand the sensation of stupefaction which was caused in the family when she unobtrusively and inexplicably vanished.  It was as though St. Paul's Cathedral or the Piccadilly Hotel had disappeared in the night, leaving nothing but an open space to mark where it had stood.  As far as was known nothing was troubling her; in fact there was much before her to make life particularly well worth living.  The youngest boy had come back from school with an unsatisfactory report, and she was to have sat in judgement on him the very afternoon of the day she disappeared— if it had been he who had vanished in a hurry one could have supplied the motive.  Then she was in the middle of a newspaper correspondence with a rural dean in which she had already proved him guilty of heresy, inconsistency, and unworthy quibbling, and no ordinary consideration would have induced her to discontinue the controversy.  Of course the matter was put in the hands of the police, but as far as possible it was kept out of the papers, and the generally accepted explanation of her withdrawal from her social circle was that she had gone into a nursing home."

"And what was the immediate effect on the home circle?" asked the Journalist.

"All the girls bought themselves bicycles; the feminine cycling craze was still in existence, and Crispina had rigidly vetoed any participation in it among the members of her household.  The youngest boy let himself go to such an extent during his next term that it had to be his last as far as that particular establishment was concerned.  The elder boys propounded a theory that their mother might be wandering somewhere abroad, and searched for her assiduously, chiefly, it must be admitted, in a class of Montmartre resort where it was extremely improbable that she would be found."

"And all this while couldn't your uncle get hold of the least clue?"

"As a matter of fact he had received some information, though of course I did not know of it at the time.  He got a message one day telling him that his wife had been kidnapped and smuggled out of the country; she was said to be hidden away, in one of the islands off the coast of Norway I think it was, in comfortable surroundings and well cared for.  And with the information came a demand for money; a lump sum of £2000 was to be paid yearly.  Failing this she would be immediately restored to her family."

The Journalist was silent for a moment, and them began to laugh quietly.

"It was certainly an inverted form of holding to ransom," he said.

"If you had known my aunt," said the Wine Merchant, "you would have wondered that they didn't put the figure higher."

"I realise the temptation.  Did your uncle succumb to it?"

"Well, you see, he had to think of others as well as himself.  For the family to have gone back into the Crispina thraldom after having tasted the delights of liberty would have been a tragedy, and there were even wider considerations to be taken into account.  Since his bereavement he had unconsciously taken up a far bolder and more initiatory line in public affairs, and his popularity and influence had increased correspondingly.  From being merely a strong man in the political world he began to be spoken of as the strong man.  All this he knew would be jeopardised if he once more dropped into the social position of the husband of Mrs. Umberleigh.  He was a rich man, and the £2000 a year, though not exactly a fleabite, did not seem an extravagant price to pay for the boarding-out of Crispina.  Of course, he had severe qualms of conscience about the arrangement.  Later on, when he took me into his confidence, he told me that in paying the ransom, or hush-money as I should have called it, he was partly influenced by the fear that if he refused it the kidnappers might have vented their rage and disappointment on their captive.  It was better, he said, to think of her being well cared for as a highly-valued paying-guest in one of the Lofoden Islands than to have her struggling miserably home in a maimed and mutilated condition.  Anyway he paid the yearly instalment as punctually as one pays a fire insurance, and with equal promptitude there would come an acknowledgment of the money and a brief statement to the effect that Crispina was in good health and fairly cheerful spirits.  One report even mentioned that she was busying herself with a scheme for proposed reforms in Church management to be pressed on the local pastorate.  Another spoke of a rheumatic attack and a journey to a 'cure' on the mainland, and on that occasion an additional eighty pounds was demanded and conceded.  Of course it was to the interest of the kidnappers to keep their charge in good health, but the secrecy with which they managed to shroud their arrangements argued a really wonderful organisation.  If my uncle was paying a rather high price, at least he could console himself with the reflection that he was paying specialists' fees."

"Meanwhile had the police given up all attempts to track the missing lady?" asked the Journalist.

"Not entirely; they came to my uncle from time to time to report on clues which they thought might yield some elucidation as to her fate or whereabouts, but I think they had their suspicions that he was possessed of more information than he had put at their disposal.  And then, after a disappearance of more than eight years, Crispina returned with dramatic suddenness to the home she had left so mysteriously."

"She had given her captors the slip?"

"She had never been captured.  Her wandering away had been caused by a sudden and complete loss of memory.  She usually dressed rather in the style of a superior kind of charwoman, and it was not so very surprising that she should have imagined that she was one; and still less that people should accept her statement and help her to get work.  She had wandered as far afield as Birmingham, and found fairly steady employment there, her energy and enthusiasm in putting people's rooms in order counterbalancing her obstinate and domineering characteristics.  It was the shock of being patronisingly addressed as 'my good woman' by a curate, who was disputing with her where the stove should be placed in a parish concert hall that led to the sudden restoration of her memory.  'I think you forget who you are speaking to,' she observed crushingly, which was rather unduly severe, considering she had only just remembered it herself."

"But," exclaimed the Journalist, "the Lofoden Island people!  Who had they got hold of?"

"A purely mythical prisoner.  It was an attempt in the first place by some one who knew something of the domestic situation, probably a discharged valet, to bluff a lump sum out of Edward Umberleigh before the missing woman turned up; the subsequent yearly instalments were an unlooked-for increment to the original haul.

"Crispina found that the eight years' interregnum had materially weakened her ascendancy over her now grown-up offspring.  Her husband, however, never accomplished anything great in the political world after her return; the strain of trying to account satisfactorily for an unspecified expenditure of sixteen thousand pounds spread over eight years sufficiently occupied his mental energies.  Here is Belgrad and another custom house."

_________________

4: The Murder at Jex Farm

Oswald Crawfurd, C.M.G.

1834-1909

In: Master Tales of Mystery, 1915

1: Charles Jex

INSPECTOR MORGAN and I were sitting over the fire one particularly cheerless winter night at my lodgings in Duke Street. The Inspector had brought with him a thick bundle of documents. He threw them on the table between us as he came in. As usual, our talk had fallen upon the art, or science of crime detection.

"Do you remember," asked Morgan, "my once saying that the first thing a clever criminal does is to try his best to block the way of the man who has to follow up the track of his crime?"

"I shall do that myself," said I, "if I ever commit a serious crime."

"Of course you would, so should I, and so, I suppose, would any man with his senses about him. Well, that is just what a man coming green to detective work is apt to forget. I came near to forgetting it myself when they sent me down to Jex Farm to inquire about the murder there. You must remember the case, for it made a great stir at the time."

"I hope you are going to tell me all about it, Morgan. One does not carry these things in one's head. One big crime gets mixed up with another."

"I came here meaning to tell you the whole story," said the Inspector, taking hold of the bundle of papers and untying the knots of red tape which bound them together.

"Are these documents in the case?" I asked.

"Plans and reports, and cuttings from newspapers, but I am only going to ask you to look at some of them."

"If I am not mistaken, Morgan, the papers spoke very handsomely of your conduct of the Jex Farm case."

"They did, but they had little reason to. If they had known all the facts as well as you will presently know them, they might have handled me differently. It is wonderful what the papers do get to know, but, naturally, they can't see things from the inside as we can."

"Well, Morgan, get to the story. I want to hear it."

"There is not much of a story to tell, so far as the outside facts were concerned. It is only the inside working of things that made it interesting. A young girl had been found lying at the orchard gate of the farm, 37½ yards from the house, dead, with three pistol bullets in her head. Suicide was out of the question, the three wounds and the three bullets precluded that, and there was no pistol about. Moreover, it was not in evidence that the girl had any cause for despondency. There was no reason for her taking her life. But then, again, she was not known to have an enemy."

The Inspector took out a newspaper from the bundle of documents, docketed Jex Murder Case, and handed it to me. I read as follows:

MURDER IN SURREY

Jex Farm, one mile from the village of Bexton, in Surrey, was the scene of a terrible and mysterious crime, on the evening of Wednesday last. A young unmarried lady of the name of Judson, a niece of Mrs. Jex, the widowed owner of Jex Farm, was found murdered, late on Wednesday night, just inside the orchard gate of the farm, and within a stone's throw of the house. There were no signs of a struggle, but Miss Judson's gold watch and chain were missing. The crime must have been committed at late dusk on Wednesday evening, 17th inst. (October). It is singular that no sound of firearms was heard by any inmate of the house; and the crime was not discovered till the family were about to meet at supper, when Miss Judson's absence was noticed.

After waiting a while and calling the name of the young lady in vain, the night being very dark and gusty, young Mr. Jex and the farm-laborers started out with lanterns. They almost immediately came upon the dead body of the unfortunate young lady, which was lying on the walk just inside the orchard gate, and it is stated that the first discoverer of the tragedy was Mr. Jex himself. It adds one more element of gloom to the fearful event when we add that it is rumored in the neighborhood that Mr. Jex, the only son of the lady who owns the farm, was engaged to be married to the victim of this terrible tragedy.

No clue has yet been obtained. It is clear that the motive of the crime was robbery— the young lady's valuable gold watch and chain were missing— and it is supposed in the neighborhood that, as the high road runs within twenty yards of the scene of the tragedy, the perpetrator may have been one of a very rough set of bicyclists who were drinking at the Red Lion at Bexton in the afternoon, and who were seen, at nightfall, to retrace their journey in the direction of Jex Farm. We understand that Inspector Morgan, the wellknown London detective, has been despatched from Scotland Yard to the scene of the murder. Inspector Morgan is the officer whose name has recently attained considerable prominence in connection with the discovery and conviction of the perpetrator of the great jewel robbery at Balin Abbey."

"Rather penny-a-lining and wordy," observed Mr. Morgan as I finished reading the paragraph aloud, "but barring the too-flattering allusion to myself, on the whole, a fair enough account of the facts.

"I found that it was young Mr. Jex himself who supplied the information about the bicyclists. He had been shooting rabbits at an outlying farm of his own a couple of miles beyond Bexton, and, stopping to get a glass of beer at the chief inn there, found himself surrounded in the bar by a group of rowdy bicyclists. The Surrey countryman generally dislikes the cycling Londoners who travel along the roads of his county in extraordinary numbers. Mr. Jex had noticed that these men, instead of continuing their journey toward London, had turned again in the direction of Jex Farm. If they repassed the Lion at Bexton, they must have done so at night, for they were not seen again.

"Mr. Jex is a fine young man with good looks, a little over thirty years of age, six foot one in height, a sportsman, and popular in the neighborhood. But I will confess at once to you that the ways and manners of the man did not find much favor with me. However, he seemed very ready to give me every assistance in his power. He is resolved, be says, to bring the villains to justice.

"His mother is a kind and motherly old lady, rather infirm in health and slightly deaf. She herself gave me to understand that she fully approved of the approaching marriage of her son. I gather in the neighborhood that Mr. Jex, like so many of his class, has been very hard hit by the prevailing agricultural depression, and that his proposed marriage with his cousin, Hiss Judson, an orphan, with a considerable fortune of her own, was something of a godsend to himself and his family.

"My written orders from headquarters had been to instal myself in the house, if I could obtain an invitation, in order the better to unravel the facts of the crime, and I was to take my full time in the investigation. I showed my instructions on this head to Mrs. Jex and her son, and was by them at once cordially invited to consider the farm my home for the time being. I thought it best to leave my two subordinate officers to do outside work and hear and report outside rumors. They put up at the Lion at Bexton.

"It was a somewhat delicate situation, and I put it plainly to each of the inmates of Jex Farm, to Mr. Jex, to his mother, and to a young lady on a visit to them, Miss Lewsome. I was a detective officer, I told them, on a mission to detect a great crime. Though I was a guest at the farm, I was bound, as a police officer, to make a minute inquiry into everybody's conduct since, and before, the murder. They must not take it amiss if I was particular in my questions, and vexatious in my way of putting them. The reasonableness of all this was apparent to them all, and I at once began my investigations at the farm and outside it.

"The first person I interviewed was young Mr. Jex himself. Now, I repeat that I did not quite like young Mr. Jex's manner. Some witnesses are too shy and too holding back, and others a good deal too forward, not to say impatient. Jex was of this class, and I was a little sharper with him in consequence than I should otherwise have been. On the 17th he told me he had returned from shooting at his farm on the other side of Bexton, and he stopped on his way home for a drink at the Red lion.

" 'At what time!' I asked.

" 'It was growing dusk,' said Jex. 'I should say it was within a few minutes of half -past five or getting on for six ; three men were drinking at the bar, bicyclists; I was thinking they would be overtaken by night; I did not like the looks of those men.'

" 'Never mind the bicyclists, for the present, Mr. Jex. You stayed some time in the bar?'

" 'An hour or more.'

" 'Did you meet any one you knew at the Lion? Any neighbors?'

" 'Yes, I met James Barton and— '

" 'Don't trouble yourself with their names just now! You met friends who can speak to your being at the inn?'

" 'I did.'

" 'That will do. I want to get to the dates. At about 6 :30 you started for horned

" 'It was on the stroke of seven, by the clock of the lion.'

" 'You had no doubt taken a glass or two of ale?'

" 'No, I took a glass of whisky and water.'

" 'Or two?'

" 'I took two glasses.'

" 'You took two glasses of whisky and water, good; and then you set off for the farm?  Was your man still with you?'

" 'What man?'

" 'The man who carried your game, or was it a boy?'

"'I had no man, or boy, with me. I had brought three rabbits in my pocket, and these I left as a present to Mrs. Jones of the Lion.'

" You were carrying your gun, of course?'

" 'Of course I was.'

" 'Was it loaded?'

" 'Yes, but I drew the charges as I neared home.'

" 'You noticed nothing unusual as you came in?'

" 'Nothing.'

" 'Yet you passed within a yard of the orchard gate where the poor girl must have been lying dead?'

" 'I did, of course, but it was pitch dark under the trees. I saw nothing but the lights in the parlor windows from the time I opened the gate out of the road.'

"'And coming along the road from Bexton you did not notice, or hear anything?'

" 'Yes, I saw the lanterns of three cyclists coming toward me when I had got only a few hundred yards from the Lion. I never saw men traveling faster by night; they nearly got me down in the road between them.'

" 'Were they the men who had been drinking at the Lion?'

" 'I couldn't see, it was too dark. They never slackened speed; I just felt the swish and wind of their machines as they shaved past me.'

" 'You noticed nothing else on the road home?"

" 'Yes, I thought I heard some shots far away— poachers, I thought at the time— in Squire Watson's woods.'

" 'How many shots?'

" 'Three.'

" 'Close together?'

" 'As close as I speak now: one— two— three.'

" 'Was this long after you met the cyclists?'

"He took a moment to think. 'Come, Mr. Jex, you can't want time to answer such a simple question?'

" 'It was some time before I met them.'

" 'How far might it have been from the Lion when you heard the three shots?'

" 'A matter of half a mile or so.'

"'Then it was after you met the cyclists?'

" 'No, it was before.'

" 'It was after, for you told me just now you met them a few hundred yards on your way home, and now you say you heard the shots when you were half a mile on your way home. Half a mile is not a few hundred yards; it is 880 yards.'

"Mr. Jex seemed puzzled.

" 'You are too sharp on a fellow!' he said.

" 'I had need to be, perhaps, Mr. Jex,' I answered.

" 'Now, Mr. Jex,' I said, 'there is another point on which I am afraid I must question you.'

" 'I guess what it is,' said he; 'go ahead. You mean about me and Miss Judson?'

" 'That is so, about Miss Judson and yourself. You were engaged to her?'

" 'I was.'

" 'Had the engagement lasted long?'

" 'A month.'

" 'And she had been two months your mother's guest at the farm?'

" 'Going on for three.'

" 'And there was nothing standing against your wishes?'

" 'I don't understand what sort of thing you mean.'

" 'Well, any misunderstanding between you— quarrels, you know?'

" 'Oh, lovers' quarrels! They don't amount to much, do they? We had the usual number, I suppose.' (This is a queer, indifferent sort of a lover, I thought.)

" 'Well, even a lover's quarrel has a cause, I suppose— and it's mostly jealousy; perhaps there was some neighbor you did not fancy the look of?'

" 'God bless you, no! Miss Judson hardly knew the neighbors.'

" 'Or some old London friend the young lady may have had a liking for once?'

" 'Couldn't be,' said Jex positively. 'Because Mary only had one friend. She had been engaged to him, and she threw him over. She fancied me better, you see. She told me all about him. She told me everything, you know.'

" 'Ah, I suppose women always do!"

" 'They do when they care for a fellow,' said Jex warmly.

"The man's way of talking of the poor dead girl grated upon me most unpleasantly.

" 'Well, perhaps they do, Mr. Jex, but you see, here's a mysterious crime, and I want to find a motive for it'

" 'Who could have a motive?' asked Mr. Jex.

" 'Possibly a disappointed rival— from London.'

" 'Why, man,' said Jex, 'I tell you it couldn't be; the man I spoke of is in New Zealand— thousands of miles away. I tell you the motive was robbery. Why! wasn't the girl's gold watch and chain taken?'

" 'That might be a blind, Mr. Jex,' said I, looking him straight in the face; 'it's a common trick, that.'

" 'Oh, nonsense; we all agreed at the inquest it was robbery, and we fastened it on to those three cyclists I saw at the Lion, coming back along the road, hot-foot, just in the nick of time to do the trick. Don't you go wasting your time, Mr. Morgan, over rivals, and rot of that kind!'

"I let this very positive gentleman run on, but I thought well presently to throw a little cold water over his cocksureness.

" 'Mr. Jex,' I said, 'do you remember that at the inquest the county police put in plaster casts of all the footprints found next morning round about where the body had lain?'

" 'Well, what if they did?'

" 'Only that i've just compared those footprints with the bootprints of the inmates of this house, and the marks correspond with the boots worn by the three laborers at the farm, and— by yourself.'

"This seemed to stagger him a bit.

" 'Of course,' he said, 'we made those marks when we brought the body in.'

" 'I know that.' I said.

" 'And one country boot,' said Jex, 'is just as like another as one pea is like another.'

" 'Not quite so like as that, Mr. Jex, and did you ever know a cyclist to ride his machine in hobnailed boots? There was no single footprint in or near the place but what had heavy hobnails showing. So, you see, the murderer could not be one of your bicyclists/

"Jex kept silence for a minute, and paled as I watched him.

" 'The man who committed this murder, Mr. Jex.' I said, 'never wore a cyclist's shoe or boot.'

" 'I'll tell you what,' said Jex, after a longish pause, 'we'd trampled down the ground a good bit all round; we must have trampled out the murderer's footprints.'

" 'It's just possible,' I said, 'but not likely that he shouldn't have left a square inch of shoeprint anywhere. However, that is of no matter to me at present. Fve another bit of evidence that Fll work out first.'

" 'A clue?' asked Jex eagerly. 'What is it?'

" 'Well, Mr. Jex, youll excuse me for not mentioning it just at present. You'll know soon enough.' I gave him a moment to think over the matter, then I went on:

" 'Now, sir, I should like to ask you one or two more questions, if you're quite agreeable.'

" 'Fire away,' said Jex. 'I'm here to answer you.'

"I'm told you used to meet Miss Judson on your return from shooting, or what not, at the orchard gate leading out of the flower garden?'

" 'That's so.'

" 'At nightfall?'

" 'Yes, as it grew from dusk to dark.'

" 'Might she he expecting you there on the 17th, just as night fell?'

" 'Likely she might.'

" 'But about that time you were drinking in the bar-parlor of the Lion?'

" 'Well, if you call two small goes of whisky and water after a long walk, drinking, I was.'

" 'The landlady is an old friend of your mother's, I'm told?'

"Jex laughed. 'Whoever told you that, told you wrong; my mother does not particularly cotton to Mrs. Jones.'

" 'What! the two old ladies don't hit it off?'

" 'Who told you that Mrs. Jones was an old lady?' said Jex. "She's a young widow, and a pretty one into the bargain.'

" 'That accounts,' said I, for the present of rabbits, eh?'

"Jex winked. Decidedly I don't like this young man."

2: Maud Lewsome And Her Diary

I HAVE mentioned a fourth inmate at Jex Farm at the time of the murder, in the person of Miss Maud Lewsome, a young lady friend of Miss Judson's, and a distant cousin of hers, but no blood relation of the Jex family. Miss Lewsome had come as a friend of Miss Judson, and had resided at the farm some Ave or six weeks. She is a tall, dark, handsome girl, gentle and reserved in manner, but, as I should judge, extremely intelligent. I hear that her profession in life is the literary one, but whether in the way of novelwriting, or journalism, I am not told. She had also been for a short time on the stage. I have, as yet, had hardly any conversation with Miss Lewsome, so overcome is she with the nervous shock of the tragedy of her dearest friend.

I need not reproduce here at any length the evidence of the country surgeon who made the post-mortem, as given at the inquest. It was to the effect that death had resulted from three bullet wounds in the side of the head, one just behind the ear and two just above it The shots must have been fired from the distance of some few yards, for there was no burning or discoloration of the skin. That they must have been fired in rapid succession was evident from the fact of the three wounds being within a circle whose diameter was not more than three inches in length. The charges of powder, in the doctor's opinion, must have been light, for, after passing through the walls of the skull, there was little penetration. The bullets, all three, had been extracted— very small round leaden bullets hardly bigger than large peas, and not of the conical shape used in revolvers of the more expensive kind. Death must have been instantaneous, for the bullets were all three found buried in the brain, one still spherical, the others flattened by contact with bona

Now, it is obvious that this circumstance increases the difficulty connected with the fact that no one at the farm, neither Mrs. Jex nor Miss Lewsome, nor any of the laborers or female servants, who were indoors and at supper at the time, had heard the sound of firearms. It is true that on the evening of the 17th half a gale of wind was blowing from the northwest, and the orchard, where the fatal shots were fired, is nearly south of the house. All doors and windows were closed, the night having turned cold and rainy, but the sitting-room faces the southeast, and, though a tall yew hedge interposed, it was difficult to understand how three pistol shots, fired less than forty yards away, should not be audible by the inmates of the room. Was Mrs. Jex hard of hearing? I asked her. Only very slightly so, she declared. Had she heard positively nothing? Nothing but the roaring of the wind in the chimney and, every now and then, the rattling of the windows. Was she absorbed in reading, or talk? No, she was knitting by the fireside. Miss Lewsome had been writing at the table all the evening. From time to time, Mrs. Jex told me, she had talked with Miss Lewsome, who had remained with her in the sitting-room from before sundown till supper time.

I then examined Miss Lewsome by herself, as I had already examined Mrs. Jex. She corroborated what that lady had said. The wind was loud that night, said Miss Lewsome. It rattled the windows and made a great noise in the chimney. She was writing all the evening, she said.

"Forgive my curiosity," I said, "was it something that took up your attention and would have prevented your hearing a noise outside?"

She hesitated. "I was writing up my diary," she answered.

"You keep a regular diary?"

"Yes."

"May I see it?"

"Oh, no!" she said. "That would be impossible. I could not show it to any one. You must really not ask to see it."

"I am sorry," I said, "I am afraid you must let me read it."

"Why?"

"Because I am a police officer, and am here to inquire into the death by violence of Miss Mary Judson, and because your diary may throw some light upon the circumstances of the crime."

"How can it help you? It is all— personal; all about myself."

"I am not in a position to say how the diary can help me till I have seen it; but see it I must."

She still hesitated; after a pause she asked:

"Do you really insist?"

"I am afraid I must."

She walked to her desk, opened it, and gave me a leathercovered book, locked, and put it, with the key, into my hands.

That night I read the diary. The entries were, as Miss Lewsome had told me, scanty, that is, at first, referring to such trivial events as her arrival at the farm, for the diary began with the beginning of her visit. As it went on, however, the entries became fuller, and the occurrences of the six or seven days previous to the murder were narrated with considerable fullness. Before I had ended my perusal of the book, certain vague suspicions that had already formed themselves in my mind began to gather in strength and to acquire full corroboration.

Inspector Morgan picked out, from the bundle of documents, one marked: Extracts from Miss Lewsome' s Diary. This is what he read out to me:

October 3.— The more I see of what is going on between Charles and Mary the more I blame myself for my fatal weakness. Had I only known of their engagement!... why, oh, why, did they keep it a secret from me? He never should have learned my passion for him— never should have ... oh, fool, fool that I have been I Poor Charles, I hardly blame him. In honor he is bonnd to poor Mary, and yet I see, day by day, that he is getting colder and colder to her and more and more devoted to ma In honor he can't break off his engagement. Poor fellow, too, he needs his cousin's money. Without it, I know, ruin stares him in the face. Were it not for that, as he says, he would break with Mary to-morrow. I believe him.

October 5.— What am I to do? The situation becomes more and more difficult every day. I see that I must leave Jez Farm, but it will break my heart, and I fear it will break Charles's too.

October 6.— Mary suspects nothing, though Charles grows daily colder to her.

October 11.— Charles and I have had an explanation. I have told him that I can bear it no longer. He said he could not break off the engagement; if he could, he would. He spoke almost brutally. "I must have Mary's money," he said. "Without it my mother, I, my sisters and brothers and the farm must all go to the devil. I hate the woman!" he cried out. "Don't— don't say that, Charles; it is so dreadfully cruel and wicked. What has poor Mary done to you?" "She has come between me and the only woman I ever loved. Is not that enough?" "But you have told me that your cousin's money must come to you some day or other?" "Yes, but only on her death." "Don't, Charles, it is too dreadful." "Yes, isn't it? Just awful!" "Well, but—" He laughed. "Oh, women never understand business, but I see what you are driving at, my dear, a post obit, or a sale of the reversion of Mary's estate, eh?" I nodded, just wishing to see what his meaning was, but, of course, never dreaming of anything so mercenary and hateful. He went on: "Then you think, I suppose, that with the cash in hand I could break off with Mary and make amends for the wrong I have done you? Is that your little game?" At that moment I almost hated Charles. Tears of mortification came into my eyes. "Oh, Charles, don't think so meanly of me I" "Meanly I Why, hang it, it was in my own head, why should it not be in yours, too? You are the cleverest girl I know, for all you are so quiet; of course, you thought of it! So did I, only that cock won't fight, my girl. Oh, no; I consulted a lawyer, and he upset all my little plans. Tou could not raise a penny,' says he, 'for Miss Judson might marry, and if she does and dies,' her estate goes to her children, if she has any. Anyhow, you can't touch the reversion till she dies single, or dies childless.' " "Then, Charles, there is nothing for me to do but to go out into the wide world, poor, abandoned and miserable, with all the weight of my sin on me!" He looked at me a long time with a curious expression in his eyes, frowning. Then he kissed me suddenly on the mouth. "Maud," he said, "you love me— really? really? really?" "I love you," I said, "with all my heart and soul and strength." "And what?" he asked, "what would you do to gain my— my company forever?" I made him no answer, for I did not understand him. I do not understand him now. Then he said suddenly, "If you look at me like that with those great brown eyes of yours and kiss me with those lips I would... by Jove! there is nothing, nothing I would not—" Then, without another reasonable word and with an oath, he broke from me and left the room.

The last entry in Miss Lewsome's diary was made and dated on the evening of the murder, and it was no doubt written at the very moment that the tragedy was being enacted within a few yards of the farmhouse windows. The handwriting of this last entry, I noticed, was as firm as it had been throughout— such a hand as I should have expected from what I knew and had heard of this young lady's character and temperament. She is a strikingly beautiful, darkskinned girl, quiet and reticent in manner, impulsive and headstrong, perhaps, where her passions lead her— the diary proves this only too clearly— but gentle, repressed in all her ways and speech; a woman, in short, with such powers of fascination as few men can resist. It is just such a girl as this for whom men commit untold follies, and just such a girl as would hold such an obstinate, dull-witted, overbearing, young fellow as I see Charles Jex to be, in the hollow of her hand. These lines that follow are the last in the diary.

"I HAVE had a long talk with Mary to-day. Charlie has at last spoken to her about his feelings toward her and his feelings toward me. He has told her plainly that he no longer cares for her, v but that he will marry her if she insists upon holding him to his promise. The communication has come upon her as a shock, she said. She was overwhelmed. She could give him no answer. She could not believe that I had encouraged him. Did I love him? she asked me. Did he really love me? Was it not all a horrible dream? I told her the truth, or as much of it as I dared. I told her he had made me care for him long before I knew, or even guessed, there was anything between him and her. I would go at once. To-morrow I could take the train to town and never trouble him, or her, or any one connected with Jex Farm again. Poor Mary cried— she behaved beautifully. She said, 'Maud, you love him, he loves you. You can make him happy, I see now that I cannot. His happiness is more to me than my own. I will go away, and you shall be his wife. I will never marry any one/ We did not speak for several minutes. I could not at first believe in such a reversal of misery. Then all the difficulties of the situation flashed upon me. My poverty; the financial ruin he had to face; the wealth that would save him. 'No,' I said, 'Mary, it cannot be. You are generous, and I love you, but it cannot be! I cannot allow you to make this sacrifice.' We talked long together, and we both of us cried a great deal. I do not think the world holds so sweet and unselfish a woman as Mary Judson. Whatever our lots are in life, hers and mine, we shall always be as sisters one to the other. To-morrow I leave Jex Farm."

3: Fresh Evidence

THE IMMEDIATE effect upon my mind of the reading of Miss Lewsome's diary was to supply me with what had been wanting: a motive for the crime. Everything had pointed in my estimation to treachery in the household; everything seemed to be against the possibility of the crime being committed by an outsider.

Assuming thieves and murderers not connected with the household, what possible reason could have brought them to run such a risk as to shoot down an innocent, unoffending girl within forty yards of a dwelling-house, where probably several men were within call, and certainly within earshot of the sound of firearms? Then again, if a stranger had done this thing for the sake of robbery, how could he be sure that the girl would have money or a watch about her? A third and stronger reason against any stranger criminal was the fact that no stranger had left the imprint of his steps in the garden plot near the gate on the further side of which the girl had fallen. Her head, as she lay, all but touched the lower bar of the orchard gate. She had been shot down at her accustomed trysting-place with her lover, in the dusk, and under deep shadow of the trees, in the darkness of late evening. What stranger could guess she would be there? What stranger could know so well where and how she would stand as to be able to fire three following shots, through the shadows of falling night, with such deadly aim as to take effect within an inch of each other on the poor girl's temple?

I abandoned the idea of a murder for the sake of robbery. It was untenable. I scouted the theory suggested by Charles Jex, and persevered in by him with curious insistence, that the murderers were the bicyclists whom he had seen in the bar at the Lion. The murderer was an inmate of Jex Farm; of that there could be no manner of doubt; the evidence of the footprints was proof enough for that.

Who, then, was the murderer?

Before I answer that question, I put in another document, a very important piece of evidence. It is the report— the very concise and careful report— of one of the most conscientious, painstaking and intelligent provincial officers I have ever had the pleasure of doing business with, Sergeant Edwardes, of the Surrey Constabulary.

THE INSPECTOR took up the bundle, selected one paper and gave me to read— Sergeant Edwardes's Report on the foot-prints near the spot where the body of Miss Judson was found at 9:35 p.m. of October 17, 189—*-. It ran as follows:

"I have counted 43 distinct human footsteps and 54 partial imprints. Of the 43, 24 are made by the left foot and only 19 by the right. Of the 54 faint or partial impressions I found 17 of the left foot and only 12 of the right, the rest are not distinctive enough to pronounce upon.

"Of the total number of the fainter footprints 18 are deeply marked in the soft clay, and others are less strongly impressed. Of the 18 that are deeply marked, 11 are made by the left foot, 7 by the right.

"This accords with what I was told subsequently— that Mr. Jest's three laborers, and Mr. Jex himself, on finding Miss Judson's body, at once took it up in their arms and bore it to the house.

"Bearers of a heavy weight, such as a dead body, walking together, invariably bear heavily upon the left foot, both those who are supporting it on the left and those who are supporting it on the right side.

"Distinguishing the bootprints by their length, breadth, and the pattern of the nail-marks upon them, I find that they are the footprints of five separate persons, all of them men. I also found, clearly impressed, the footprints of a sixth person, a woman, namely, those of the victim herself.

"There had been heavy rain in the morning of the 17th, and the soil is a sticky clay. I examined the marks at daybreak on the morning of the 18th, and, as it had not rained during the night, the impressions were as fresh as if they had just been made. By my orders no one had been allowed to come near the spot where the body was found during the night. Just inside the gate of the orchard the grass has been long ago trodden away by passers-by, leaving the earth bare; and this patch of bare earth forms an area rather broader than the gate. On this area the body had fallen, and round about the spot where it had lain, I found all the footprints on which I am reporting.

"I have compared the boots worn by the laborers with the impressions near the gate. They correspond in every particular.

"In the case of the footprints of the three laborers a majority of the deeper impressions are made by the left boot. "I therefore conclude that all three men came upon the spot only to carry away the body of the girl, and hold no hand in her death. I argue the same from the footprints made by Mr. Jex. He also had borne more heavily with the left than with the right foot. He also, therefore, must have come on the spot only to bear off the body, and could have taken no part in the girl's murder.

"There are almost an exactly equal number of impressions, plain or faint, of the footprints of these four persons.

"There remain the footprints of a fifth person. Xhey are the impressions of a man's foot, but the hobnailed boots that made them, though full-sized, are of a rather lighter make than the others, and the nail-marks are smaller, the boots are newer, for the sides of the impressions have a cleaner cut, and, what is important, the impressions of the left foot are in no case deeper than those of the right.

"This person, therefore, clearly did not assist in carrying the body. The person who left these footprints is, in my opinion, the man who, on the night of the 17th of October last, murdered Miss Mary Judson."

4: More Facts In The Case

THE CONCLUSION, so clearly and so logically arrived at by Inspector Edwardes, at once narrowed the field of investigation. My own inquiries, bring out a still more startling discovery. The footprints alleged by Sergeant Edwardes to be those of the murderer— the almost self -convicted murderer— correspond in length and breadth, and in the number of nailmarks, twelve in the print of the left foot, ten (there being two gaps) in that of the right, with a pair of boots in the possession of Mr. Charles Jex.

I did not, however, allow this very damning fact to press too heavily against Charles Jex. It is absolutely necessary in inquiries of this very grave character to proceed with caution and deliberation. Another man might have worn the boots with intent to deception on the night of the murder. A murderer, using the devilish cunning of one who seeks to compass the death of a fellow-being without risk of detection, frequently employs such wily precautions as -this.

I must first of all seek for a possible criminal among the inmates of the house. There was Miss Lewsome— but it could not have been Miss Lewsome, for, first, there was the direct evidence of old Mrs. Jex that the young lady had not left her side, in the sitting-room, from sundown till after the body was found. There is the almost stronger indirect, undesigned, and internal evidence of Miss Lewsome's diary, with the entry of this very date calmly and fully set out at the very time the murder must have been committed.

Then, again, there are the two maids, to all seeming wellbehaved, innocent, rustic girls. It could be neither of them, for their presence in the kitchen the whole evening was vouched for by the evidence of the other servants. The same applied to the three farm laborers. Not one of the servants, male or female, had left the kitchen or scullery that night. From sundown to supper-time is the hour of rest and recreation at a farm, and the day generally ends in talk and laughter. The whole five of them had been enjoying themselves noisily round the kitchen fire. Their loud talk and the blustering wind that roared about the farm chimneys on this tempestuous evening had, doubtless, prevented any one of them from hearing the three revolver shots on the night of the murder.

There remains Mr. Jex. Let us impartially examine the acts that throw suspicion upon him. Here is a man who clearly no longer loves, probably never did love, the girl whom he is about to marry for her money; who certainly does care for another woman; who has entangled himself in an intrigue with this second woman, which he may reasonably expect to come to light at any moment and endanger his prospects of a rich marriage. Here is a man who, by the impartial evidence of that woman's diary, has indulged in vague threats against the murdered girl. He is the only person who could benefit by her death, and would enjoy a welcome and immediate relief, by this event, from impending bankruptcy.

On the other hand, Mr. Jex, at the moment of the crime's commission, represented himself to have been at Bexton, or on the homeward road; but we have, of course, no exact knowledge of the hour at which Mary Judson met with her death. It clearly took place a little time before or a little after half past six o'clock. It might be, for all we know, a good half hour later than Mr. Jex's return to the farm. We know nothing of Mr. Jex's movements from the time of his coming home till his entry, at nine o'clock, into ibe sittingroom where his mother and Miss Lewsome were awaiting him. No servant opened the door for him; he let himself in. No one saw or heard him enter. What was he doing during all the time that elapsed between his coming home and the discovery of the murder? By his own statement there was an hour and a half to be accounted for. He says he was taking, off his wet things and putting on dry ones, lounging about in his bedroom, resting. It may be so, but the time so occupied seems unnecessarily long.

Charles Jex had shown hinlself, in his talk with me, not a little of a fool, as well as (assuming his guilt) a brutal and cruel murderer. It was the very extremity of his stupidity, indeed, that almost inclined me to hope him innocent. It was almost unthinkable that such a shrewd fellow as Jex had the character of being in the countryside— keen at a bargain, quick at a joke, a hearty, jovial companion at board and bar, knowing and clever in all the signs of coming- change in weather and market— should have proved so clumsy and stupid in this deadly affair; leaving traces enough and supplying motives enough to hang a dozen men. Of all men, one would suppose that a man of the fields and a sportsman, used to the marks and tracking of game, would be careful how he left the imprint of his footsteps on the soft clay. Why, that evidence alone, with time fitting and motive thrown in, was enough to bring him to the gallows!

As if this was not enough, further most damning evidence was presently forthcoming.

I will trace out for you, step by step, the history of the murder, on the assumption that Jex was the actual murderer. As to motive I have said enough. No one but Jex had a pecuniary motive for the murder of th# girl, whom he certainly did not love. The evidence of the footprints was very strong, but I have said enough of them. To touch upon the immediate cause of the girl's death, there were three small bullets found in the brain. I Have already told you that these bullets were not of the conical kind usually found in revolver catridges. They were round, and of the size that is used in the dangerous toys known as drawing-room pistols. During one of Jex's absences on the farm, I had carefully overhauled the saddle-room, where the young farmer kept his guns and ammunition. I found all his guns, cartridge fillers, wads, shots of different sizes, arranged with the neat order that a good sportsman uses. The guns, carefully cleaned and oiled, were slung on the wall. Two were of the ordinary kind— twelve-inch bore and double-barreled. A third was a heavy, single-barreled, percussion-action duck gun, no doubt meant for use in the neighboring marsh. Half a dozen old-fashioned shot pouches hung along the wall, full, or half full, of shot.

These receptacles, as every one knows, were formerly employed for muzzle-loaders, when men put in, first, the powder, then the wadding, then the shot, with a second wad over that, and finally a percussion cap on the lock nipple. One of these old-fashioned pouches caught my eye. It was of a larger size than the others. I took it from the wall, held it mouth downward over my left hand, and pressed the spring which releases a charge of shot. No shot fell into my hand, but three slugs of the size of small pistol bullets. I snapped the spring again, and three slugs again fell out. I repeated the experiment again and again, every time with the same result. The brass measure, meant to hold an ordinary charge of shot that would weigh about one ounce, held just three of the slugs, neither more nor less, every time it was opened and shut. It was a revelation, for the slugs were identical in size and weight with those found in the brain of the unfortunate girl! The obvious conclusion was that the murderer had loaded his gun from this leather pouch.

There was another corollary to be drawn. The theory of three shots from a revolver was no longer tenable; it seemed clear that the fatal shot had been fired at one discharge, and from a gun. It was also certain, from other evidence, that the person who fired the shot had been one well acquainted with firearms and their use. He would have been anxious that the discharge of his gun should make as little noise as possible. A man, knowing in gun-firing, knows that, to do that, he must use a minimum of powder, with a soft paper wadding in place of the usual tightly fitting circular wad. So fired, the report of a gun is little louder than the clap of a man's two hands when he holds them half-curved. It was in evidence that the bullets had made hut little penetration, only just enough to kill, and that therefore the charge was light. It is true that no such paper wadding as I believed had been employed to muffle the sound of the discharge had been found near the scene of the murder. There were further conclusions still to be drawn. The gun was heavy and unhandy. It could hardly have been used but by a strongish man, A further conclusion still was this, that for the three bullets in the charge not to scatter in their trajectory, the gun must have been held close to the girl's head.

It was well, though not absolutely indispensable, in order to bring home the perpetration of the crime to Jex, and in order to show that it was the deed of an expert— in order to show that his story of his hearing the three shots was a lie, invented to find a reason for the gun report, fired so close to the house, having been unheard by its inmates— it was well, I say, to show that the noise had actually been deadened by the use of soft paper wadding.

I walked straight to the orchard gate. I placed myself where the murderer must have stood, within two or three yards of it; he must have fired point-blank at the girl, suddenly and quickly, in the half dark, before she would have had time to move. She had, probably, with her hands resting on the top rail, stood waiting for her lover. The paper wadding would have flown out from the gun barrel, at an angle, more or less acute, to the line of fire, right or left of it, some four or five yards from the muzzle of the gun, and would have fallen, and must now be lying hidden in the grass across the gate, on one side or the other of the orchard path.

I searched the long wisps of grass, and, in two or three minutes, had the satisfaction of finding, half hidden among them, first one, and then a second piece of crumpled paper charred and blackened with gunpowder. Inspector Edwardes had overlooked this important piece of evidence. By the time I had spread the papers out upon a board, there was little left of them but a damp film, but enough was left of their original appearance to show that they were pieces of the county paper, taken in regularity by Mr. Jex.

The man who fired that shot therefore was a proved expert. He was one who had strong reason for not wishing the shot to be heard; and, with half a charge of powder, a light load of shot, and loose paper wadding, he had taken the very best means to effect this purpose. Who in the household was thus expert in firearms? Who, alone, could have known of the existence of the bullet in the saddle-room? Clearly, no one but Charles Jex. He had loaded the gun, too, with paper obtainable in his own house.

I had now more than evidence enough to justify Jex's arrest for the murder of Mary Judson, but I was willing to accumulate still more. I therefore contented myself with obtaining a warrant for his arrest from the magistrates at Bilford, the nearest large town, and prepared to execute it the moment circumstances should make it expedient. Jex had, for some time, shown himself to be uneasy. He shunned me; it was clear he suspected me of having got upon the trail of the crime. I became anxious lest he should think the game was up, and try to escape from justice. I wired for two officers, and instructed them to watch the farm by night, and lay hands on the farmer if he should attempt to break away in the darkness. By day I could keep my own eye upon him. I did not let him get far out of my sight, but, careful as I was, he showed signs of knowing he was watched.

ON THE morning of the 22nd of October— it was my third day on this job— he came down early, dressed rather more smartly than usual, and, before breakfast, he went round to the stables. I affected not to have observed this suspicious movement, and, in the course of the morning, I accepted Miss Lewsome's invitation to accompany her on a walk to Bexton. We both went to make ready. Jex left the room at the same moment. He went toward the stables ; I was watching him from my bedroom window. I ran downstairs, prepared for what was coming, and, making my way quickly into the road, stood behind the tall, quickset hedge.

Presently I heard the hurried steps of the groom in the avenue; in a moment more he had opened the gate wide, and as he did so, the dog-cart appeared with Jex driving his gray mare very fast. He called to his servant to look sharp, and hardly stopped the trap for the man to climb up behind. I moved quickly in front of the mare.

"Hulloa, Mr. Jex, you're in a hurry this morning I"

"Yes, confound you, I am; get out of my way, please, or we shall do you a mischief," and he whipped up the mare and tried to drive past me.

"Easy! easy! if you please." I took hold of the reins and kept a firm hold.

"Well, what is it?" he asked.

"Going to catch a train, Mr. Jex?" He hesitated.

"You're in good time for the 12:10 up, you know. Going to town, perhaps?"

"N— no— I'm not. Going to meet a friend at Lingham Junction, that's all."

"Will you take me with you, Mr. Jex?"

"No room, Inspector. My friend and his things, and my fellow will take all there is to spare."

"Oh, leave Sam behind. I can hold your mare at the station, you know." He muttered an oath stupidly, but there was no way for him out of the scrape.

"Jump up, then," he said sulkily. "Sam," he called to his man, "you can go back to your horses."

I sat by his side in the cart, and we drove at a fair pace to the station without half a dozen words passing between us.

No doubt he was thinking the matter out; so was I. I knew just what was passing in his thick head. He was demising how he might slip into the train while I stood outside, holding the horse. He forgot the telegraph. Dealing with these rustic criminals and their simple ways, is bad practice for us London officers, who have to set our wits, in town, against some of the sharpest rogues in creation. I thought, as I sat by Charles Jex, of my old friend Towers, alias Ikey Coggins, and I laughed to myself as I compared the one criminal with the other. We got in good time to the station. The up-train signal only went up as we drove to the gate.

"Now, Mr. Jex, you'll be wanting to meet your friend; shall I walk the mare about?"

"Please to do so, Mr. Morgan," said Jex. "You might ake her two hundred yards, or so, up the road. Keep her behind that outhouse, where she can't see the train passing, will you? when it comes in. The mare is a bit nervous."

I laughed in my sleeve at the fellow's shallowness.

"All right, give me the ribbons. Hulloa, you've got a bag!"

"Only a parcel for the up-train."

"Oh, I see; only a parcel for the up-train. Look sharp, then, and get it booked while there's time."

I looked up and down the line; the train was not yet in sight ; there was no need for hurry. I turned the mare round and drove her slowly toward the building Jex had pointed to. I saw him watch us from the station gateway before he went in. As he disappeared I beckoned to a boy standing by.

"Here's a shilling job, my lad! Just you walk the mare up to that outhouse, and keep her there out of sight of the train till I come back."

Then I slipped into the station, and, keeping out of sight, saw, as I fully expected I should, Jex taking his ticket.

I waited till the train was in, and as the young farmer, bag in hand, stepped on to the footboard of a second-class carriage, I walked up to him and laid my hand upon his shoulder.

"Charles Jex," I said, speaking loud and clear, for him and the others around to make no mistake about it, "I arrest you for the murder, on the 17th instant, of Miss Mary Judson!"

There was a crowd of ten to fifteen porters, guards, farmers, and others round us in a minute. Jex just swore once. Most criminals that I have taken this way lose their pluck and turn pale, but Jex behaved differently. It wa9 clear that my move had not taken him by surprise.

"I expected as much," he said. He looked round at the people on the platform— his friends to a man, for the young farmer was popular in the neighborhood. "Half a minute more," said he, under his breath, "and I'd have done it."

I slipped one of a pair of handcuffs over his wrist— and clicked the catch, keeping fast hold of the other iron.

"Anyhow, the game's up now," I said.

"You're right, Inspector, the game's up now, sure enough."

The crowd of his friends became rather obstreperous. I called on the station-master and his guards to stand by me, telling him and the people about who I was. There was a bit of a hustle, and rough talk and threats, and I tried to get the other handcuff on, hut my prisoner and I were being pushed about in spite of what the station people did to help us, and I should not have managed it but for Jex himself. He held his free hand out alongside of the manacled one. "Oh, damn it, Morgan, if that's what you want, get done with it, and let's be off out of this."

I put the second handcuff on and clicked the lock.

The sight angered his friends, the farmers standing about, and one of them shouted:

"Now, then, boys, one more rush to goal and we score!"

"Hold on, gentlemen, if you please," I cried. "I warn you, in the King's name! This is my lawful prisoner; I'm an Inspector of Police and I hold a warrant for the arrest of the body of Charles Jex, for murder."

They held back at this for a moment, and I hurried my prisoner through the station entrance, and the porters, guards, and station-master closed round and shut the gate in the faces of the crowd. I never yet knew a man take it so coolly as Jex. When we got to the dog-cart, he said:

"I guess you'll have to drive yourself, Mr. Inspector. With these damned things on my wrists, I can't."

We got in, and I took the reins and drove off fast.

We had traveled some half a mile from the station, and Jex had not opened his lips. I said :

"So you were going to town, were you, Mr. Jex?"

"Mr. Inspector," he said quietly, "haven't you forgotten to caution your prisoner before you ask him any questions? Isn't .that the law?" He had me there, sure enough.

"I warn you," I said, coming in with it rather late, I must admit, "that any statement you make may be used against you on trial."

"That's just what I had in my mind, Inspector," said Jex, and he never uttered another word till we neared the farm.

Just as we sighted the farm buildings, I made out on the road, in the distance, a woman's figure. It was Miss Lewsome. She stood in the middle of the road, and I should have driven over her if I had not pulled up.

"What is this, Mr. Morgan?" she cried as we drove up. "Why is it you who are driving? Tell me— tell me quick."

"You'll know soon enough, Miss Lewsome. Stand aside, if you please."

"Oh! what is it? Charles, speak, for God's sake, speak!"

Jex had kept his hands under the apron; he did not say a word, but presently he held out his two wrists, manacled together, for the girl to see. She gave a loud scream.

"O God! you have arrested him, Mr. Morgan! No, no, you can't— you—"

As she was speaking a faintness came over her; she turned from red to very pale, muttering incoherent words which we 'could not catch, and staggered back against a road gate. But for the bar of the gate to which she clung, she would have fallen. "Help her," said Jex. "Get down and help the girl. You know I can't."

"It's all right, she'll get over it. We'll let her be, and send the women to her presently," and I drove the cart the forty or fifty yards that took us into the stable-yard.

It had been my intention to lodge my prisoner, after dark, that evening, in the keeping of the county police, but events were to happen before nightfall that put a quite different face upon the whole case. As soon as I had given the young farmer into my men's charge, with orders that one or the other was to be with him till we should give him over to the police at Bilford, I called to two of the women of the farm, and went with them to the help of Miss Lewsome.

We found her lying by the roadside, in a dead faint. A farmer's wife— a passer-by— was kneeling by her side, and trying to recall her to her senses.

"Poor thing!" she was saying. "It's only a bit of a swound. She'll come to, if we wait a little."

In two or three minutes Miss Lewsome opened her eyes, and presently stood up, and, with our help, she walked to the house. She said nothing, in her seemingly bewildered condition, of what had happened, and presently afterward she was induced to lie down in her bedroom, and, for the time, I saw no more of her.

In little more than an hour, however, I had a message from her through one of the farm girls. She desired to see me at once, and alone.

I found her sitting up in an armchair, pale and excited in ooks, but, at first, she did not speak. I drew a chair near hers and sat down. She did not notice the few phrases of condolence I uttered. Suddenly she spoke, and I could judge what she must have felt by the strained tones of her voice.

"He is innocent, Mr. Morgan."

I said nothing. Poor girl! My heart bled for her.

"Innocent, I tell you! Innocent, and you must release him at once!"

"You must not excite yourself about this matter, Miss Lewsome. It is not a thing for a young lady to meddle with."

"Yes, but I must meddle with it! I must, I must!"

She raised her voice to a scream.

"Yes, yes, my poor girl, I know how shamefully you have been treated."

"I, shamefully treated? No, no! He has treated me so well. No one could be so good and loyal as he has been."

"Your diary, Miss Lewsome?"

"Lies, all lies, all wicked, cowardly lies, to save myself and hurt him. Yes, to hurt the only man I ever loved. Oh, I am a devil, a malignant, hateful devil! No woman, since the world began, ever schemed so hellish a thing as I schemed."

She covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

What should I do? I was wasting my time in listening to the raving of a love-sick, hysterical girl. I rose to leave her.

"You are doing your health no good, dear Miss Lewsome. You must see the doctor, not me; he shall give you a sleepingdraught, and you will be all right again in the morning."

"By the morning you will have gone away, and you will have, taken Charles with you to disgrace, perhaps to death. No, they can't, they can't! The law can't convict him, can it?"

"It is not for me to say. The evidence is very strong." T

"Very strong? But there is not a particle of evidence! There can be none!"

"If that man did not murder Mary Judson," said I, getting impatient with her hysterical nonsense, "who did?"

She did not answer for a space of time in which I could have counted twenty, slowly; but she kept her eyes on mo with a look in them that almost frightened me.

"I did!" she cried out, at last.

"Ah no! young lady, I see what you're driving at, but it won't do. No, Miss Lewsome, it's a forgivable thing, your saying this to save your friend, but I tell you it won't do."

"I murdered Mary Judson I" I shook my head and smiled.

"I tell you, I shot Mary Judson on Wednesday night. I did it because I was a jealous, malignant devil, and hated her, and hated him."

"Quite impossible. You never left Mrs. Jex's side all the evening, from before sundown till supper-time. It's in evidence."

"She says so— she believes I did not. She dozes for an hour every evening, and does not even know that she does. I went from the room. I slipped out the moment she dozed off, and came back before she woke. Oh, I had plenty of time."

"But your footprints were not there, and Jex's were."

"I put on his boots over my own. I had often done it, in fun. I did it that day in earnest."

"Did you want to hang him?"

"I did. I hated him so— then."

"Why, in your diary you say you loved himl"

"I did; oh, I do now! But then, when she was alive, I hated them both— her and him. But you can't understand Men can't understand women. I was mad."

"You are mad now, Miss Lewsome, if you think to save your lover by telling me these falsehoods— for you know they are falsehoods. Mind, I don't blame you for saying what you are saying, but don't expect me, or any one, to believe you."

"I shot Mary Judson in the dusk, at the gate, with his gun! I put three little balls in it that I took from a shot-pouch in the saddle-room."

"You couldn't load the double-barrel with powder and balls, without a cartridge, and none was used."

I thought to catch her tripping in her invention here.

"I did not use the double-barrel. I used the single-barrel. I loaded it as I had seen Charles load it I put a bit of paper over the powder, and another over the bullets, and rammed them down as I have seen Charles do, and I put a cap on as he had shown me how."

"Come now, that gun with a full charge would have knocked you down."

"I know it would, but I put in only half a charge."

"Stop a bit now, Miss Lewsome, and I will catch you out. I have found the paper wadding in the grass. What sort of paper was it you put in— brown paper?"

"No, a bit of newspaper; the county paper. I tore off a bit of the Surrey Times."

The thing was beginning to puzzle me.

"Another question, Miss Lewsome. You say Mr. Jex is an innocent man. Then why does he attempt to run away? He tried this very day to throw dust in my eyes and go by the express to London."

"I guessed he would, and that is why I wished to get you out of his way this morning."

"Had you told Mr. Jex, then, what you tell me now?"

"No, but he suspects me— oh, I am sure he knows it is I who have done this dreadful thing!"

"If he knows that you are the real murderer and himself innocent, why did he try to escape? You see your story won't hang together, Miss Lewsome."

"Mr. Jex tried to escape, I tell you, to save me,"

"But why should he put his own neck in the halter to save a guilty woman— if guilty you are?"

"Because he loves me. He would be suspected, not I."

She was certainly in one story about it all.

"Yes, he loves me so that he has run this great risk to save me from being found out and hanged."

"He told you this?"

"No, he has told me nothing, nor have I told him anything; but these last days I have guessed, by his face, that he knows. I have seen it in his eyes. Oh, he loathes and despises me now!" I said nothing for a few moments.

"Now, Miss Lewsome, I will ask you once more deliberately, and, mind you, your story will be sifted to the utmost, and what you say now may be used against yourself in court. You tell me you shot Miss Mary Judson after sundown on the night of the 17th of October?"

"I did."

"You used Mr. Jex's gun, and you charged it yourself?*

"Yes."

"You wore Mr. Jex's boots when you went out in the dark to kill your dearest friend, and you committed this black crime in order to throw suspicion upon Mr. Jex, who was your lover?"

"Yes. Oh, I was quite mad! I can't understand it. But there was only hatred and bitterness in my heart, and I saw nothing but blood— there was blood in my eyes."

"And what was your object? What did you think would come of it?"

"Nothing, only I hated her so. I was too miserable, because the time was coming near when he would marry her and I be left alone."

"But, according to your first story, you were writing your diary, if not at the time of the murder, at least immediately after it was done. Do you wish me to believe that a murderess, hot-handed, can sit down and write long entries in a diary?"

"It was a lie I told to take you in. I wrote that entry in the diary— all those lies, to throw dust in your eyes— in the forenoon."

"You expected nothing, then, from the murder?"

"I think I expected that perhaps Charles would inherit hex money and be able to marry me, when it had all blown over."

"But why did you say, just now, that you hated him, and had committed this cruel crime to spite him? You must have guessed that you would bring him in peril of his life."

"Ah, you don't understand women. Women understand women; men never do. I tell you I felt a devil. Why did he want to make her his wife and leave me in the cold? Oh, I hated him for that; I should never have killed her if I had not so hated him."

"Surely you could not have expected him to marry a woman who had committed a murder?"

"I never thought he would guess. I never thought of all these discoveries. No one would have known, if you had not taken him up."

"But you brought that about by wearing his boots, and firing with his gun and his ammunition."

"Ah, yes, there is the pity. I did not reason; I wanted to punish him for his jilting of me. He would be in my power. Oh, I did not reason. I only felt a vindictive devil. Have no mercy on me; I deserve everything. I hate myself!"

I got up. "We will talk of this again to-morrow," I said, "when you are calmer."

"Yes," she said quietly, "when I am calmer."

"You will let me send for the doctor?"

"Why?"

"To give you a sleeping-draught."

"Yes, send for him; but you won't tell Mrs. Jex. She is old and feeble."

"No, I will tell her nothing to-night, at any rate— nothing of what has happened. She need not even know that her son has been arrested. He will not go from here to-night"

"Can you manage that?"

"Yes, I can manage that."

THE FARM SERVANTS, of course, knew that their master was in custody. I told them they were to keep it from the old lady. I sent one of them for the doctor, and when he came I bade him give a strong sleeping-draught to Miss Lewsome.

I went into Jex's bedroom. He was lying on the bed, with the handcuffs on his wrists. My two men were with him. I motioned them to leave me.

I took out my key, unfastened the irons and removed them.

"What's up?" he asked.

"I've some fresh evidence, that is all."

"Am I no longer under arrest, then?"

"Please to consider yourself in custody for the present. I have said nothing to your mother about all this. She knows nothing. Isn't that better so?"

"Much better. I'll come down to supper, to keep it up."

"I was going to ask you to."

"How is Miss Lewsome?"

"Very excited and disturbed. I've sent for the doctor to give her a sleeping-draught. Miss Lewsome has made a communication to me."

"Ay, ay." He showed no further curiosity in the matter.

The doctor came, gave Miss Lewsome a pretty strong dose of chloral, and departed, having learned nothing, by my express orders to the servants, of what had taken place that day at Jex Farm. One of my men remained that night in Mr. Jex's bedroom, and the other had orders to watch the house from the outside.

Miss Lewsome's absence was easily accounted for to Mrs. Jex, who was too old and feeble to be easily roused to curiosity, by a story of a chill and a headache that had obliged her guest to keep to her bedroom.

The hours after breakfast, next morning, passed slowly. No fresh developments of any kind occurred. Jex asked no questions, and I did not care to speak to him.

I waited for Miss Lewsomefa awakening and deliberated as to my next step. Was her confession to be seriously acted upon? It had shaken me, but not quite convinced me, curiously supported though it was by a whole chain of circumstantial evidence. Was I bound to arrest this evidently hysterical girl, on the strength of a story which might, after all, be nothing but a tissue of cunning lies to save her lover?

I have not often been so puzzled. I have not often found the facts and probabilities, for and against, so equally poised in the balance.

Midday came and there had been no sign, or sound, of stirring in Miss Lewsome's bedroom. I sent in one of the servants and waited outside. Presently the maid screamed and ran out of the room, pale and speechless.

"What is it?" I asked, rather fearful myself. "What's up now, my girl?"

"Go to her, sir; go in to her quick! Oh, I don't know— I can't tell, but I'm afraid it's— Her hands are cold, stone cold, and her face is set. I can't waken her!"

She was dead— had been dead for hours— and on the dressing-table, propped against the pincushion, was a closed letter addressed to myself. I opened it, and read what follows :

"I, MAUD LEWSOME, make this dying confession. I, of my own will, no one knowing, no one advising, no one helping me, shot my friend, Mary Judson, at the orchard gate of Jex Farm. I had put on Mr. Jex's boots over my shoes in order that the crime might be shifted from my shoulders. to his. I shot her across the orchard gate, in the dark, just at nightfall, when she could not see me. She was waiting for him. Perhaps I could not have done it, though I had resolved I would, but that as I came up, she said, 'Is that you, dearest?' Then I raised the gun and fired— seeing her only in outline against the little light still in the evening sky. She fell at once on the place where she stood and made no cry or groan.

"The gun gave no report hardly, but I was afraid they might somehow guess indoors it was me, and I waited a long time, not daring to go in. Presently the gate from the road was opened. I knew it was Charles Jex coming from Bexton to her, and I was glad then that I had done it. I thought he would see me if I ran into the house, so I opened the orchard gate very softly and crouched down beside Mary's dead body. He came up to the gate and called 'Mary' twice, but he could see nothing and went away. Then I felt quite hard and callous, but my mind was very clear and active, and I thought I would take her watch, so that people might think she had been robbed. I took it and her chain, and, coming into the garden again, I buried them with my hands, two or three inches deep, in the flower-border, near the porch and smoothed the mould down over it. Then I was afraid he would hear me in the passage, and I took off the thick boots and carried them in my hand. I could hear him in his bedroom overhead, and I took the gun to the saddleroom and the boots I rubbed dry with a cloth and laid them in a row with the others. Then I felt I must see him, and I went up very lightly and knocked at his door and he came out in his shirt-sleeves and said, in a whisper, 'How pale you are, Maud,' and he kissed me, and I kept my hands behind me lest he should see the garden mould on them, but he did not notice that, and he said again:

" 'How pale you look to-night! Have you seen a ghost?'

"And I ran back first to my room and washed my hands and looked at myself in the glass and thought, This is not the reflection of Maud Lewsome! This is the reflection of a murderess! And in my ears there is always the report of the gun as I fired it at Mary Judson, and in my nostrils the smell of the gunpowder smoke, and since then I have heard and smelt these two things day and night; but Mary's face, when I killed her, I did not see, and I am glad I did not. The doctor has given me chloral, and, presently, I shall take another double dose from a bottle of it I have, and before morning I shall be dead, for I cannot live after this thing that I have done. I thought I could forget it, but I cannot, and I must dia I tell the exact truth now in the hope that God may listen to my confession and my repentance, and forgive me for the awful wickedness that I have committed. I shot her with Charles's large gun; I had watched him loading it often, and I did as he did, and I put three little bullets in it that I took from the shot pouch that hangs third in the row on the wall."

The first thing I did after reading this was to call one of my men and bid him turn over the soil in the flower border close to the porch. He did so, and in my presence he found Mary Judson's watch and chain. Taking it in my hands, I carried it to Jex.

"We have found this, Mr. Jex."

"Where?"

I told him. He nodded, but said nothing.

"Will you, please, read this paper, Mr. Jex?" and I handed him that on which Miss Lewsome had written her confession. He read the first few lines and started up.

"Good God! Has she—?"

I nodded.

"She took her own life last night."

He sank down on a chair and covered his face with his hands, but his emotion lasted for a moment only.

"Poor girl!" he said sadly, "I expected it."

"Then you knew she had done the murder?"

He made no answer, but read calmly through the confession he held in his hand, then he gave it back without comment.

"After this, Mr. Jex, you are, of course, at liberty. I have only to apologize to you for the inconvenience I have put you to, but the evidence against you was strong, you must admit."

"You could not do otherwise, Inspector Morgan, than you have done," and he held out his right hand to me.

I made some pretence of not seeing his action. I did not take Charles Jex by the hand.

Except for certain formalities that I need not give you, there is no more to interest you in the case. I need only add that with such evidence before us as Miss Lewsome's confession, it was, of course, impossible to charge Jex with any part in this murder; but, remembering all the circumstances since, I have sometimes asked myself, Was the girl alone guilty, was she a tool in the hands of a scheming villain, or was she perhaps only a victim and entirely innocent? Women are, to us men, often quite unaccountable beings.

_______________

5: The Ghost At Laburnum Villa

Anonymous

Belgravia, August 1870

THERE CAN BE no doubt that Mr. Paul Withers is constitutionally nervous. Mrs. Withers says so ; and as a man's wife ought to know something about his weak points, the fact may be considered indisputable. Not that Withers himself seeks to conceal or deny this peculiarity; on the contrary, he makes rather a parade of it; just as some people do with their cynicism, their bad temper, or any other feature which they think gives them distinctiveness of character. Withers, being an author, is in the habit of declaring that he considers his nervousness an advantage; but when he tries to define this position, he gets too misty to follow very closely. Mrs. W., it need scarcely be said, takes the opposite view, and invariably clinches the discussion by declaring, that if Paul hadn't been so absurdly nervous he would never have seen the ghost at Laburnum Villa. As Paul believes devoutly in the one spectral experience of his life, he does not find the illustration convincing; but out of respect for his wife's strength of scepticism, changes the subject.

Was there a ghost at Laburnum Villa, or was it merely a creation of Withers' over-excited brain? Our readers shall judge for themselves.

The 'neat detached villa-residence' in question was situated in a semi-rural suburb of London. The agent's advertisement, just quoted, farther described it as being 'elegantly furnished,' and 'within five minutes of a railway-station.' If anything more antagonistic to the supernatural than this can be imagined, we shall beglad to hear of it. The advertisement attracted the attention of Mrs. Withers while seated at breakfast with her family in a remote Welsh watering-place; and in the evening of the same day, just as the heavy twilight of a dull September was changing into night, Withers stood at the gate of Laburnum Villa with a small travellingbag in his hand, and the key of that residence in his pocket.

It had been a miserable day. In the first place, his breakfast had been spoiled by the ' impetuosity' of Mrs. Withers. That worthy lady had been for some time bringing a legitimate pressure to bear to secure a month or two's stay in London. When she saw the advertisement, she became immediately and completely possessed by the idea that the neighbourhood in question combined every advantage attainable in this necessarily imperfect state of existence. To resolve and act being with her one and the same impulse, she began at once to pack Withers' travelling-bag in spite of his almost pathetic remonstrances. Finding pathos of no use he tried argument, and from that drifted into what he called 'firmness' and Mrs. W. 'stupidity.' At this point, when there was just ten minutes to catch the mail-train from Holyhead, Mrs. W. asked in a tone of assumed calmness, if he intended to go to London in his slippers. His only reply was to put on his boots with a gloomy frown, snatch up his bag, and depart without even a 'good-morning.' That circumstance, however, did not in the least affect the appetite with which Mrs. Withers continued her interrupted breakfast. Withers meantime speeding Londonwards, and suffering as only nervous men can suffer from the irritating strain of an express journey, was brooding over a terrible scheme of vengeance. He would take the house— O yes, he would take it at any risk; if it was steaming with damp, infested with the most formidable rats, overrun with specimens of natural history, with a leaky cistern and defective drains, broken-windowed, dilapidated, ay, even roofless! 'His great revenge had stomach for them all!' But he never for a moment contemplated the possibility of its being 'haunted.'

Arrived in London, shattered in body and mind, but with his gloomy purpose strong upon him, he enlisted the obstructiveness of a maddening cabman to place as many difficulties as possible in the way of his finding the house-agent. After this slave of the rank had shut him in a rickety and strong-smelling box on wheels, he displayed an amount of obtuseness about the required address that nearly made Withers jump through the window with rage. Then, when he had acquired some dim notion of where his fare wanted to go, he proceeded with great deliberation in an entirely wrong direction. After two or three false starts of this sort, and the consequent dissipation of a good deal of valuable time, the right office was found at last; and the agent himself discovered in the act of closing his labours for the day, in order to retire to the 'bosom of his family.' This is never a good time to meet a man who hates doing things in a hurry. Therefore Withers had expended some energy against the impassible composure of Mr. Leese in vain, until he happened to mention the name of the house he wished to occupy. The words 'Laburnum Villa' seemed to act like a spell; and in ten minutes more Withers found himself in possession of the key of that 'neat detached villa-residence.' Confiding himself once more to the cafe of cabby, he soon forgot the temporary gleam of elation produced by this small success in gloomy reflections on the probability of his being obliged to spend the night wandering aimlessly about the suburbs in that strong-smelling cab. Then he remembered a newspaper controversy about conveying hospital-patients in public vehicles. Unpleasant impressions began to crowd upon him, and he was on the point of stopping the cab and jumping out, when it was pulled-up with a violent jerk, and he was informed that he was 'there.'

When he found himself alone in a front garden of tolerable size, lie began to find the situation singular. Then a lurking suspicion that it might prove disagreeable obtruded itself. He glanced up at the front of the house, which was of the usual commonplace bow-windowed pattern, and was struck by the fact that there was no appearance of occupation. To resolve this doubt at once he knocked at the door. The sound seemed to raise a dozen melancholy echoes in the neighbourhood; but after these had died away in a low-spirited style, there was no response from the interior of Laburnum Villa. At this point a servant, in full evening dress of light cotton print, fluttered across from one of the nearest villas for the purpose of informing, him that, 'Please, sir, no one lives in that 'ouse.'

'No one! Is it left to take care of itself?'

'O no, sir. There's a person— leastways an old woman— comes in the daytime, but she don't live there regular. No one has lived there regular since Miss Steel died.'

After imparting these agreeable facts, the servant fluttered genteelly away again, leaving Withers standing on the door-step with an awkward consciousness that, from the drawing-room window of the nearest villa, eyes were bent upon him through the laths of the Venetians. It would be absurd to retreat. He took the key from his pocket and entered.

Falling over a pail, happily empty, which had been carelessly left in the little hall, did not tend to put him in a good temper, or to decrease the nervousness that had been growing upon him all day. He sat down on the pail, rubbed his shins, and tried to realise the situation. Alone in a strange house, with nothing to eat, and with that faint sickness upon him which comes of the fatigue and semi-starvation of express travelling. Obviously the thing to do was to look for the kitchen. There might be something to eat: at any rate the chance was worth trying. Fortunately the kitchen was not far off, on the ground-floor, and he groped his way there without much difficulty. Here he was rejoiced by discovering the remains of a good fire, and received a momentary shock from a woman's dress, which was hanging from a hook in a way suggestive, in the dim light from the grate, of the person— 'leastways the old woman'— having made a violent end of herself. A box of matches was the next fortunate discovery made by Withers, who began to feel himself a sort of Crusoe; but after burning two or three in a vain attempt to light the gas, he was forced to the unpleasant conclusion that it was either turned off at the meter, or ' cut off' by the gas company. Deferring farther experiments in this direction for the present, he began, with the aid of a candle, to search for provisions. The prosecution of this laudable object naturally took him into the pantry. He was standing here, holding the candle above his head, and peering anxiously about the shelves, when he heard close to him, as it seemed, the shrill treble shout in which boyhood proclaims its eternal war with mankind. 'Yah! yah! the post!' the cry sounded like. What did they mean by 'post'? Withers opened the window a little way, and listened more intently. The juvenile destroyers of peace were some distance across the field by this time, so he couldn't be sure whether his ears deceived him or not; but he certainly thought he heard 'Yah! yah! the ghost!' It was very absurd, of course ; but still Withers felt 'queer' as he closed the window again and continued his search. He was rewarded by a magnificent 'find'— a half-consumed meat-pie in prime condition, doubtless the personal property of the 'person' before mentioned. I t was evident that she, at least, was no ghost, which was so far satisfactory. With the help of the brandy in his travelling-flask, Withers made a hearty supper off the meat-pie ; and, strange to say, never bestowed a thought on the probability of its 'disagreeing' with him— a subject upon which, on ordinary occasions, he was wont to be discreetly but pathetically eloquent.

'Now for the meter,' thought Withers, after finishing supper by the light of his solitary candle. He had always entertained rather a high opinion of himself, had Withers, in a modest self-contained way; but now, under the combined influence of meat pie, brandy, and a pipe of cavendish, he began to think he had done himself scanty justice. 'Strange,' he mused over his pipe, 'how a novel situation, strange conditions, bring out what is self-reliant in a man. How soon a fellow with any stuff in him grasps and subdues unfamiliar surroundings! The curled and scented military darling of drawing-rooms becomes a hero in war and a Spartan in the camp. The refined son of metropolitan civilisation, the polished cynic of club smoking-rooms, goes to the diggings, and straightway becomes "hail fellow well met" with navvies, and a thoroughgoing advocate of Lynch law.' And then Withers began to think pleasantly of his own fertility of resource, though he had, after all, only gone into an unoccupied house, and consumed another person's provisions. Rousing himself from such meditations with a gentle melancholy upon him, as became a person never destined to be thoroughly appreciated, he went to look for the meter. He found the place where the meter had been, but that was all. This being an emergency to which his resources were by no means equal, he began to doubt the absolute sufficiency of self-reliance under all circumstances. At any rate, no tolerably efficient substitute for the missing meter suggested itself to him, so he determined to distinguish himself in another unfamiliar direction. Returning upstairs, he occupied an hour or so very pleasantly, blacking his face and hands to an impossible extent, in the attempt to light a fire in the dining-room. He had chosen the dining-room to pass the night in, in preference to running the risk of damp beds, because it was compact, not to say diminutive, in its proportions, and therefore more easily warmed and lighted by a fire and a couple of candles. Here, then, after the completion of his arrangements, he will be left to continue the story in his own words.

I DO NOT know what the general experience in such cases may be, but I never can feel on thoroughly good terms with other people's furniture; there is a sense of antagonism which I find it impossible to subdue. Even while lounging in the very comfortable easy-chair in the dining-room of Laburnum Villa, I felt as strongly as possible that I was being seated under protest. The companion easy-chair balancing mine on the opposite side of the fire-place had, to my sensitive mind, a distinctly disparaging expression in its arms, and a shrug, as of contempt, in its well-stuffed back. A fiercely-gilt warrior, who was careering at a terrible rate on the top of a clock (run down and silent) decorating the mantelpiece, seemed to point his weapon at me in an openly threatening manner, and challenge me to mortal combat. Even the engravings on the walls rejected me as an alien. 'Shakespeare and his Contemporaries' were evidently engaged in discussing me in an unfavourable spirit; and Frith's 'Merrymakers' ignored me so completely that I ought to have sunk terribly in my own esteem. There was a portrait in oil, too, of a gentleman, which it was impossible to escape, because it hung opposite the chimney-glass; so that whenever I raised my head, I caught it apparently looking at me over the mantelpiece with an unmistakable expression of indignant surprise. I could almost hear it saying in an injured tone, 'What the deuce is that fellow doing in my dining-room!'

This state of feeling was becoming intensified to a most disagreeable pitch, when a framed photograph 'caught my eye'— if I may be permitted to use the phrase— and gave a new turn to my thoughts. It was a full-length of a young lady with one of the most singular faces I ever saw in my life; not a pleasant face by any means, but full of decided character, though the mouth and chin were weak without being feminine. I thought, with something like a shudder of repugnance, that Elsie Venner— that curious creature with the reptile taint in her blood— must have looked like this girl, who seemed to have nothing of girlhood about her but its physical weakness. The small colourless face, with its retreating chin, unsmiling mouth, and slightly prominent nose, its sloping narrow forehead and brilliant black eyes, had such a repellent unsympathetic character, that it created the most disagreeable impressions. I returned to my seat, from which I had risen to examine the portrait; but I found it impossible to shake-off the feeling it had produced. It was as repugnant to me as if it had been some noxious thing endowed with a sluggish vitality which found expression in the glittering eyes alone: they seemed to hold me with a triumphant consciousness of their power, though they were looking in another direction, out of the picture, but not at the spectator. I got up under an uncontrollable impulse, and turned the face to the wall. In doing so, I discovered that on the back of the frame there was pasted one of those 'funeral cards' which some people are in the habit of sending to their friends on the occasion of a death in the family. That there might be no mistake as to the identity of the 'Laura Steel' here mentioned, a miniature photograph was affixed at the top of the card. So Laura Steel was the name of the unprepossessing young lady, and she was dead. All the nameless fascination went out of those singular orbs at the thought, and I felt something like remorse for my fancies about her.

I ought to have begun to feel fatigued by this time; but though I lay back as comfortably as possible in the easy-chair, put my feet on the fender, and stared at the fire, no drooping of the eyelids hinted at an approaching doze. It was no use trying to persuade myself that I wanted to take 'forty winks.' The fact was not to be disguised that I was most distressingly wakeful, restless, and listening; distinctly listening, for I caught myself in the act. It was very plain that nature was revenging itself for my ill-spent day in the abnormal activity of my nervous system. I got up, and going to a book-case in a recess, took down a volume at random. It proved to be a collection of German plays of the sanguinary school: Lessing's Emilia Galotti, Schiller's Robbers, and others of the same type. This proved a fortunate speculation; and I soon found myself going through the most harrowing and bloodthirsty scenes with that luxurious sense of suspended attention which is the first phase of an inevitable doze. Emilia was about to stab herself, and I was just nodding my admiration of her courage and virtue, when suddenly I started up broad awake, and let the book fall. I glanced almost involuntarily at the photograph, and saw, or fancied I saw, in the averted glittering eyes the same indefinable expression revived that had struck me so unpleasantly at first. W hat was it that had startled me ? I did not know. Still less could I explain the intensity of a new sensation, possessing me completely, which seemed to hold all my being in the one act of listening.

A house does not need to be old and dilapidated in order to supply plenty of mysterious noises; indeed, new houses are more prolific in this respect than old ones. I heard any quantity of the usual creaking, straining, and flapping in Laburnum Villa, but nothing to which I felt inclined to give any special significance. After a few minutes, therefore, the acute tension of my nerves began to relax, and I turned once more to my book. Here I met with a disappointment; for I soon became sensible that the horrors of the German dramatist had lost their soporific effect, and, inexplicably enough, were acting as an irritant. I was reading with sharpened senses, and realising what I read. It was another disagreeable surprise to find that the late Miss Steel— or, at least, my idea of her— was getting involved in the scenes, identifying herself with the sanguinary interest as a pervading evil influence. The criminal personages seemed to gleam at me from the page with the snake-like brilliancy of her eyes, and the malignant bitterness of the wicked speeches to come from the same lax unsmiling lips. I threw down the book impatiently, and began to trim the candles; but though I smiled while doing so at the idea of being reduced to candles in this age of gas, I could not help noticing that my hands trembled violently. I was so awkward about my work that I nearly extinguished the light. I poked the fire into a blaze, and set myself resolutely to think.

Some considerable time passed in a vain attempt to resume the mastery of myself; but I gave up the struggle at last, and resigned myself passively to wait and listen. I was sensible of no alarm, or even anxiety; I was simply held down, physically and mentally, and kept quiet. An imperious expectation of something, I did not know what, absorbed every sense and faculty of my being. How long I half sat, half lay thus, I do not know. Nature seemed to stand still; there was no time, and everything came to a breathless pause. Then over this dead peace there came stealing a subtle infection of tenor. The air was charged with it as with a plague. This horror gathered and thickened, like the darkness before a storm, until it became a palpable oppression. My body was paralysed; only my soul struggled feebly against the threatening of madness or death.

It came at last. With my quickened senses, I could hear the stir in the air that heralded its approach, as if the atmosphere of Nature recoiled from the awful thing. It was in the room, and I recognised the figure at once, though the face was turned from m e: the girl of the portrait with the snake-like eyes. I felt that if those eyes met mine, I should go mad; and yet I was powerless to look away, or move, or cry out. My heart stood still, and life was slipping away from my paralysed grasp. It was kneeling before the drawers in the lower part of the book-case, and appeared to he searching anxiously in one of them. Suddenly it recoiled, and threw its arms wildly above its head. It arose swiftly, and in the instant it stood erect was confronted by another figure, that of an old man. It seemed to read a sentence of condemnation in the face of this second comer, for it sank into a kneeling position, and clasped the other despairingly by the knees. There were savagely-rapid blows rained upon the face of the petitioner, upturned in an agony of entreaty, and a furious thrusting away. With a long wailing scream, it rolled writhing almost at my feet, and the awful eyes glared full into mine. Merciful oblivion came upon me, and I fell into a death-like unconsciousness.

When I revived, it was to find myself in a state of physical prostration as great as if I had just been recovering from a severe illness. The nervous restlessness from which I had suffered in the early part of the night had completely disappeared. It seemed that I had exhausted my powers of endurance, and my capacity for receiving violent mental impressions. I could only lie still and try, in a feeble groping way, to renew my hold upon the familiar every-day life which had become so distant and indistinct. I endeavoured to remember the incidents that had preceded my arrival at the villa; but I could only do so in a confused wandering style, without sequence or coherency. Mr. Leese the house-agent got mixed up with the cab-man, and both receded into some indefinite past, the duration of which it was impossible to calculate. And all the time I was thus trying to rearrange the history of the day, I was sensible of a shadowy horror in the background of my thoughts, which I knew, evade it as I might, I should be obliged to face by and by. That dreadful remembrance, I was conscious, would force itself upon me with returning physical strength, without any effort of mine to rouse it. Let it sleep now, like a coiled serpent; there were hours enough of depression in store in the future to be darkened by its malignant influence. Should I ever forget it? I could not help asking myself, even in my almost imbecile state of prostration. Would it be always, as it was now, a lurking horror, crouching for a spring when its victim was most helpless?

I must have sat for a long time in this state of mental suspension; for when I gained energy enough to take active note of external things, I found the candles burnt out, and the fire a black mass, with some faint red sparks here and there. My first act of vitality was to seize the brandy-bottle, and take a draught of raw spirit such as would have completely stupefied me under ordinary circumstances. As it was, it produced such an immediate effect, in my weak state, that I could just stagger to the sofa, where I fell into a heavy and dreamless sleep.

It was broad daylight when I wakened again, and found a singular-looking old woman standing by the side of my improvised couch. We stared at each other, with much bewilderment on my side, and apparently much solemn relish on hers, for several minutes. She was the first to break the awkward silence, by remarking in a husky tone, 'Lor' a-mussy!' Then I sat up, and became aware that I had a very active collection of steam-hammers at work in my head. This indisposed me for conversation, especially with an old woman who seemed to breathe gin, and I lay down again. She wheezed interrogatively, and did not appear to have any intention of going away. I turned towards her, and "she repeated the exclamation or observation before quoted. 'What do you want?' I asked at last, feeling under an obligation to say something. This simple question confused her so much, that she could only wheeze louder than ever, and rub her hands aimlessly with a very dirty duster. 'I suppose you are the person who takes care of the house?' I added,' with the benevolent design of assisting her comprehension. 'Yes, sir; Mrs. Panting, sir, as Mr. Leese allus 'as engaged, me bein', as 'e says, trustworthy, with the 'ighest of characters, as was wrote out most beautiful by Mr. Leese's young man; an' I 'ope, sir, if you've took the 'ouse, as your good lady'll keep me on, sir, bein' easy satisfied, with a pore appetite, through bein' a widow, sir, with a small fambly, as allus did the charin' and washin' for pore Mr. Steel, and giv' the 'ighest satisfaction.'

I had collapsed at first, under this sudden shower-bath of information; but the name of Steel roused me, and I determined to extract what information Mrs. Panting possessed about the family. She possessed a great deal, as it proved, and no doubt invented whatever was necessary to fill up the gaps in her knowledge; but in its broad outlines the story was probable enough.

Miss Steel's was one of those histories, commonplace in appearance to the outside spectator, the external features of which may be summed-up in a few lines, while an internal analysis would fill volumes. Mrs. Panting's amplified, decorated, and very discursive history may be told in a few words. Laura Steel had conceived a violent and unreasoning passion for a man who was utterly and hopelessly unworthy of the slightest public notice from any woman who valued her reputation. There had been a clandestine correspondence, and a regular series of stolen meetings, before her father discovered the state of affairs. Then came a sickening struggle for supremacy between the father and daughter: she bold, defiant, and reckless; he mad with passionate rage and the bare possibility of social disgrace. There was a short and deceitful truce, but it was only the sullen calm that precedes the fury of the storm. It came to a sudden end one day, for he had been searching among her papers during her absence, and found a certificate of marriage dated about seven months before. There was a terrible scene when she returned home at night; a scene which even imaginative Mrs. Panting trembled at the mere recollection of. He cast his daughter off with such frightful imprecations as raving demons might have uttered, and swore a horrible oath of hatred even beyond the grave. A few days after, she died in giving birth to a still-born child. The terrible passion of the old man was too much for his enfeebled frame; and he too succumbed soon after to an attack of paralysis, which, though it deprived him of speech, could not quench the hatred that burned in his eyes to the last.

When Mrs. Panting had finished her story, she exhibited as corroborative evidence a manuscript volume, much burned on the outside, which she had picked up from under the grate the morning after the tragedy. As she could not read, however, she had no idea how irresistible that corroboration was. It was Miss Steel's diary, or at any rate all that was left of it. A more appalling production, for a woman's hand, I never met before, and devoutly hope never to meet again.

How is it that the worst women, if they have the power of expression, are always the most eager to make a morbid analysis of their wickedness on paper? Let philosophers answer, if they can. Miss Steel's diary was not one of incident; about her personal surroundings she wrote little beyond the facts that her mother had died while she was an infant, and that she had never loved her father. The 'sentiment,' as she considered it, of filial affection was the subject of her most caustic sarcasms. Her father, on the other hand, had reciprocated her indifference most thoroughly, and thus she had grown in a state of complete isolation. An intelligence so acute and observant that it only wanted a touch of human sympathy to produce the fruits of genius, had been perverted by indiscriminate and unwholesome reading into a field for the growth of the wildest and most unhealthy fancies. No question was too high, or too low, or too sacred for the effrontery of her amazing speculations. Themes that mankind have been accustomed to approach with reverent awe were treated with revolting flippancy, as almost unworthy of serious thought. But it was when she had passed under the dominion of a new passion that all the distorted strength of her character was put forth. It was simply raving, with few intervals of lucidity; and I was compelled to give up the task of reading it from sheer inability to bear the painful feeling of mental irritation it produced. I need only add, that I felt it a duty to superintend carefully the process of reducing it by fire to a harmless pile of feathery ashes.

HUMAN nature, even nervous human nature, will bear a great deal, we know; and I must have got over the effects of my night's experience to some extent when I could feel a sort of grim satisfaction in despatching the following telegram to Mrs. Withers at Llanfairfechan:

'Don't come. Laburnum Villa won't do.'

________________

6: Christmas Ghost Story

Ida Deahl
fl 1890s-1900s

Weekly Times (Melbourne)  21 Dec 1895

Reprinted widely in 1920 in Australian newspapers as "Strange Ghost Story", without attribution. I can't find any biographical information, but she wrote a number of stories including "A Terrible Ordeal; or, Experience Not Necessary"(1893); "For Country" (1893); "A Will Case" (1896).

IT WAS two days before Christmas, 18—, when I arrived at Norrington Hall. The Christmas, festivities at Norrington were a tradition of the countryside, and there was not a cottage in the neighbourhood where, owing to the generosity of Sir Robert and Lady Norrington, a good piece bf beef and a rabbit or fowl or goose, in addition to a large pudding, did not afford Christmas fare to the poorest.

Lady Norrington and I had been at school together, and our girl friendship- bad continued unchanged during her active life as mistress of Norrington Hall and toy quiet, spinsterly existence as governess in different families, and my Christmas visit to Norrington was as regular a part of my life as the recurrence of the festival in each year's calendar.

I had my doubts if my friend Lady Norrington was a happy woman. These doubts were rather an undefined instinct than an outcome of any ascertained fact. I fancied at times I could detect a cloud of anxiety in her soft blue eyes and a want of interest in her daily occupations which suggested some mental preoccupation.

People said Sir Robert was a man of morbid character He was undoubtedly reserved and unsociable; perhaps the gloom of his disposition cast a shadow over his wife's life, in spite of her own explanation of her husband's moroseness being the consequence of a liver complaint acquired when he was in India..

I was at Norrington Hall some ten Christmas ago when he returned from his wanderings. He had not communicated with his parents at home for over two years, and they were in doubt if he, were alive or not. In his early days he had been very extravagant, and several mortgages had to be effected on the estate to pay off his debts. Then suddenly he had disappeared, "India" being the vague description of his destination.

The Christmas gathering at the Hall had still been continued, and among the guests were myself and my friend, Miss Mutley, between whom and Robert Norrington an early affection had existed, and which had been formally recognized by an engagement just before the heir of Norrington Hall had started on his travels. We were starting to church on the Christmas Day when Robert Norrington appeared among us. But Robert Norrington was greatly changed and sobered from the careless, daredevil young man who had left England two years previously. Already, doubtless, the liver complaint had worked its ravages, affecting alike his character and appearance. He spoke generally of two years of hard and successful work, and brought with him the means to pay off the mortgages and to put everything on its old footing of comfort and ease.

At the early dinner that afternoon a merry party gathered round the hospitable board. Old Sir James and Lady Norrington seemed to have persuaded Father Time to lift ten years from their shoulders. Miss Mutley blushed again as the past was renewed in the present, and all the other guests were animated by the happiness which enlivened our host and hostess. Robert Norrington was alone silent and moody; but this might be fatigue, or perhaps even the remembrance of past follies, which, fury-like, haunt the mind when quiet and peace dispose it to reflection.

An incident occurred at that dinner which remains impressed on my memory, more from its apparent effect on Robert Norrington than from any circumstance that openly followed on it. When the pudding was on the table the butler went round to Robert Norrington and whispered something in his ear. The colour left the young man's face as he hastily questioned the servant in an undertone; then, turning to his father, he requested to be excused for a few minutes, as some one had called to see him.

This was extraordinary, considering the young man's sudden and unexpected homecoming; but Robert Norrington offered ho further explanation, and hastily left the room. He was absent about five minutes, and then returned, introducing a friend, for whom a place was made fit the table.

This friend was an Indian named Rahmud, with keen, sharp, almond-, shaped eyes and glittering white teeth, strongly contrasting with his black hair, slight moustache, and dark complexion. Moreover, when he came into the room he seemed to bring with him a subtle perfume, reminding one of the scented Indian woods and Eastern beads.

The presence of the stranger completely altered the demeanour of Robert Norrington. He became lively, almost uproarious; he drank deeply, whereas before he had scarcely touched the wine- in his glass, and it leaked out in conversation that a matter he had neglected to see to before leaving India would necessitate his accompanying Rahmud to London immediately— in fact, they would start the next day, before any one was up, walking to the station to catch a train that started for London soon after six.

Sir James, with whom the rites of hospitality were almost as sacred as those of religion, protested— said the servants would be up and a carriage ready to take the travellers to the station. Rahmud seemed inclined to think the proposal reasonable, but Robert Norrington would not hear of the arrangement.

It was about five the next morning when one of the servants heard some movement in the house, followed shortly after by the opening and shutting of the house door. Two glasses that had been used for brandy and soda were found on the dining-room table when the servants came down, and it was concluded that the Indian had carried off the heir to London. But this supposition was contradicted at breakfast-time, when Robert Norrington appeared and explained that, after a chat with his friend Rahmud, it had been arranged that the matter of business could be settled without his presence, and that having given full authority to the Indian, Rahmud had set out alone.

SOME months, later Robert Norrington married my friend, Miss Mutley, and within seven years, Sir James having followed Lady Norrington !to the grave, Robert reigned in his stead. But a truce to reminiscences. What I have to tell relates to the present, though, after all, perhaps the brief sketch I have given of the past may help to explain my narrative.

On my arrival at the Hall, Lady Norrington had carried me oft to her boudoir, and we settled. down to our annual confidential chat, such as women who have been separated for months love. The tea-things were arranged on a small table, and, shortly after we were seated in cosy chairs by the bright wood fire, one of the servants brought in the steaming teapot. It was a girl, who had been some years at the Hall, and I nodded recognition with some short remark.

On looking at the girl I was struck on noticing that she wore a brooch of rare Indian workmanship. As a constant frequenter of museums, I am a fine judge of such matters, and I felt sure the trinket was of considerable value, and was curious to know bow she became possessed of it.

'What a pretty brooch that is you are wearing, Emma!' I said.

The girl blushed as she replied:

'I have just bought it, miss, of an Indian girl who is travelling about selling cheap jewellery. She was caught in the snowstorm, and came on to the hall, as there is no. other house for over a mile. All the servants' have bought some trifle from her, as she seems in great distress, and she is waiting in the kitchen till' the storm is past.'

Then, looking at her brooch, the girl added, 'I have just bought this, and put it in my dress not to lose it till I could go upstairs.

'It is a dreadful, evening for a girl to be out in,' said Lady Norrington, looking up from attending to the tea. 'She had better wait in the kitchen till the storm is over; and see, Emma, that she is given something to eat and drink.'

I concluded I must be mistaken in my estimate of the value of the trinket, and the subject passed for the time from my mind.

The fire was burning brightly in the grate as I retired to rest, but I was tired, and was soon in bed and fast asleep. My first slumber must have been short, for when I woke the room was still well lighted by the bright embers in the grate. I am a light sleeper, and my waking instinct was that something had aroused me. Such a feeling naturally sharpens the senses, and though I laid quiet, I was distinctly sensible of hearing a sound of crawling on the floor.

I raised myself softly in bed and saw a figure in white, apparently on its hands and knees, creeping on the floor, examining the old wainscoting of the walls, and seemingly from a distinct sniffing sound it emitted seeking out the locale of some smell. It must be a dog that has got into the room, I hoped, but the strange weird-like outline. of the figure forbade this matter-of-fact explanation. Was it a nightmare? Was it? But a creepy sensation of the supernatural deprived me of coherence of conjecture, and I seemed only able to note the movements of my strange companion without the power of reflection. It passed round the fireplace, still in the same crawling posture, and, arriving nearly opposite to where I was sitting in bed, remained for some time drawing in its breath in audible sniffs.

Suddenly it rose to its feet, with its back towards me, It was a human figure, or a spectre endowed with mortal presentiment. A long white garment clothed it. It raised its arms, and placing two fingers of one hand on the oaken panelling of the walls, gently tapped on them with the corresponding fingers of the other hand, much in the same way a doctor may sound the chest of a patient. I don't know if I moved, causing a rustle of the bedclothes, but suddenly the figure faced me.

Two bright eyes gleamed on me; a scream came to my lips, but so sudden was the movement of my assailant that it was stifled ere it could find utterance. A strong, nervous hand was on my mouth, and I was forced back in my bed. I can remember so far, but no more. I probably fainted, or was rendered unconscious; and when I came to myself the fire was out, the room quite dark, and my nerves so shaken I could not move, and had not the strength to scream.

The exhaustion, following on the nervous strain, threw me into a deep sleep, and I did not awake till the sun was shining into my room the next morning. Had it not been for a certain stiffness in my jaw, I should have concluded that I had suffered from nightmare; but my chin, where the hand had rested to close my mouth, was so tender that it gave a reality to my recollection.

My  first action was to get out of bed to see if my purse and watch, which I had placed on the dressing-table, were still there.  Yes, they were safe and I  could detect nothing that had been disturbed.  I then examined the door, it was locked as, I had left it, with the key inside. It was clear that however my midnight visitor had found access to my apartment, egress could not have been obtained through the door. To use a paradox, the only reasonable conclusion to arrive at was an unreasonable one— that some supernatural agency had been at work, or that I had been the victim of some dreadful dream, and that in an imaginary struggle I had struck my face against the bedpost.

I am very sensitive of ridicule, and above everything pride myself on sound common sense. I therefore determined to keep my night's experience to myself, and to seek indirectly to avoid sleeping in the same room again.

That morning, at breakfast Sir Robert seemed less depressed than usual, and shortly after the meal he started off for London, saying he should be back for dinner. I had a long chat with Lady Norrington during the course of the day, and learned with surprise that she was harassed about money matters. This was surprising, considering that since Sir Robert's accession an uncle of his had died, and a rich entailed estate, producing a clear net income of six thousand a year, had been inherited by him.

'Our income must be at least twelve thousand a year,' said Lady Norrington, 'and yet with what Sir Robert allows me for household expenses I can scarcely keep free from debt. I fear at times my husband must gamble, or back horses for very large amounts, or enter into speculations on the Stock Exchange. Yet none of these explanations seem satisfactory, for in any of these alternatives he would surely be sometimes successful, whereas there seems a constantly-increasing drain on our resources.'

That evening when Sir Robert returned from town he appeared a new man. His care was thrown aside, and the change was so noticeable that he explained, he had seen his doctor, and had heard the welcome news that he was on the fair road to complete recovery. He brought down a curious little Christmas presents for us all.

'I know what you have got for me, uncle,' said a little niece of Lady Norrington, whose turn to receive her present came last— 'an Indian bead  necklace.'

I noticed Sir Robert's face turn pale.

'Wrong, Polly ; it is a little gold bangle,' he replied, as he handed her a box from a jeweller's. 'What was the cause of your guess?'

'Oh, because I can smell that scent those kind of things have, and as no one else had one, I thought it was for me.'

A worried look came over. Sir Robert's face. I noticed the scent the child referred to, and was instantly reminded of many years ago when a similar odour was noticeable on Rahmud, the Indian, entering the room— no sense like smell possessing so strong a power in calling up almost forgotten memories.

THAT evening after dinner, as we sat round the huge log fire, it was proposed to keep Christmas Eve in the good old-fashioned way of telling ghost or other blood-curdling stories, and on my turn coming round I described my previous night's adventure, though I concealed my identity with the sufferer, and shifted the scene of action to some lonely old castle on the Rhine. I was surprised to notice the interest Sir Robert took in my story, and when I had finished he closely questioned me as to details. Later on in the evening, when I was looking out some music, he crossed over to me and asked where I had heard that strange ghost story— or was it a dream that had happened to myself?

'Do you know,' he added, 'that the description of the room might fit several of the bedchambers at Norrington?'

'I don't know,' I answered, 'if it was a dream or a vision— it was very real.'

'It was a dream,' he rejoined, decisively. 'It must have been a dream. This old place is haunted with dreams. I have such dreams night after night, but why,' he added, meditatively, 'should such dreams come to you?'

This conversation did not act as a tonic to my nerves. A certain feeling of pride prevented me, however, confessing to the nervousness which possessed me. During the day I had persuaded away my fears, but it was now a different thing that night had set in and that my feelings were agitated with the ghostly recitals of the evening, and more especially by the terrible reality which my experiences, had acquired by putting them into words. 'My bedroom was, to me a terror, and I dreaded loneliness with the horror of a nervous child.

That evening snapdragon and the various other festivities which gave welcome to Christmas morn delayed, our getting to bed till after Midnight. Yet this was scarcely any consolation to me, as I reflected that in ail probability those occupying the bedrooms adjoining mine would only sleep the sounder; and under the veriest pretext I managed to carry Lady Norrington with me to my bedroom.

We sat up talking till conversation flagged, and till, confessing that she felt sleepy, she left me. It was close on two o'clock, and. she opined her husband- might be asleep, and that, if he were disturbed, he would probably be restless for the remainder of the night, she retired to a dressing-room adjoining the bedroom, in which a bed was made up, and in which she occasionally slept during his frequent fits of insomnia.

I retired trembling to bed, but not to sleep. My ears were constantly on the alert, and although at times I occasionally closed my eyes, it was only almost immediately to open them again expecting to see some terrifying eight in front of me.

Three struck from, the clock on the mantelpiece, and the quiet of death seemed to reign at the Hall. I was comforting myself by reflecting that according to all rules and precedents the hour when graves do give up their dead was past, and was gradually obtaining more courage, when I heard a rustling in the wainscoting. At any other time I should have been satisfied with an explanation of rats, but my quickly-pulsating heart and throbbing brain prepared me for the supernatural. I can scarcely explain my sentiments when I heard a distinct scratching at the wall of my room, just where I had seen the figure standing the previous night; but at present, though the sound was distinctly audible, nothing was visible.

A creaking noise followed; the fire which had been flickering and had slightly lighted the room, now died down to an expiring glow, and I could distinguish nothing till again a white figure, my visitant of the night before, passed in front of the fire, and stood bending over my dressing-table.

There was momentary flicker it the grate, which enabled me to see that the white-shrouded form had taken my candlestick, and was retreating to what appeared like a dark patch in the wall. In a moment confidence returned to me. The act was that of a mortal, the dark shadow was an opening in the wall, and I silently glided from my bed with the intention of pursuit. I groped to the wall— yes, there was a panel that elided back, and which had not been left quite closed, so I did not need to find the secret spring to open it.

I pushed it back, but complete darkness met me— at least, so it seemed at first, though after a fen seconds I was conscious that there was a glimmer of reflected light from round a corner.

My matches and candle were gone. What could I do? Seek aid? Alarm the house? While I hesitated. Fate worked out its ends. I was still standing irresolute, when two sharp, pistol reports rang through the house; and rushing out on the landing, I was soon joined by the trembling occupants of the neighbouring rooms. As we huddled together like a frightened herd of deer, repeated screams reached us. They came from Lady Norrington's room, whither we hurried.

A dreadful sight met our view. Lady Norrington was bending over the body of her husband, who had been stabbed to the heart.

'I can, perhaps,' I exclaimed, 'find a solution to this mystery. Come to my room.'

Some of the servants and two gentlemen who were staying in the house followed me, while others had hurried to the stables to get ready a trap to fetch the nearest doctor.

'It is through there the murderer is to be found,' I said, pointing to the open panel. On examination we found that leading to the opening in my room was a steep flight of steps, which communicated with a narrow passage which ran between the walls of the house.

We first examined the passage, which we found passed round the intervening bedrooms till it skirted that which had been Sir Robert's. Probably there was a panel which opened into the room, though we did not find it that night, and it was not discovered till some years afterwards when the old hall was pulled down.

The searchers then returned to the steps, which they slowly descended. At the bottom was a large cavern, which in former days had probably been used as a hiding-place. As the lanterns were lowered to the ground a white mass was discovered, which closer inspection proved to be the figure of the Indian girl who had sold jewellery to the servants of Norrington Hall two evenings previously.

On lifting the girl it was discovered that she was dead, two bullets being lodged in her body. The two shots fired by Sir Robert in self-defence had thus had deadly effect, but not before she had time to murder the baronet— and for what reason? An amulet set with costly brilliants of exceptional size was clasped in one of her dead hands! Was robbery, therefore, the motive that had brought her to her untimely end? The valuable ornament was of Indian make, and if it had been in Sir Robert's possession, no one knew he owned a trinket the worth of which was valued at over a hundred thousand pounds.

When the dead body of the girl had been removed it was found that she had thrown herself for her last resting-place on a human skeleton which had probably been for years in the cavern, and subsequent investigations suggested that these mortal remains were those of the Indian Rahmud, who had visited Norrington Hall the day of Sir Robert's return from India.

The matter was placed in the hands of the police, and detectives for a time  worked hard to unravel the mystery; but the result of their discoveries was never made public, although I heard privately some time later that when the next-of-kin succeeded to the Norrington estates, he had caused the costly amulet to be sent back to India; so this seemed to preclude the idea that it was really the property of the Norringtons and that the Indian girl's crime had been prompted by the idea of plunder. The matter remained and has remained a mystery to the public and maybe is quoted as another example of the incompetence of the police.

I AM privileged to be able to give some details which may partly elucidate the strange facts which I have related.

This opportunity, occurred to me in the following manner:

I met one day one of the detectives who had been employed by Lady Norrington. He had then retired from the force, and was living in a little cottage close by the seat of a nobleman, where I was engaged as governess and companion to an only daughter. Chance threw the man in my  way, and, perhaps naturally enough, we fell to talking of Sir Robert's death, and I expressed my wonder that no explanation had been forthcoming.

"You see, miss,"  the man answered, "the Police in England are not the same as in other countries; so many matters have to be hushed up, and then the police get blamed for stupidity. You hear of jewel robberies which baffle the police. Nine out of ten it turns out that a son or a friend or even a husband has taken the valuables; so the matter has to be hushed up, and the police are put down as incompetent. Sometimes the lady sells her own jewels to pay her dressmaker, and then tells her husband they have been stolen. When we find out these things we are told to hush them up, and the public cries out we are incompetent."

"Perhaps this is so," I replied, "but nothing of the kind could have  occurred in the Norrington case."

"Well, you see, miss, we made our inquiries and sent in our report to the family, and it was thought better not to go on with our search. I don't see that I can do much harm in letting you know what we did find out, as Sir Robert and Lady Norrington are dead, and the Indian and his daughter also. When the matter was put into our hands, our first inquiry was to discover what Sir Robert had done in India, and how he had acquired his money. We found that no one of the name of Norrington had been in India; but we identified Sir Robert with a young man by the name of Morris, who had been employed by a rich native named Rahmud in a confidential capacity. Ah, miss, I see you remember the name of Rahmud. It appeared that Morris had suddenly left his employer, who had almost  immediately started in pursuit of him, having missed, directly Morris had left, a valuable amulet, worth in money alone over one hundred thousand pounds, but worth to the Rahmud very much more.

"It appears that on reaching England Morris became once more Norrington, and after spending some days in London, came on to the Hall at Christmastide, and that he was followed there by Rahmud, who must have been by the way a sharp fellow in following up clues.

"They were to leave Norrington the next morning. Rahmud was, supposed to have done so, though he was never heard of after that time, when he retired to bed— and that was his body undoubtedly that was found in the cavern.

"If the facts had been made public people might have, said that Sir Robert murdered, for some reason or another, Rahmud, and concealed his body in the cavern, and played the little game of the two glasses and the opening and shutting of the hall door just to avert suspicion. Perhaps people would have been right; but mind, I don't express an opinion.

"Well, miss, after the disappearance of Rahmud, things seem to have gone on fairly well at the Hall till the Indian woman turned up. We discovered easily enough that she was the daughter of Rahmud;  though how she found out Sir Robert offers a little difficulty. Perhaps her father, on making the discovery, may have written, though this explanation, hardly satisfies me, as there seems no reason for the delay. However, after some years she appears on the scene, gains over the servants with cheap jewellery, has a chat with the housekeeper, hears from her about Rahmud's visit, is told what room he occupied, and when she has been given some cold provisions, profits by all the servants being out of the kitchen to slip away unperceived. It is naturally concluded she has gone, but in reality, it seems, she found her way to your room— which was the one occupied by Rahmud when he slept at Norrington— and hides herself under the bed or in the wardrobe, waiting to pursue her investigations till everyone in the Hall should be asleep

"And now we come to your waking up and finding her sniffing about the room. This is explained by the fact of certain Indian families using a perfume, the ingredients of which are known only to themselves, and which is a family tradition. Children are brought up to this particular odour, and members of a family are able to detect traces of it lingering about nooks and corners long ', after it would be Imperceptible to any ordinary nose. They are trained to it like a setter or a bloodhound, only, like an Indian's power of hearing, this sense is carried to an acuteness which seems incredible to us.

"The girl probably thus discovered where her father had disappeared, and striving to ascertain if the panel were hollow, caused you to move and detected you were awake. You know what followed. Probably she drugged you and discovered the secret spring again be her marvellous acuteness of smelling, as possibly when Sir Robert pressed the spring, the secret of which was only known to the late baronet, and which, by the old conservative custom of the family,  was never trusted to anyone by the reigning baronet excepting to his eldest son.

"She probably remained in the cavern all that night and the next day, waiting for the next night to complete her work. You know on the Christmas Eve Sir Robert went to, London. We discovered the motive of his journey to be to release from pawn the amulet which on his return from India he had pledged with a wealthy firm of Jews for sixty thousand pounds in order to pay off the mortgages on the estate. It appears that for years he had been cutting down expenses and saving in every possible manner to get together this money. The public may say that a remorse of conscience prompted him to return the amulet to the Rahmud family. You say he complained of uneasy dreams, and that the evening he could effect this purpose he seemed to have taken a fresh lease of life. This fact might support the idea which I have attributed to the public, though for myself I would not express an opinion. Now we come to the concluding act.

"It stands in proof that the amulet was enclosed in a box strongly, scented with the particular perfume of the Rahmuds. Perhaps this guided the girl to Sir Robert's room; we cannot say what was her particular motive— whether revenge for her father, whether a stronger family duty, of regaining the talisman. When, by the discovery of the secret panel, she gained admittance to Sir Robert's room, her keen sense told her immediately the amulet box was under his pillow. If she would have been content to regain the talisman, who can say? But Sir Robert was awake, and seizing his revolver, fired twice with deadly aim before she could reach his bedside. Although the wounds were mortal, she yet affected perhaps her double purpose, and managed to stagger back with the talisman to die on her father's remains. That appears to be the true explanation, miss. Of course this is strictly confidential. We don't care what the public says about our incompetency. In fact, the public don't know it themselves, and we don't want them to, but the wider of the mark they are in their conjectures, the greater is the service they are doing us detectives."

_______________

7: Discharging Martha

Carroll Watson Rankin

1870-?

fl. 1895-1926

World's News (NSW), 19 June 1909

THE first applicant to respond to Brice and Pendleton's advertisement for an office-girl appeared fairly promising to Tom Page, who was too busy with tax-titles to look very closely at the young woman; so Martha Pratt, with "country-bred" written all over her, was promptly engaged.

At first Martha's innumerable mistakes were ascribed to her newness; but by the end of the first week, when no improvement was visible, Mr. Brice, clearing his throat ominously, waylaid Mr. Pendleton near the street door.

"By the way, Pendleton," said be, "that new girl doesn't fill the bill."

"Tell Page to advertise for another to-morrow," advised Mr. Pendleton. "I meant to mention it this noon. He'd better tell the girl, too. Of coarse we'll give her a week's warning."

Martha, however, entertained no suspicion of this threatening state of affairs when, the next morning, she bounced into that quiet office, carrying three substantial buttonhole-bouquets.

"My grandmother sent them," beamed good-natured Martha, presenting her solid gifts, without a trace of either coquetry or partiality, to Mr. Brice, Mr. Pendleton, and Tom Page. They're fresh from the country."

Elderly Mr. Brice glared at the matter-of-fact girl; Pendleton made queer, embarrassed noises in his throat; Tom Page, controlling with difficulty the twitching corners of his mouth, pinned his unexpected gift to the lapel of his coat. Martha, observing nothing and apparently entirely satisfied with herself, retired to her own corner.

Indeed, Martha was not observant. Perhaps if she had been, she would have made a more satisfactory assistant. As it was, she had much to learn; but unfortunately, no one in that busy office possessed either the time or the inclination to struggle with incompetence. Not only was Martha's ignorance of office methods colossal, but the girl seemed disorderly and untidy to an astonishing degree. Her desk was always in confusion. Her figures staggered down the page like a rail fence on end. Her writing was smeared with blots. She eyed these with good natured tolerance.

"I never could use ink without spilling it," she confessed to Tom Page. "We Pratts are generous even with our ink."

Yet, in spite of the general untidiness of Martha's belongings, about tbe girl herself there was a clean wholesomenese that was rather pleasing. She was not a pretty girl. Her countenance was too broad, too freckled, too ruddy for beauty; but the lines of her large mouth were neatly cut, and her big brown eyes fairly beamed with honesty and kindliness.

However, in the frigid atmosphere of Brice and Pendleton's it was not customary for the clerks to beam with anything. Tom Page had recognised that fact at once, and had promptly suppressed his own natural tendency toward exuberance. But Martha, who lacked Tom's keen perception, remained her simple, kindly, radiant, and disorderly self.

Of course neither Mr. Brice nor Mr. Pendleton, with Martha's unwelcome gift perched on his desk, could bring himself to the point of mentioning the matter of Martha's dismissal that morning. It seemed too much like betraying a trusting child. So, all unconsciously, Martha had postponed the evil moment.

Then, before the flowers had quite faded, beaming Martha appeared one morning with six splendid, big, red apples, in a plebeian yellow paper bag.

"Uncle Ben sent them," explained Martha, who, in spite of the announced fact that she was an orphan, seemed bountifully supplied with country relatives. "There isn't another tree like that in our country. Eat them right now; they'll take you back to boyhood."

Again Mr. Brice glared at Martha; again Mr. Pendleton made queer, embarrassed noises in his throat; again Tom Page struggled with his twitching lips. All three were at an utter loss for words. But they ate the apples, for such perfect fruit was indeed rare. And again was the moment of Martha's dismissal postponed.

Before the memory of those delicious apples had quite vanished, Martha arrived one rainy morning accompanied by a large circular ob-ject, which she unwrapped on Mr. Brice's sacred desk. It was a pie— a huge, thick, golden pumpkin pie with a tender, fluted crust.

"Aunt Julia made it," confided radiant Martha. "I noticed you had a cold, Mr. Pendleton, and I thought this pie might save your going out to lunch; but there's plenty for all— wait, here's a knife and three forks. This is all your pie; I had mine for breakfast."

It was certain that no pie had ever before been eaten in the formal, businesslike at-mosphere of that expensively-furnished office. But, little as the idea appealed to them, the three nonplussed men ate Aunt Julia's handi-work and found it extremely good.

Martha's numerous relatives, it developed, were not only generous, but well-to-do. They were fond of ambitious, orphaned Martha; and, being kindly disposed generally, were interested in her employers. They were as simple and as guileless as Martha herself. In Ridgeway it was customary to give way to generous impulses. That this was not the fashion in the business circles of Bolton was an idea that had not occurred to any of the Pratts.

During the noon hour one day the three men found themselves alone.

"Pendleton," said Mr. Brice, eyeing the golden russet pear on his desk, "that woodenheaded girl is buying us."

"Yes," agreed Mr. Pendleton, glancing at the twin pear on his own desk, "she certainly is; but she doesn't know it— I'm convinced of that."

"Perhaps not," returned Brice, doubtfully; "but the fact remains that we've been bought. "What are we going to do about it? I— well— I can't eat a pear like that and then deliberately crush the donor."

"It's a tough proposition," admitted Pendleton.

"There's a first-rate girl in Hooper's," sug-gested Tom Page, "that we could have for the asking. They're cutting down their office force. We could let Miss Pratt do the drudgery— there's enough of it, and she's certainly willing enough. That would let her down by degrees, and give us the efficient help that we lack at present."

Thus weakly temporising, the partners agreed to this plan. The new girl, Miss Emmons, proved all that Martha was not. Neat, slender, efficient, self-contained, Miss Emmons was like a piece of well-oiled office furniture. Within 48 hours of her arrival, Messrs. Brice and Pendleton were all but oblivious to the fact that Miss Emmons existed. They did realise, however, that the office work was going with unprecedented smoothness.

Martha realised It also. But Martha could not regard the newcomer with indifference. To the deposed clerk, Miss Emmons was a revelation. Her clothes, her reserved yet assured manner, most of all her systematic neat-ness, profoundly impressed country-bred Martha. There was no doubt about her unstinted admiration for Miss Emmons. Martha began at once to copy the older girl's clothes, her way of doing her hair, her noiseless manner of moving about the office. She even tried to imitate Miss Emmons's neat figures and pre-cise handwriting. By the end of a fortnight, ill-taught Martha was improving by leaps and bounds.

"By Jove!" said Tom Page. "I never supposed she had it in her or I'd have given her a lift or two myself. Perhaps, after all, there's the making of a good business woman in her. Perhaps she was merely raw and green. They say that width between the eyes denotes intelligence; the width's there, all right. But, of course, Brice and Pendleton's is no kindergarten for greenhorns; we couldn't be expected to teach her. But she's certainly picking up."

There was no doubt about it, Martha was "picking up." But in one respect she was still unchanged. Russet pears from Uncle Rowan, Baldwin apples from Uncle Ben, Aunt Julia's famous pumpkins pies, and bouquets from Grandma Pratt's luxuriant houseplants, continued to invade the office.

Whenever one of these incongruous gifts arrived, Miss Emmons wore a superior smile, which Tom Page easily interpreted, but to which Martha remained sublimely impervious. The thanks of Miss Emmons for her share in these gifts were delicately ironical. This also missed fire with honest Martha.

One morning the usually prompt Mr. Brice arrived late. It was evident to the least ob-servant that he was suffering with a stiff neck. Mr. Brice at his best was an unapproachable person; Mr. Brice in pain was formidable even to his most courageous relative. Mr. Pendleton wisely postponed certain business matters that he had intended to mention; Tom Page quietly effaced himself; Miss Emmons as quiet-ly became a piece of insensate office furniture; but Martha, nothing daunted, exclaimed sym-pathetically:—

"Mercy, Mr. Brice, you must be feeling just awful! I had one of those necks once, and it hurt like all possessed. I'm real sorry for you."

Mr. Brice glowered, Mr. Pendleton gulped, Tom Page controlled his treacherous lips. Miss Emmons shot a satirical yet guarded glance in Tom Page's direction.

"Don't worry," assured oblivious Martha; "it won't last long."

That noon Martha was late; she was likewise flushed and dishevelled front unusual exertion. She placed a tall, brown bottle on Mr. Brice's highly-polished desk.

"Sorry I'm late," said she, easily; "but I had to go way out to Cousin Sarah Calliper's for this mixture. It's the best stuff ever made for stiff necks. Take off your collar and rub this liniment on the cords. Don't be afraid; Cousin Sarah made it herself."

Even on the hottest day of midsummer Mr. Brice had never committed the impropriety of removing his coat or loosening his collar in that austere office, but now, under Martha's compelling eye, the collar came off, the evilsmelling liniment went on.

"Now," said Martha, producing a compact roll of coarse flannel, "wrap this about your neck."

Mr. Brice, still glowering, obeyed. There was simply nothing else to do with those kind-ly, insistent brown eyes compelling him. Mr. Pendleton considerately removed himself from the premises; Tom Page discovered instant and pressing business within the fireproof vault.

At intervals during the afternoon Martha insisted on fresh applications. At closing time, Mr. Brice, whose bravest relative would have hesitated, in a matter of life or death, to ask him to carry a parcel, walked meekly out of the office with a big, brown bottle distending the pocket of his faultless coat. A muffler, impulsively borrowed by Martha from Tom Page, mercifully concealed the red flannel.

And then Miss Emmons, who felt that matters had gone far enough, turned to beaming Martha. In cold, cutting, unmistakable words she told her that she was a simple-minded greenhorn; that office-girls were expected to work, not to conciliate their employers with foolish gifts; that when a business firm em-ployed a girl, it did not wish to be burdened with obligations to all that girl's relatives. She ridiculed the apples, the pears, the pumpkin pies, and the brown liniment. She made poor Martha see how ludicrous a thing it was for old Grandma Pratt to send her home-grown bouquets to such men as Messrs. Brice and Pendleton and Tom Page.

There was no doubt that Martha needed some such lesson; but, as the wellaimed blows landed neatly, the girl fairly staggered under the battery.

"I— I didn't know," she gasped. Then, plunging blindly into her wraps, Martha fled toward the elevator.

"That was a hanged shame," confided Tom Page to the contents of his desk. "No man could have knifed her like that."

Thereafter, there were no more apples, no more pears, no more pies. When Tom Page came down unmistakably with quinsy, Martha, knowing that her home contained the perfect remedy, remained outwardly as impassive as Miss Emmons herself.

Then came the startling days of the panic. Brice and Pendleton found themselves suddenly and uncomfortably involved. For a week even obtuse Martha could see that Messrs. Brice and Pendleton were exceedingly troubled. She gathered vaguely that an alarmingly large sum of money was needed for some immediate contingency; that the money was not forthcom-ing, and that the world in general was not to be apprised of the pressing need. She learned, too, that both Mr. Brice and Mr. Pendleton had tried, and failed, to secure a large portion of the needed amount, and that both men were surprised, shocked, and bewildered at finding the firm in this unlooked-for predicament.

But Martha was now sophisticated. She knew now that she lived in a world where it was not considered proper to "rush in" with eager offers of assistance. It was not in Martha, however, to permit even an ice-clad employer to sink with human aid in sight. A month pre-viously, the task would have seemed simple. Now, enlightened by Mise Emmons, Martha found it exceedingly hard to extend to the drowning men her straw, even though it proved, like her apples, pears, and pies, rather a substantial straw.

Yet, gathering all her courage, she forced herself to cross the room under the fire of Miss Emmons's hard, inquiring eyes and to stand, inwardly cringing, beside Mr. Brice's desk.

"Mr. Brice," said she, abject in her consciousness and crimsoning and paling by turns, "I know now that it isn't proper for me to offer to do anything more in this office than you tell me to do. I've learned that— and I'm awfully sorry I have learned it, because we Pratts like to do things for others. I guess it's part of our religion out in Ridgeway; but I see now that it isn't that way in towns. But— but— well, would eighteen thousand dollars be of any use to you?"

"Use!" gasped Mr. Brice, clutching the arms of his chair. "Use! Why, girl, if I could have that sum before noon to-morrow it would just about save Brice and Pendleton!"

"Well," returded Martha, now as calm as if she were lightly proffering eighteen cents, "Uncle Ben, Uncle Rowan, and Uncle Henry— he's Aunt Julia's husband— could lend you that much money and hold their tongues about it. If you'll ride out to Ridgeway with me now, you can fix it up with the men folks."

Leaving Mr. Pendleton, Tom Page, and Miss Emmons gasping like three freshly-landed trout, the senior partner and Martha departed hurriedly to catch the suburban car.

"That girl," said Mr. Pendleton, recovering finally, "is as sound and wholesome as one of Aunt Julia's pies."

"And her kind," agreed Tom Page, "is as rare as that apple-tree of Uncle Ben's."

___________________

8: The Allard Burglars

George Hibbard

1858-1928

Munsey’s Magazine March 1906

The World's News (Sydney) 14 Apr 1906

I HAD BEEN staying for some time at the Allards'. I did not remain there because I was enjoying myself. In fact, I cannot recollect having ever made such another stupid visit. The house was the quietest of the quiet, and everything in it the stiffest of the stiff. Adele's father had died some years before, and her mother lived in the greatest seclusion. Everyone called her "Mme. Allard," and indeed she was like a stately old French marquise. I do not mean the gay kind, but one of those haughty old grandes dames of the Faubourg St. Germain. She had married M. Victor Allard when he was not yet 20, and had lived in France all her life, so that she was virtually a Frenchwoman. She had come back to America to bring out Adele in her own country, and had taken a large house on the outskirts of Morristown.

The fact that Adele was engaged to George Lerov did nothing to add to the liveliness of the place. I did not understand how the girl could have managed it. As a matter of fact, she hadn't. The Leroys are an old Louisiana family with exactly the same foreign ideas as Mme. Allard's.

Thank goodness, I am a free American maiden Not even living in a "moated grange" would repay me for being an English miss, who is not expected to open her mouth in society. Not even having a Crusader for an ancestor would compensate far having to have a chaperon every time one went into the street, as would be the case if I were a demoiselle of France. And as for getting married! Nothing could make up for being just a plain— I don't mean "not pretty"— young American, with the chance to choose for myself and the power to do it in my own way. I am never more patriotic than when I think of all the fun that I have had as an American girl, and all I am going to have as an American woman.

George's father and Adele's mother simply ar-ranged the whole thing. Fortunately, the young people had fallen in love at first sight; but as for the very best part of being engaged, the walking and riding and driving together— not at all! Sitting out on the verandah in the moonlight— never! Mme. Allard simply would have expired with horror at the very idea of each proceedings. Me for the good old United States way— hanging on the front gate and buggy-riding ad libitum.

I was going to be first bridesmaid, and I had promised to see Adele, who was a dear, through all of it. In the morning we sewed with Mme. Allard. In the afternoon we drove in the big victoria with her. In the evening I played piquet with her. while George, who was allowed to come to dinner, eat within earshot and tried to make conversation with Adele.

Naturally, with this dearth of occupation and lack of interest, my mind was unusually busy. I had practised myself in detecting any unwont-ed manifestation. Unavoidably, therefore, when I observed a singular-looking man pass and re-pass twice through the little lane at the back of the house and across the gardens, on which my bedroom window looked, I began to sit up and take notice. He was a stout, strong looking, fresh-faced, youngish individual, and what first attracted my attention was the unusual loudness at his attire. Nowhere, except on a tes-selated pavement, have I seen such enormous checks or squares as were exhibited in the pattern of his clothes.

His necktie was a flaming green, and in it he wore a large yellow stone. But what chiefly caused me to notice him was his conscious manner. I could not say precisely how he showed his nervousness; but something about the hang of his head, the way in which no shuffled his feet, the furtive fashion in which he glanced out from under his curly brimmed hat, convinced me that something was amiss. He had perfectly the air of having eaten the canary.

I do not mean to say that to the ordinary person his aspect and conduct might not have appeared usual and natural; but I was not deceived. The lane did not lead anywhere. I did not believe that such a being could be found walking in the country merely for his health, much less to enjoy the beauties of nature.

After seeing him twice, I placed myself on watch at the hour at which he passed. Would he appear again? At that time I did not have the confidence in myself which I have since attained. Only with the remarkable events through which I have passed have I learned to put trust in my own conclusions, deductions— yes, and intuitions. When I was at the Allards' I had not a series of successes to give me self-reliance. He came. From behind the certain I saw him stand at the end of the path and glance up and down; next he skulked doubtfully forward. I never beheld a more hangdog creature in my life. If he had not some concealed purpose in his head, then no detective story of them all was worth anything as a precedent. He walked, or rather stole, along. Having advanced for some distance, he leaned against the opposite fence and proceeded to gaze about with a great assumption at abstraction, at the same time darting quick glances at the house.

At once all my interest was aroused. Here was unmistakably a mystery before my very eyes. I determined then and there to probe it to its depths. How was this to be accomplished? I tried to think of all that those whom I had read would do. Undoubtedly I had called some-where. Any one of them would already have seen a clue; but all that I could do was to watch, and I blamed myself for utter stupidity. Finally, as if satisfied, the man began to move away, with the same guilty air which had marked his every motion. Suddenly I had an inspiration. I would go down and look. I should assuredly find something to throw light on the affair. I reflected that criminals never did anything without some trace remaining by which all might be read if search was made in the right way. Let the true detective appear, and there was something— a matchbox, a shred of cloth, a blot of ink— something that would reveal everything. That the tell-tale sign was there I could not doubt. I had only to find it. At once I hurried down-stairs and out of the house. I fairly ran across the garden path. I was in such a hurry that then and there I nearly missed my clue. Indeed, I leaned at that moment that never for an instant should one allow one's attention to relax— that one must be continually on the alert. I do not know how I happened to do it, but as I tripped along I noticed what looked like a blotch of light yellow on a big tree near the high wall. My roving glance was at once arrested and held. Looking closer, I saw that a stout limb had been torn away, leaving a place where the fresh wood showed through the bark. How had the limb been broken? Certainly there was no one in our household gives to climbing large trees— or little ones, either. I drew nearer, and discovered that I was not mis-taken. I stood gazing up in perplexity, and them I happened to look down.

I will confess that I could hardly trust my senses. I know that I gave a great start. They were there— of all things— footprints. They were just what detectives always found, and here was I discovering them the very first thing. I could scarcely believe that all this was actually happening to me exactly as I had read that such things happened.

I realised at once that I must be calm and collected. That was the way in which the stars of my profession always behaved. I most not let my judgment be disturbed by excitement.

I most approach the problem with a perfectly clear mind. Hastily I plumped down on my knees. In-tently I examined my discovery. A garden bed ran along the wall. The plants had been taken from this, leaving it bare and ready for the next season. In the soft mould the marks were distinctly visible. That they were made by a man's shoe I learned at once— a large shoe, or two large ones, such as the person I had watched on the lawn might wear. But—

I thrilled with excitement. Each moment the mystery grew deeper. As I studied the confused prints I became more and more certain that the traces had not an been left there by one pair of feet Two people had been there!

The other impressions were smaller, but still too large to be left by a woman's sole and heel. Two men had crossed the wall! The Individual who had just gone had a confederate, or else, as was more probable, he was the confederate of the other.

I stood up to meditate. I remembered that on the other side of the wall a farm waggon had been ran up against it. By mounting into it, climbing to the wall, and swinging down by the tree, I found that access to the grounds was extremely easy. Two men had entered is that way— but why?

The prints continued across the garden beds. I must follow them and see where they led. Diligently I set out on the trail. I lost it once in a tangle of weeds. I picked it up again, Once mere I thought myself completely at fault at a gravel path and a patch of smooth grass. I hunted along the house. I reached another bed under the dining-room window, and found the smaller prints once mere. There were a great many of them, one over another, as if the man had stood there for some time and had moved about restlessly. The larger prints did not appear at all; but searching still further, I discovered them in a muddy place in the path that led toward the back of the house.

I sank down on a garden bench. I saw it all! A bank of robbers was preparing to break into the place. They had come to make investigation. The man in the lane was a spy; they would return at the proper time and "crack the crib."

My first impulse, naturally, was to give warn-ing. I think I started up to do so, and then sat down. I could not convince myself yet that all was as I believed. Mme. Allard was such a serious, matter-of-fact person that I did not like to go to her with my story. Even Adele, I feared, might laugh at me if I told her any-thing.

I knew of a girl who was staying at a country house and thought she heard a burglar in her room. She woke up everybody, and there was nothing there. They made such fun of her that she did not have any peace. The result was that when she actually saw a robber, she thought she was dreaming, and went off to sleep again. In the morning they found that all her jewels and the family silver were gone. I wanted to be absolutely sure of my burglar first. As I cogitated. I saw Adele come tearing out of the house. From the way she flew, from the fashion in which she panted, I knew that something remarkable had taken place.

"Oh, what is it?" I exclaimed, springing for-ward.

Discovering me, she sped toward me.

"Cynthia," she cried, "I'm running to the stable to send a groom for Dr. Stibbs. Fanfare—"

"What is the matter with him?" I demanded, imagining the consternation that must reign indoors if anything had gone wrong with Mme. Allard's brown poodle, the privileged and cherished pet of the establishment.

"He's been taken violently ill, and there to no time to he lost. Mama is distracted!"

As she sped away, I thought rapidly. The first thing thieves did was to get rid of any dog. Poor Fanfare, in spite of his pampered existence, had all his senses, and would have given instant warning of any unusual noise after nightfall. Proof seemed to be piling upon proof.

Still I did not speak. The commotion and dismay which I found in the house had some-thing to do with it. With Fanfare in such a state, I do not believe that Mme. Allard would have paid any attention If I had told her that the Forty Thieves were hammering at the door. Besides, I reflected that If I watched, nothing could happen, for if the burglars came I could give warning in time. Furthermore, there was something attractive about the idea of acting independently. That, I believe, was the way in which all the famous detectives would have met the crisis.

Poor Fanfare was very ill indeed. Everyone was running about and a fuss that any thought of other things was quite impossible. Presently the doctor hurried in, thinking from the wild alarm that Mme. Allard herself was at death's door. I do not fancy he was very well pleased in being called to treat a dog, but he understood Fanfare's position in the house, and soon got over his indignation.

At dinner we talked of nothing else but Fan-fare's seizure, which had now pretty nearly passed off. When George Leroy came in the evening, he had to be told all about it to the last particular. Then madame and I settled down to piquet—and how the minutes dragged! I thought the hands of the clock, which I watched eagerly, would never reach half past ten— at which time precisely George Leroy was always sent away from the house.

Finally, however, I found myself in my room. My window commanded the point in the wall where the marauders had crossed before, and I concluded that the same method of entry would boe used again. I sat down in the dark, dressed just as I was, and prepared for a long vigil. I remembered from my reading that such at- tempts were never made until the small hours of the morning, when all was the quietest.

The place was so still that if they were going to undertake the desperate deed, I thought they might as well do it then as at any other time. The house was sunk in perfect rest. Outside, in the faint, clouded moonlight, not a thing stirred. The darkness and the absolute quietude began to affect me. I realised that my pulse was beat- ing quickly— that my nerves were all at tension.

Presently I perceived a head bob up over the wall. In an instant a body followed. A man climbed over the opening, and swung himself by the branches down to the ground. My first feeling was one of exultation that I had not been mistaken. Here was a burglar, sure enough! Next I reached the conclusion that the moment had come for me to act.

Mme. Allard's room was down the corridor and across the big gallery. In an instant I was at her door. Knocking tempestuously, I awakened her at once.

"What is it?" she demanded sleepily.

"Burglars!" I answered thrillingly.

"Nonsense, my dear," she responded placidly.

"I saw a man climb over the wall and steal up to the house!"

"I'll be with you in a moment," she replied.

She was as good as her word, and a few seconds later she stood beside me, an impressing figure. She would have intimidat-ed any burglar by her stately appearance; nor did she seem at all frightened.

"Of course you dreamed it all," she declared. That was exactly what the other people said. "Girls are always having panics about burglars. However, just to convince you, we will look."

"Aren't you afraid?" I gasped.

"They will not hurt two women."

We advanced down the darkened stairs. I was more terrified than I would acknowledge as I followed her.

"If they heard us coning, they would simply run away," she said to reassure me. "However, if you screamed, it might have a good effect."

I found a great satisfaction in obeying her. I have been told that my voice is low and soft, but the screech that rent the night would have been worthy of any heroine of lurid fiction. At the same instant Mme. Allard touched the but-ton, and the lower hall was flooded with light. We peered eagerly and a little fearfully about, but saw nothing.

"I think, indeed, you must be mistaken," madame observed. "We will, however, investigate further."

"The dining-room!" I ejaculated. "The tracks were under the window. The safe is there!"

"We proceed there at once," she announced with her usual grand manner.

As I stood before the dining-room door, I felt as I had never felt before. My knees fairly trembled under me. What might await us on other side on the panels? What might happen when the dark and heavy barrier was swung back? I was soon to know, for Mme. Allard turned the knob. "I know they are there!" I murmured. "Oh, be careful!"

Complete darkness met our gaze, but as the door opened we heard a startled exclamation, and there was a movement in the impenetrable blackness.

"Oh, they are there!" I cried.

Then Mme. Allard screamed herself. She screamed quite as loudly as I had, and this testified me even more. At the same time every electric light in the room suddenly glowed into radiance. I think she turned on the switch in- stinctively, in her nervousness and consterna- tion. And then I opened my eyes, and my mouth too, and stared and stared. There, seated on the table, was George Leroy, with his arm above Adele, who sat beside him. Each had in one hand a large piece of cake.

With a slight shriek Adele slid to her feet. George let himself down more slowly.

"What—" stammered Mme. Allard. For once in her life her self-possession had com-pletely deserted her. But before anything further could be said or done, the most remarkable thing happened. The pantry door crashed open. With a rush which knocked down the screen, the strange man whom I had seen in the lane, followed by Matilda, the cook, sprang into the room. Before I had time to think, before I had even time to see perfectly what was going on, he had seized George Leroy.

"Got you, have I?" the newcomer exclaimed. They straggled violently. Finally, with a desperate effort— for both were very strong— George threw him off.

"What's the meaning of this?" he demanded.

"Meaning yourself?" retorted the stranger hotly.

"Oh, what is it?" demanded Mme. Allard, just as agitated and trembling as anyone else.

"Why," declared the intruder indignantly, as he wiped his hot, red face with a spotted blue handkerchief, "I heard a scream. I started to find out what was wrong. Comin' in quick through that there door I catched this man standin' here and lookin' guilty, and as there wasn't anyone else I grabs him for a burglar."

"And pray," asked Mme. Allard, recovering herself somewhat, "who are you?"

"I am Samuel Gullidge, the batcher, ma'am," he answered a good deal more deferentially. "What are you doing here at this hour?"

The man hesitated. "I'll tell you, ma'am," said Matilda, speaking up briskly. "Sam was here to see me. What with the strict ways o' this house there was nothing else to he done, except do it unbeknownst to you—"

"Silence!" commanded Mme. Allard. "And you?" she said, turning to George Leroy. He stood speechless for an instant.

"Why," said Adele suddenly and desperately, "I never had a chance to see George alone. With this foreign idea of an engagement I was just like a prisoner. I was determined to have the fun that other girls have; so every even- ing George would say good night, and then, after everyone had gone upstairs. I slipped down here, opened the dining-room window, and he came in to say good night to me all over again."

"I never heard of anything like—" Mme.

Allard commenced; then she paused.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," continued Matilda, beginning to sob into her apron.

"I'm sorry to have you think I'd have such underhand ways. An' I'm sorry, ma'am, I give the leavin's of the lobster Newburgh to Fanfare. That's what made him sick, I'm thinkin'."

"I have no doubt of it,'' Mme. Allard commented briefly.

"I am sorry, too. Mme. Allard," said George Leroy, stepping forward. "I should not have done it, but never to see Adele for a moment except with people was maddening. In an American engagement—"

"Yes," said Mme. Allard, as he paused. "I understand. When one is in Rome it's better to be— an American. In future you and Adele shall have the drawing-room to yourselves, and Cynthia and I will play piquet in the library. And, Matilda, you may receive Mr. Samuel Gullidge, who so bravely came to what he supposed our rescue, in the servants' sitting-room on Wednesday and Saturday evenings."

Really, in view of what I did for Adele— and for Matilda— I think I am fully justified in considering the adventure of the Allard burglar a triumph.

____________

9:  The Eyes

Edith Wharton

1862-1937

Scribner's Magazine, June 1910

Edith Newbold Jones Wharton

WE had been put in the mood for ghosts, that evening, after an excellent dinner at our old friend Culwin's, by a tale of Fred Murchard's— the narrative of a strange personal visitation.

Seen through the haze of our cigars, and by the drowsy gleam of a coal fire, Culwin's library, with its oak walls and dark old bindings, made a good setting for such evocations; and ghostly experiences at first hand being, after Murchard's brilliant opening, the only kind acceptable to us, we proceeded to take stock of our group and tax each member for a contribution. There were eight of us, and seven contrived, in a manner more or less adequate, to fulfil the condition imposed. It surprised us all to find that we could muster such a show of supernatural impressions, for none of us, excepting Murchard himself and young Phil Frenham— whose story was the slightest of the lot— had the habit of sending our souls into the invisible. So that, on the whole, we had every reason to be proud of our seven "exhibits," and none of us would have dreamed of expecting an eighth from our host.

Our old friend, Mr. Andrew Culwin, who had sat back in his arm-chair, listening and blinking through the smoke circles with the cheerful tolerance of a wise old idol, was not the kind of man likely to be favoured with such contacts, though he had imagination enough to enjoy, without envying, the superior privileges of his guests. By age and by education he belonged to the stout Positivist tradition, and his habit of thought had been formed in the days of the epic struggle between physics and metaphysics. But he had been, then and always, essentially a spectator, a humorous detached observer of the immense muddled variety show of life, slipping out of his seat now and then for a brief dip into the convivialities at the back of the house, but never, as far as one knew, showing the least desire to jump on the stage and do a "turn."

Among his contemporaries there lingered a vague tradition of his having, at a remote period, and in a romantic clime, been wounded in a duel; but this legend no more tallied with what we younger men knew of his character than my mother's assertion that he had once been "a charming little man with nice eyes" corresponded to any possible reconstitution of his dry thwarted physiognomy.

"He never can have looked like anything but a bundle of sticks," Murchard had once said of him. "Or a phosphorescent log, rather," some one else amended; and we recognized the happiness of this description of his small squat trunk, with the red blink of the eyes in a face like mottled bark. He had always been possessed of a leisure which he had nursed and protected, instead of squandering it in vain activities. His carefully guarded hours had been devoted to the cultivation of a fine intelligence and a few judiciously chosen habits; and none of the disturbances common to human experience seemed to have crossed his sky. Nevertheless, his dispassionate survey of the universe had not raised his opinion of that costly experiment, and his study of the human race seemed to have resulted in the conclusion that all men were superfluous, and women necessary only because some one had to do the cooking. On the importance of this point his convictions were absolute, and gastronomy was the only science which he revered as dogma. It must be owned that his little dinners were a strong argument in favour of this view, besides being a reason— though not the main one— for the fidelity of his friends.

Mentally he exercised a hospitality less seductive but no less stimulating. His mind was like a forum, or some open meeting-place for the exchange of ideas: somewhat cold and draughty, but light, spacious and orderly— a kind of academic grove from which all the leaves had fallen. In this privileged area a dozen of us were wont to stretch our muscles and expand our lungs; and, as if to prolong as much as possible the tradition of what we felt to be a vanishing institution, one or two neophytes were now and then added to our band.

Young Phil Frenham was the last, and the most interesting, of these recruits, and a good example of Murchard's somewhat morbid assertion that our old friend "liked 'em juicy." It was indeed a fact that Culwin, for all his mental dryness, specially tasted the lyric qualities in youth. As he was far too good an Epicurean to nip the flowers of soul which he gathered for his garden, his friendship was not a disintegrating influence: on the contrary, it forced the young idea to robuster bloom. And in Phil Frenham he had a fine subject for experimentation. The boy was really intelligent, and the soundness of his nature was like the pure paste under a delicate glaze. Culwin had fished him out of a thick fog of family dulness, and pulled him up to a peak in Darien; and the adventure hadn't hurt him a bit. Indeed, the skill with which Culwin had contrived to stimulate his curiosities without robbing them of their young bloom of awe seemed to me a sufficient answer to Murchard's ogreish metaphor. There was nothing hectic in Frenham's efflorescence, and his old friend had not laid even a finger-tip on the sacred stupidities. One wanted no better proof of that than the fact that Frenham still reverenced them in Culwin.

"There's a side of him you fellows don't see. I believe that story about the duel!" he declared; and it was of the very essence of this belief that it should impel him— just as our little party was dispersing— to turn back to our host with the absurd demand: "And now you've got to tell us about your ghost!"

The outer door had closed on Murchard and the others; only Frenham and I remained; and the vigilant servant who presided over Culwin's destinies, having brought a fresh supply of soda-water, had been laconically ordered to bed.

Culwin's sociability was a night-blooming flower, and we knew that he expected the nucleus of his group to tighten around him after midnight. But Frenham's appeal seemed to disconcert him comically, and he rose from the chair in which he had just reseated himself after his farewells in the hall.

"My ghost? Do you suppose I'm fool enough to go to the expense of keeping one of my own, when there are so many charming ones in my friends' closets?— Take another cigar," he said, revolving toward me with a laugh.

Frenham laughed too, pulling up his slender height before the chimney-piece as he turned to face his short bristling friend.

"Oh," he said, "you'd never be content to share if you met one you really liked."

Culwin had dropped back into his armchair, his shock head embedded in its habitual hollow, his little eyes glimmering over a fresh cigar.

"Liked— liked? Good Lord!" he growled.

"Ah, you have, then!" Frenham pounced on him in the same instant, with a sidewise glance of victory at me; but Culwin cowered gnome-like among his cushions, dissembling himself in a protective cloud of smoke.

"What's the use of denying it? You've seen everything, so of course you've seen a ghost!" his young friend persisted, talking intrepidly into the cloud. "Or, if you haven't seen one, it's only because you've seen two!"

The form of the challenge seemed to strike our host. He shot his head out of the mist with a queer tortoise-like motion he sometimes had, and blinked approvingly at Frenham.

"Yes," he suddenly flung at us on a shrill jerk of laughter; "it's only because I've seen two!"

The words were so unexpected that they dropped down and down into a fathomless silence, while we continued to stare at each other over Culwin's head, and Culwin stared at his ghosts. At length Frenham, without speaking, threw himself into the chair on the other side of the hearth, and leaned forward with his listening smile…

ii

"OH, of course they're not show ghosts— a collector wouldn't think anything of them… Don't let me raise your hopes… their one merit is their numerical strength: the exceptional fact of their being two. But, as against this, I'm bound to admit that at any moment I could probably have exorcised them both by asking my doctor for a prescription, or my oculist for a pair of spectacles. Only, as I never could make up my mind whether to go to the doctor or the oculist— whether I was afflicted by an optical or a digestive delusion— I left them to pursue their interesting double life, though at times they made mine exceedingly comfortable…

"Yes— uncomfortable; and you know how I hate to be uncomfortable! But it was part of my stupid pride, when the thing began, not to admit that I could be disturbed by the trifling matter of seeing two—

"And then I'd no reason, really, to suppose I was ill. As far as I knew I was simply bored— horribly bored. But it was part of my boredom— I remember— that I was feeling so uncommonly well, and didn't know how on earth to work off my surplus energy. I had come back from a long journey— down in South America and Mexico— and had settled down for the winter near New York, with an old aunt who had known Washington Irving and corresponded with N. P. Willis. She lived, not far from Irvington, in a damp Gothic villa, overhung by Norway spruces, and looking exactly like a memorial emblem done in hair. Her personal appearance was in keeping with this image, and her own hair— of which there was little left— might have been sacrificed to the manufacture of the emblem.

"I had just reached the end of an agitated year, with considerable arrears to make up in money and emotion; and theoretically it seemed as though my aunt's mild hospitality would be as beneficial to my nerves as to my purse. But the deuce of it was that as soon as I felt myself safe and sheltered my energy began to revive; and how was I to work it off inside of a memorial emblem? I had, at that time, the agreeable illusion that sustained intellectual effort could engage a man's whole activity; and I decided to write a great book— I forget about what. My aunt, impressed by my plan, gave up to me her Gothic library, filled with classics in black cloth and daguerrotypes of faded celebrities; and I sat down at my desk to make myself a place among their number. And to facilitate my task she lent me a cousin to copy my manuscript.

"The cousin was a nice girl, and I had an idea that a nice girl was just what I needed to restore my faith in human nature, and principally in myself. She was neither beautiful nor intelligent— poor Alice Nowell!— but it interested me to see any woman content to be so uninteresting, and I wanted to find out the secret of her content. In doing this I handled it rather rashly, and put it out of joint— oh, just for a moment! There's no fatuity in telling you this, for the poor girl had never seen any one but cousins…

"Well, I was sorry for what I'd done, of course, and confoundedly bothered as to how I should put it straight. She was staying in the house, and one evening, after my aunt had gone to bed, she came down to the library to fetch a book she'd mislaid, like any artless heroine on the shelves behind us. She was pink-nosed and flustered, and it suddenly occurred to me that her hair, though it was fairly thick and pretty, would look exactly like my aunt's when she grew older. I was glad I had noticed this, for it made it easier for me to do what was right; and when I had found the book she hadn't lost I told her I was leaving for Europe that week.

"Europe was terribly far off in those days, and Alice knew at once what I meant. She didn't take it in the least as I'd expected— it would have been easier if she had. She held her book very tight, and turned away a moment to wind up the lamp on my desk— it had a ground glass shade with vine leaves, and glass drops around the edge, I remember. Then she came back, held out her hand, and said: 'Good-bye.' And as she said it she looked straight at me and kissed me. I had never felt anything as fresh and shy and brave as her kiss. It was worse than any reproach, and it made me ashamed to deserve a reproach from her. I said to myself: 'I'll marry her, and when my aunt dies she'll leave us this house, and I'll sit here at the desk and go on with my book; and Alice will sit over there with her embroidery and look at me as she's looking now. And life will go on like that for any number of years.' The prospect frightened me a little, but at the time it didn't frighten me as much as doing anything to hurt her; and ten minutes later she had my seal ring on my finger, and my promise that when I went abroad she should go with me.

"You'll wonder why I'm enlarging on this familiar incident. It's because the evening on which it took place was the very evening on which I first saw the queer sight I've spoken of. Being at that time an ardent believer in a necessary sequence between cause and effect I naturally tried to trace some kind of link between what had just happened to me in my aunt's library, and what was to happen a few hours later on the same night; and so the coincidence between the two events always remained in my mind.

"I went up to bed with rather a heavy heart, for I was bowed under the weight of the first good action I had ever consciously committed; and young as I was, I saw the gravity of my situation. Don't imagine from this that I had hitherto been an instrument of destruction. I had been merely a harmless young man, who had followed his bent and declined all collaboration with Providence. Now I had suddenly undertaken to promote the moral order of the world, and I felt a good deal like the trustful spectator who has given his gold watch to the conjurer, and doesn't know in what shape he'll get it back when the trick is over… Still, a glow of self-righteousness tempered my fears, and I said to myself as I undressed that when I'd got used to being good it probably wouldn't make me as nervous as it did at the start. And by the time I was in bed, and had blown out my candle, I felt that I really was getting used to it, and that, as far as I'd got, it was not unlike sinking down into one of my aunt's very softest wool mattresses.

"I closed my eyes on this image, and when I opened them it must have been a good deal later, for my room had grown cold, and the night was intensely still. I was waked suddenly by the feeling we all know— the feeling that there was something near me that hadn't been there when I fell asleep. I sat up and strained my eyes into the darkness. The room was pitch black, and at first I saw nothing; but gradually a vague glimmer at the foot of the bed turned into two eyes staring back at me. I couldn't see the face attached to them— on account of the darkness, I imagined— but as I looked the eyes grew more and more distinct: they gave out a light of their own.

"The sensation of being thus gazed at was far from pleasant, and you might suppose that my first impulse would have been to jump out of bed and hurl myself on the invisible figure attached to the eyes. But it wasn't— my impulse was simply to lie still… I can't say whether this was due to an immediate sense of the uncanny nature of the apparition— to the certainty that if I did jump out of bed I should hurl myself on nothing— or merely to the benumbing effect of the eyes themselves. They were the very worst eyes I've ever seen: a man's eyes— but what a man! My first thought was that he must be frightfully old. The orbits were sunk, and the thick red-lined lids hung over the eyeballs like blinds of which the cords are broken. One lid drooped a little lower than the other, with the effect of a crooked leer; and between these pulpy folds of flesh, with their scant bristle of lashes, the eyes themselves, small glassy disks with an agate-like rim about the pupils, looked like sea-pebbles in the grip of a starfish.

"But the age of the eyes was not the most unpleasant thing about them. What turned me sick was their expression of vicious security. I don't know how else to describe the fact that they seemed to belong to a man who had done a lot of harm in his life, but had always kept just inside the danger lines. They were not the eyes of a coward, but of some one much too clever to take risks; and my gorge rose at their look of base astuteness. Yet even that wasn't the worst; for as we continued to scan each other I saw in them a tinge of faint derision, and felt myself to be its object.

"At that I was seized by an impulse of rage that jerked me out of bed and pitched me straight on the unseen figure at its foot. But of course there wasn't any figure there, and my fists struck at emptiness. Ashamed and cold, I groped about for a match and lit the candles. The room looked just as usual— as I had known it would; and I crawled back to bed, and blew out the lights.

"As soon as the room was dark again the eyes reappeared; and I now applied myself to explaining them on scientific principles. At first I thought the illusion might have been caused by the glow of the last embers in the chimney; but the fire-place was on the other side of my bed, and so placed that the fire could not possibly be reflected in my toilet glass, which was the only mirror in the room. Then it occurred to me that I might have been tricked by the reflection of the embers in some polished bit of wood or metal; and though I couldn't discover any object of the sort in my line of vision, I got up again, groped my way to the hearth, and covered what was left of the fire. But as soon as I was back in bed the eyes were back at its foot.

"They were an hallucination, then: that was plain. But the fact that they were not due to any external dupery didn't make them a bit pleasanter to see. For if they were a projection of my inner consciousness, what the deuce was the matter with that organ? I had gone deeply enough into the mystery of morbid pathological states to picture the conditions under which an exploring mind might lay itself open to such a midnight admonition; but I couldn't fit it to my present case. I had never felt more normal, mentally and physically; and the only unusual fact in my situation— that of having assured the happiness of an amiable girl— did not seem of a kind to summon unclean spirits about my pillow. But there were the eyes still looking at me…

"I shut mine, and tried to evoke a vision of Alice Nowell's. They were not remarkable eyes, but they were as wholesome as fresh water, and if she had had more imagination— or longer lashes— their expression might have been interesting. As it was, they did not prove very efficacious, and in a few moments I perceived that they had mysteriously changed into the eyes at the foot of the bed. It exasperated me more to feel these glaring at me through my shut lids than to see them, and I opened my eyes again and looked straight into their hateful stare…

"And so it went on all night. I can't tell you what that night was, nor how long it lasted. Have you ever lain in bed, hopelessly wide awake, and tried to keep your eyes shut, knowing that if you opened 'em you'd see something you dreaded and loathed? It sounds easy, but it's devilish hard. Those eyes hung there and drew me. I had the vertige de l'abime, and their red lids were the edge of my abyss… I had known nervous hours before: hours when I'd felt the wind of danger in my neck; but never this kind of strain. It wasn't that the eyes were so awful; they hadn't the majesty of the powers of darkness. But they had— how shall I say?— a physical effect that was the equivalent of a bad smell: their look left a smear like a snail's. And I didn't see what business they had with me, anyhow— and I stared and stared, trying to find out…

"I don't know what effect they were trying to produce; but the effect they did produce was that of making me pack my portmanteau and bolt to town early the next morning. I left a note for my aunt, explaining that I was ill and had gone to see my doctor; and as a matter of fact I did feel uncommonly ill— the night seemed to have pumped all the blood out of me. But when I reached town I didn't go to the doctor's. I went to a friend's rooms, and threw myself on a bed, and slept for ten heavenly hours. When I woke it was the middle of the night, and I turned cold at the thought of what might be waiting for me. I sat up, shaking, and stared into the darkness; but there wasn't a break in its blessed surface, and when I saw that the eyes were not there I dropped back into another long sleep.

"I had left no word for Alice when I fled, because I meant to go back the next morning. But the next morning I was too exhausted to stir. As the day went on the exhaustion increased, instead of wearing off like the lassitude left by an ordinary night of insomnia: the effect of the eyes seemed to be cumulative, and the thought of seeing them again grew intolerable. For two days I struggled with my dread; but on the third evening I pulled myself together and decided to go back the next morning. I felt a good deal happier as soon as I'd decided, for I knew that my abrupt disappearance, and the strangeness of my not writing, must have been very painful for poor Alice. That night I went to bed with an easy mind, and fell asleep at once; but in the middle of the night I woke, and there were the eyes…

"Well, I simply couldn't face them; and instead of going back to my aunt's I bundled a few things into a trunk and jumped onto the first steamer for England. I was so dead tired when I got on board that I crawled straight into my berth, and slept most of the way over; and I can't tell you the bliss it was to wake from those long stretches of dreamless sleep and look fearlessly into the darkness, knowing that I shouldn't see the eyes…

"I stayed abroad for a year, and then I stayed for another; and during that time I never had a glimpse of them. That was enough reason for prolonging my stay if I'd been on a desert island. Another was, of course, that I had perfectly come to see, on the voyage over, the folly, complete impossibility, of my marrying Alice Nowell. The fact that I had been so slow in making this discovery annoyed me, and made me want to avoid explanations. The bliss of escaping at one stroke from the eyes, and from this other embarrassment, gave my freedom an extraordinary zest; and the longer I savoured it the better I liked its taste.

"The eyes had burned such a hole in my consciousness that for a long time I went on puzzling over the nature of the apparition, and wondering nervously if it would ever come back. But as time passed I lost this dread, and retained only the precision of the image. Then that faded in its turn.

"The second year found me settled in Rome, where I was planning, I believe, to write another great book— a definitive work on Etruscan influences in Italian art. At any rate, I'd found some pretext of the kind for taking a sunny apartment in the Piazza di Spagna and dabbling about indefinitely in the Forum; and there, one morning, a charming youth came to me. As he stood there in the warm light, slender and smooth and hyacinthine, he might have stepped from a ruined altar— one to Antinous, say— but he'd come instead from New York, with a letter (of all people) from Alice Nowell. The letter— the first I'd had from her since our break— was simply a line introducing her young cousin, Gilbert Noyes, and appealing to me to befriend him. It appeared, poor lad, that he 'had talent,' and 'wanted to write'; and, an obdurate family having insisted that his calligraphy should take the form of double entry, Alice had intervened to win him six months' respite, during which he was to travel on a meagre pittance, and somehow prove his ultimate ability to increase it by his pen. The quaint conditions of the test struck me first: it seemed about as conclusive as a mediaeval 'ordeal.' Then I was touched by her having sent him to me. I had always wanted to do her some service, to justify myself in my own eyes rather than hers; and here was a beautiful embodiment of my chance.

"Well, I imagine it's safe to lay down the general principle that predestined geniuses don't, as a rule, appear before one in the spring sunshine of the Forum looking like one of its banished gods. At any rate, poor Noyes wasn't a predestined genius. But he was beautiful to see, and charming as a comrade too. It was only when he began to talk literature that my heart failed me. I knew all the symptoms so well— the things he had 'in him,' and the things outside him that impinged! There's the real test, after all. It was always— punctually, inevitably, with the inexorableness of a mechanical law— it was always the wrong thing that struck him. I grew to find a certain grim fascination in deciding in advance exactly which wrong thing he'd select; and I acquired an astonishing skill at the game…

"The worst of it was that his bêtise wasn't of the too obvious sort. Ladies who met him at picnics thought him intellectual; and even at dinners he passed for clever. I, who had him under the microscope, fancied now and then that he might develop some kind of a slim talent, something that he could make 'do' and be happy on; and wasn't that, after all, what I was concerned with? He was so charming— he continued to be so charming— that he called forth all my charity in support of this argument; and for the first few months I really believed there was a chance for him…

"Those months were delightful. Noyes was constantly with me, and the more I saw of him the better I liked him. His stupidity was a natural grace— it was as beautiful, really, as his eye-lashes. And he was so gay, so affectionate, and so happy with me, that telling him the truth would have been about as pleasant as slitting the throat of some artless animal. At first I used to wonder what had put into that radiant head the detestable delusion that it held a brain. Then I began to see that it was simply protective mimicry— an instinctive ruse to get away from family life and an office desk. Not that Gilbert didn't— dear lad!— believe in himself. There wasn't a trace of hypocrisy in his composition. He was sure that his 'call' was irresistible, while to me it was the saving grace of his situation that it wasn't, and that a little money, a little leisure, a little pleasure would have turned him into an inoffensive idler. Unluckily, however, there was no hope of money, and with the grim alternative of the office desk before him he couldn't postpone his attempt at literature. The stuff he turned out was deplorable, and I see now that I knew it from the first. Still, the absurdity of deciding a man's whole future on a first trial seemed to justify me in withholding my verdict, and perhaps even in encouraging him a little, on the ground that the human plant generally needs warmth to flower.

"At any rate, I proceeded on that principle, and carried it to the point of getting his term of probation extended. When I left Rome he went with me, and we idled away a delicious summer between Capri and Venice. I said to myself: 'If he has anything in him, it will come out now; and it did. He was never more enchanting and enchanted. There were moments of our pilgrimage when beauty born of murmuring sound seemed actually to pass into his face— but only to issue forth in a shallow flood of the palest ink…

"Well the time came to turn off the tap; and I knew there was no hand but mine to do it. We were back in Rome, and I had taken him to stay with me, not wanting him to be alone in his dismalpension when he had to face the necessity of renouncing his ambition. I hadn't, of course, relied solely on my own judgment in deciding to advise him to drop literature. I had sent his stuff to various people— editors and critics— and they had always sent it back with the same chilling lack of comment. Really there was nothing on earth to say about it—

"I confess I never felt more shabbily than I did on the day when I decided to have it out with Gilbert. It was well enough to tell myself that it was my duty to knock the poor boy's hopes into splinters— but I'd like to know what act of gratuitous cruelty hasn't been justified on that plea? I've always shrunk from usurping the functions of Providence, and when I have to exercise them I decidedly prefer that it shouldn't be on an errand of destruction. Besides, in the last issue, who was I to decide, even after a year's trial, if poor Gilbert had it in him or not?

"The more I looked at the part I'd resolved to play, the less I liked it; and I liked it still less when Gilbert sat opposite me, with his head thrown back in the lamplight, just as Phil's is now… I'd been going over his last manuscript, and he knew it, and he knew that his future hung on my verdict— we'd tacitly agreed to that. The manuscript lay between us, on my table— a novel, his first novel, if you please!— and he reached over and laid his hand on it, and looked up at me with all his life in the look.

"I stood up and cleared my throat, trying to keep my eyes away from his face and on the manuscript.

" 'The fact is, my dear Gilbert,' I began—

"I saw him turn pale, but he was up and facing me in an instant.

" 'Oh, look here, don't take on so, my dear fellow! I'm not so awfully cut up as all that!' His hands were on my shoulders, and he was laughing down on me from his full height, with a kind of mortally-stricken gaiety that drove the knife into my side.

"He was too beautifully brave for me to keep up any humbug about my duty. And it came over me suddenly how I should hurt others in hurting him: myself first, since sending him home meant losing him; but more particularly poor Alice Nowell, to whom I had so uneasily longed to prove my good faith and my immense desire to serve her. It really seemed like failing her twice to fail Gilbert—

"But my intuition was like one of those lightning flashes that encircle the whole horizon, and in the same instant I saw what I might be letting myself in for if I didn't tell the truth. I said to myself: 'I shall have him for life'— and I'd never yet seen any one, man or woman, whom I was quite sure of wanting on those terms. Well, this impulse of egotism decided me. I was ashamed of it, and to get away from it I took a leap that landed me straight in Gilbert's arms.

"'The thing's all right, and you're all wrong!' I shouted up at him; and as he hugged me, and I laughed and shook in his incredulous clutch, I had for a minute the sense of self-complacency that is supposed to attend the footsteps of the just. Hang it all, making people happy has its charms—

"Gilbert, of course, was for celebrating his emancipation in some spectacular manner; but I sent him away alone to explode his emotions, and went to bed to sleep off mine. As I undressed I began to wonder what their after-taste would be— so many of the finest don't keep! Still, I wasn't sorry, and I meant to empty the bottle, even if it did turn a trifle flat.

"After I got into bed I lay for a long time smiling at the memory of his eyes— his blissful eyes… Then I fell asleep, and when I woke the room was deathly cold, and I sat up with a jerk— and there were the other eyes…

"It was three years since I'd seen them, but I'd thought of them so often that I fancied they could never take me unawares again. Now, with their red sneer on me, I knew that I had never really believed they would come back, and that I was as defenceless as ever against them… As before, it was the insane irrelevance of their coming that made it so horrible. What the deuce were they after, to leap out at me at such a time? I had lived more or less carelessly in the years since I'd seen them, though my worst indiscretions were not dark enough to invite the searchings of their infernal glare; but at this particular moment I was really in what might have been called a state of grace; and I can't tell you how the fact added to their horror…

"But it's not enough to say they were as bad as before: they were worse. Worse by just so much as I'd learned of life in the interval; by all the damnable implications my wider experience read into them. I saw now what I hadn't seen before: that they were eyes which had grown hideous gradually, which had built up their baseness coral-wise, bit by bit, out of a series of small turpitudes slowly accumulated through the industrious years. Yes— it came to me that what made them so bad was that they'd grown bad so slowly…

"There they hung in the darkness, their swollen lids dropped across the little watery bulbs rolling loose in the orbits, and the puff of fat flesh making a muddy shadow underneath— and as their filmy stare moved with my movements, there came over me a sense of their tacit complicity, of a deep hidden understanding between us that was worse than the first shock of their strangeness. Not that I understood them; but that they made it so clear that some day I should… Yes, that was the worst part of it, decidedly; and it was the feeling that became stronger each time they came back to me…

"For they got into the damnable habit of coming back. They reminded me of vampires with a taste for young flesh, they seemed so to gloat over the taste of a good conscience. Every night for a month they came to claim their morsel of mine: since I'd made Gilbert happy they simply wouldn't loosen their fangs. The coincidence almost made me hate him, poor lad, fortuitous as I felt it to be. I puzzled over it a good deal, but couldn't find any hint of an explanation except in the chance of his association with Alice Nowell. But then the eyes had let up on me the moment I had abandoned her, so they could hardly be the emissaries of a woman scorned, even if one could have pictured poor Alice charging such spirits to avenge her. That set me thinking, and I began to wonder if they would let up on me if I abandoned Gilbert. The temptation was insidious, and I had to stiffen myself against it; but really, dear boy! he was too charming to be sacrificed to such demons. And so, after all, I never found out what they wanted…"

iii

THE fire crumbled, sending up a flash which threw into relief the narrator's gnarled red face under its grey-black stubble. Pressed into the hollow of the dark leather armchair, it stood out an instant like an intaglio of yellowish red-veined stone, with spots of enamel for the eyes; then the fire sank and in the shaded lamp-light it became once more a dim Rembrandtish blur.

Phil Frenham, sitting in a low chair on the opposite side of the hearth, one long arm propped on the table behind him, one hand supporting his thrown-back head, and his eyes steadily fixed on his old friend's face, had not moved since the tale began. He continued to maintain his silent immobility after Culwin had ceased to speak, and it was I who, with a vague sense of disappointment at the sudden drop of the story, finally asked: "But how long did you keep on seeing them?"

Culwin, so sunk into his chair that he seemed like a heap of his own empty clothes, stirred a little, as if in surprise at my question. He appeared to have half-forgotten what he had been telling us.

"How long? Oh, off and on all that winter. It was infernal. I never got used to them. I grew really ill."

Frenham shifted his attitude silently, and as he did so his elbow struck against a small mirror in a bronze frame standing on the table behind him. He turned and changed its angle slightly; then he resumed his former attitude, his dark head thrown back on his lifted palm, his eyes intent on Culwin's face. Something in his stare embarrassed me, and as if to divert attention from it I pressed on with another question:

"And you never tried sacrificing Noyes?"

"Oh, no. The fact is I didn't have to. He did it for me, poor infatuated boy!"

"Did it for you? How do you mean?"

"He wore me out— wore everybody out. He kept on pouring out his lamentable twaddle, and hawking it up and down the place till he became a thing of terror. I tried to wean him from writing— oh, ever so gently, you understand, by throwing him with agreeable people, giving him a chance to make himself felt, to come to a sense of what he really had to give. I'd foreseen this solution from the beginning— felt sure that, once the first ardour of authorship was quenched, he'd drop into his place as a charming parasitic thing, the kind of chronic Cherubino for whom, in old societies, there's always a seat at table, and a shelter behind the ladies' skirts. I saw him take his place as 'the poet': the poet who doesn't write. One knows the type in every drawing-room. Living in that way doesn't cost much— I'd worked it all out in my mind, and felt sure that, with a little help, he could manage it for the next few years; and meanwhile he'd be sure to marry. I saw him married to a widow, rather older, with a good cook and a well-run house. And I actually had my eye on the widow… Meanwhile I did everything to facilitate the transition— lent him money to ease his conscience, introduced him to pretty women to make him forget his vows. But nothing would do him: he had but one idea in his beautiful obstinate head. He wanted the laurel and not the rose, and he kept on repeating Gautier's axiom, and battering and filing at his limp prose till he'd spread it out over Lord knows how many thousand sloppy pages. Now and then he would send a pailful to a publisher, and of course it would always come back.

"At first it didn't matter— he thought he was 'misunderstood.' He took the attitudes of genius, and whenever an opus came home he wrote another to keep it company. Then he had a reaction of despair, and accused me of deceiving him, and Lord knows what. I got angry at that, and told him it was he who had deceived himself. He'd come to me determined to write, and I'd done my best to help him. That was the extent of my offence, and I'd done it for his cousin's sake, not his.

"That seemed to strike home, and he didn't answer for a minute. Then he said: 'My time's up and my money's up. What do you think I'd better do?'

" 'I think you'd better not be an ass,' I said.

"He turned red, and asked: 'What do you mean by being an ass?'

"I took a letter from my desk and held it out to him.

" 'I mean refusing this offer of Mrs. Ellinger's: to be her secretary at a salary of five thousand dollars. There may be a lot more in it than that.'

"He flung out his hand with a violence that struck the letter from mine. 'Oh, I know well enough what's in it!' he said, scarlet to the roots of his hair.

" 'And what's your answer, if you know?' I asked.

"He made none at the minute, but turned away slowly to the door. There, with his hand on the threshold, he stopped to ask, almost under his breath: 'Then you really think my stuff's no good?'

"I was tired and exasperated, and I laughed. I don't defend my laugh— it was in wretched taste. But I must plead in extenuation that the boy was a fool, and that I'd done my best for him— I really had.

"He went out of the room, shutting the door quietly after him. That afternoon I left for Frascati, where I'd promised to spend the Sunday with some friends. I was glad to escape from Gilbert, and by the same token, as I learned that night, I had also escaped from the eyes. I dropped into the same lethargic sleep that had come to me before when their visitations ceased; and when I woke the next morning, in my peaceful painted room above the ilexes, I felt the utter weariness and deep relief that always followed on that repairing slumber. I put in two blessed nights at Frascati, and when I got back to my rooms in Rome I found that Gilbert had gone… Oh, nothing tragic had happened— the episode never rose to that. He'd simply packed his manuscripts and left for America— for his family and the Wall Street desk. He left a decent little note to tell me of his decision, and behaved altogether, in the circumstances, as little like a fool as it's possible for a fool to behave…"

iv

CULWIN paused again, and again Frenham sat motionless, the dusky contour of his young head reflected in the mirror at his back.

"And what became of Noyes afterward?" I finally asked, still disquieted by a sense of incompleteness, by the need of some connecting thread between the parallel lines of the tale.

Culwin twitched his shoulders. "Oh, nothing became of him— because he became nothing. There could be no question of 'becoming' about it. He vegetated in an office, I believe, and finally got a clerkship in a consulate, and married drearily in China. I saw him once in Hong Kong, years afterward. He was fat and hadn't shaved. I was told he drank. He didn't recognize me."

"And the eyes?" I asked, after another pause which Frenham's continued silence made oppressive.

Culwin, stroking his chin, blinked at me meditatively through the shadows. "I never saw them after my last talk with Gilbert. Put two and two together if you can. For my part, I haven't found the link."

He rose stiffly, his hands in his pockets, and walked over to the table on which reviving drinks had been set out.

"You must be parched after this dry tale. Here, help yourself, my dear fellow. Here, Phil—" He turned back to the hearth.

Frenham still sat in his low chair, making no response to his host's hospitable summons. But as Culwin advanced toward him, their eyes met in a long look; after which, to my intense surprise, the young man, turning suddenly in his seat, flung his arms across the table, and dropped his face upon them.

Culwin, at the unexpected gesture, stopped short, a flush on his face.

"Phil— what the deuce? Why, have the eyes scared you? My dear boy— my dear fellow— I never had such a tribute to my literary ability, never!"

He broke into a chuckle at the thought, and halted on the hearth-rug, his hands still in his pockets, gazing down in honest perplexity at the youth's bowed head. Then, as Frenham still made no answer, he moved a step or two nearer.

"Cheer up, my dear Phil! It's years since I've seen them— apparently I've done nothing lately bad enough to call them out of chaos. Unless my present evocation of them has made you see them; which would be their worst stroke yet!"

His bantering appeal quivered off into an uneasy laugh, and he moved still nearer, bending over Frenham, and laying his gouty hands on the lad's shoulders.

"Phil, my dear boy, really— what's the matter? Why don't you answer? Have you seen the eyes?"

Frenham's face was still pressed against his arms, and from where I stood behind Culwin I saw the latter, as if under the rebuff of this unaccountable attitude, draw back slowly from his friend. As he did so, the light of the lamp on the table fell full on his perplexed congested face, and I caught its sudden reflection in the mirror behind Frenham's head.

Culwin saw the reflection also. He paused, his face level with the mirror, as if scarcely recognizing the countenance in it as his own. But as he looked his expression gradually changed, and for an appreciable space of time he and the image in the glass confronted each other with a glare of slowly gathering hate. Then Culwin let go of Frenham's shoulders, and drew back a step, covering his eyes with his hands…

Frenham, his face still hidden, did not stir.

__________________

10: The Magic Circle

Ethel M. Dell

1881-1939

The Red Magazine, 1 July 1910

Ethel Mary Dell Savage

Ethel M Dell was a prolific best-selling author of romance novels and short stories, with her first novel published shortly after this 1910 magazine story. She married at the age of 41, and she was by then earning £20,000 to £30,000 a year, with a large and loyal fan base who took no notice of the literary critics. She was fiercely private, and the picture above is the only one to be found.

THE PERSISTENT chirping of a sparrow made it almost harder to bear. Lady Brooke finally rose abruptly from the table, her black brows drawn close together, and swept to the window to scare the intruder away.

"I really have not the smallest idea what your objections can be," she observed, pausing with her back to the; room.

"A little exercise of your imagination might be of some assistance to you," returned her husband dryly, not troubling to raise his eyes from his paper.

He was leaning back in a chair in an attitude of unstudied ease. It was characteristic of Sir Roland Brooke to make himself physically comfortable at least, whatever his mental atmosphere. He seldom raised his voice, and never swore. Yet there was about him a certain amount of force that made itself felt more by his silence than his speech.

His young wife, though she shrugged her shoulders and looked contemptuous, did not venture upon open defiance.

"I am to decline the invitation, then?" she asked presently, without turning.

"Certainly!" Sir Roland again made leisurdy reply as he scanned the page before him,

"And give as an excuse that you are too staunch a Tory to approve of such an innovation as the waltz?"

"You may give any excuse that you consider suitable," he returned with unruffled composure.

"I know of none," she answered, with a quick vehemence that trembled on the edge of rebellion.

Sir Roland turned very slowly in his chair and regarded the delicate outline of his wife's figure against the window-frame.

"Then, my dear," he said very deliberately, "let me reconmiend you once more to have recourse to your ever romantic imagination!"

She quivered, and clenched her hands, as if goaded beyond endurance. " You do not treat me fairly," she murmured under her breath.

Sir Roland continued to look at her with the air of a naturalist examining an interesting specimen of his cult. He said nothing till, driven by his scrutiny, she turned and faced him.

"What is your complaint?" he asked then.

She hesitated for an instant. There was doubt— even a hint of fear— upon her beautiful face. Then, with a certain recklessness, she spoke:

" I have been accustomed to freedom of action all my life. I never dreamed, when I married you, that I should be called upon to sacrifice this."

Her voice quivered. She would not meet his eyes. Sir Roland sat and passively regarded her. His face expressed no more than a detached and ' waning interest.

"I am sorry," he said finally, " that the romance of your marriage has ceased to attract you. But I was not aware that its hold upon you was ever very strong."

Lady Brooke made a quick movement, and broke into a light laugh.

"It certainly did not fall upon very fruitful ground," she said. " It is scarcely surprising that it did not flourish."

Sir Roland made no response. The interest had faded entirely from his face. He looked supremdy bored.

Lady Brooke moved towards the door.

"It seems to be your pleasure to thwart me at every turn," she said. "A labourer's wife has more variety in her existence than I."

"Infinitely more," said Sir Roland, returning to his paper. "A labourer's wife, my dear, has an occasional beating to chasten her spirit, and she is considerably the better for it."

His wife stood still, very erect and queenly.

"Not only the better, but the happier," she said very bitterly. "Even a dog would rather be beaten than kicked to one side."

Sir Roland lowered his paper again with startling suddenness.

"Is that your point of view?" he said. "Then I fear I have been neglecting my duty most outrageously. However, it is an omission easily remedied. Let me hear no more of this masquerade, Lady Brooke! You have my orders, and if you transgress them you will be punished in a fashion scarcely to your liking. Is that clearly understood?"

He looked straight up at her with cold, smiling eyes that yet seemed to convey a steely warning.

She shivered very slightly as she encountered them. " You make a mockery of everything," she said, her voice very low.

Sir Roland uttered a quiet laugh.

"I am nevertheless a man of my word, Naomi," he said. "If you wish to test me, you have your opportunity."

He immersed himself finally in his paper as he ended, and she, with a smile of proud contempt, turned and passed from the room.

She had married him out of pique, it was true, but life with him had never seemed intolerable until he had shown her that he knew it.

She took her invitation with her, and in her own room sat down to read it once again. It was from a near neighbour. Lady Blythebury, an acquaintance with whom she was more intimate than was Sir Roland. Lady Blythebury was a very lively person indeed. She had been on the stage in her young days, and she had decidedly advanced ideas on the subject of social entertainment. As a hostess, she was notorious for her originality and energy, and though some of the county families disapproved of her, she always knew how to secure as many guests as she desired. Lady Brooke had known her previous to her own marriage, and she clung to this friendship, notwithstanding Sir Roland's very obvious lack of sympathy.

He knew Lord Blythebury in the hunting-field. Their properties adjoined, and it was inevitable that certain courtesies should be exchanged. But he refused so steadily to fall a captive to Lady Blythebury's bow and spear, that he very speedily aroused her aversion. He soon realised that her influence over his wife was very far from . benevolent towards himself, but , save that he persisted in declining all social invitations to Blythebury, he made no attempt to counteract the evil. In fact, it was not his custom to coerce her. He denied her very little, though with regard to that little he was as adamant.

But to Naomi his non-interference was many a time more galling than his interdiction. It was but seldom that she attempted to oppose him, and, save that Lady Blythebury's masquerade had been discussed between them for weeks, she would not have greatly cared for his refusal to attend it. When Sir Roland asserted himself, it was her habit to yield without argument.

But now, for the first time, she asked herself if he were not presuming upon her wifely submission. He would think more of her if she resisted him, whispered her hurt pride, recalling the courteous indifference which it was his custom to mete out to her. But dared she do this thing?

She took up the invitation again and read it. It was to be a fancy-dress ball, and all were to wear masks. The waltz which she had learned to dance from Lady Blythebury herself and which was only just coming into vogue in England, was to be one of the greatest features of the evening. There would be no foolish formality, Lady Blythebury had assured her. The masks would preclude that. Altogether the whole entertainment promised to be of so entrancing a nature that she had permitted herself to look forward to it with considerable pleasure. But she might have guessed that Sir Roland would refuse to go, she reflected, as she sat in her dainty room with the invitation before her. Did he ever attend any function that was not so stiflf and dull that she invariably pined to depart from the moment of arrival?

Again she read the invitation, recalling Lady Blythebury's gay words when last they had talked the matter over.

"If only Una could come without the lion for once!" she had said.

And she herself had almost echoed the wish. Sir Roland always spoilt everything.

Well!— She took up her pen. She supposed she must refuse. A moment it hovered above the paper. Then, very slowly, it descended and began to write.

THE CHATTER of many voices and the rhythm of dancing feet, the strains of a string-band in the distance, aiid, piercing all, the clear, high notes of a flute, filled the spring night with wonderful sound. Lady Blythebury had turned her husband's house into a fairy palace of delight. She stood in the doorway of the ballroom, her florid face beaming above her Elizabethan ruffles, looking in upon the gay and ever-shifting scene which she had called into being.

"I feel as if I had stepped into an Arabian Night," she laughed to one of her guests, who stood beside her. He was dressed as a court jester, and carried a wand which he flourished dramatically. He wore a close-fitting black mask.

"There is certainly magic abroad," he declared, in a rich, Irish brogue that Lady Blythebury smiled to hear. For she also was Irish to the backbone.

"You know something of the art yourself. Captain Sullivan?" she asked.

She knew the man for a friend of her husband's. He was more or less disreputable, she believed, but he was none the less welcome on that account. It was just such men as he who knew how to make things a success. She relied upon the disreputable more than she wotdd have admitted.

"Egad, I'm no novice in most things!" declared the court jester, waving his wand bombastically. "But it's the magic of a pretty woman that I'm after at the present moment. These masks. Lady Blythebury, are uncommon inconvenient. It's yourself that knows better than to wear one. Sure, beauty should never go veiled."

Lady Blythebury laughed indulgently. Though she knew it for what it was, the fellow's blarney was good to hear.

"Ah, go and dance!" she said. "I've heard all that before. It never means anything. Go and dance with the little lady over there in the pink domino! I give you my word that she is pretty. Her name is Una, but she is minus the lion on this occasion. I shall tell you no more than that."

"Egad! It's more than enough!" said the court jester, as he bowed and moved away.

The lady indicated stood alone in the curtained embrasure of a bay-window. She was watching the dancers with an absorbed air, and did not notice his approach.

He drew near, walking with a free swagger in time to the haunting waltz-music. Reaching her, he stopped and executed a sweeping bow, his hand upon his heart.

"May I have the pleasure "

She looked up with a start. Her eyes shone through her mask with a momentary irresolution as she bent in response to his bow.

With scarcely a pause he offered her his arm.

"You dance the waltz?"

She hesitated for a second; then, with an aifirmatory murmur, accepted the proffered arm. The bold stare with which he met her look had in it something of compulsion.

He led her instantly away from her retreat, and in a moment his hand was up6n her waist. He guided her into the gay stream of dancers without a word.

They began to waltz— a dream-waltz in which she seemed to float without effort, without conscious volition. Instinctively she responded to his touch, keenly, vibrantly aware of the arm that supported her, of the dark, free eyes that persistently sought her own.

"Faith!" he suddenly said in his soft, Irish voice. "To find Una without the lion is a piece of good fortune I had scarcely prayed for. And what was the persuasion that you used at all to keep the monster in his den?"

She glanced up, half-startled by his speech. What did this man know about her?

"If you mean my husband," she said at last, "I did not persuade him. He never wished or intended to come."

Her companion laughed as one well pleased.

"Very generous of him!" he conmiented, in a tone that sent the blood to her cheeks.

He guided her dexterously among the dancers. The girl's breath came quickly, unevenly, but her feet never faltered.

"If I were the lion," said her partner daringly, "by the powers, I'd play the part! I wouldn't be a tame beast, egad! If Una went out to a fancy ball, my faith, I would go too!"

Lady Brooke uttered a little, excited laugh. The words caught her interest. "And suppose Una went without your leave?" she said.

The Irishman looked at her with a humorous twist at one comer of his mouth.

"I'm thinking that I'd still go too," he said.

"But if you didn't know?" She asked the question with a curious vehemence. Her instinct told her that, however he might profess to trifle, here at least was a man.

"That wouldn't happen," he said, with conviction, "if I were the lion."

The music was quickening to the finale, and she felt the strong arm grow tense about her.

"Come!" he said. "We will go into the garden."

She went with him because it seemed that she must, but deep in her heart there lurked a certain misgiving. There was an almost arrogant air of power about this man. She wondered what Sir Roland would say if he knew, and comforted herself almost immediately with the reflection that he never could know. He had gone to Scotland, and she did not expect him back for several weeks.

So she turned aside with this stranger, and passed out upon his arm into the dusk of the soft spring night.

"You know these gardens well?" he questioned.

She came out of her meditations.

"Not really well. Lady Blythebury and I are friends, but we do not visit very often."

"And that but secretly," he laughed, "when the lion is absent?" She did not answer him, and he continued after a moment: " 'Pon my life, the very mention of him seems to cast a cloud. Let us draw a magic circle, and exclude him!" He waved his wand. "You knew that I was a magician?"

There was a hint of something more than banter in his voice. They had reached the end of the terrace, and were slowly descending the steps. But at his last words. Lady Brooke stood suddenly still.

"I only believe in one sort of magic," she said, "and that is beyond the reach of all but fools."

Her voice quivered with an almost passionate disdain. She was suddenly aware of an intense burning misery that seemed to gnaw into her very soul. Why had she come out with this buffoon, she wondered? Why had she come to the masquerade at all? She was utterly out of sympathy with its festive gaiety. A great and overmastering desire for solitude descended upon her. She turned almost angrily to go.

But in the same instant the jester's hand caught her own.

"Even so, lady," he said. "But the magic of fools has led to paradise before now."

She laughed out bitterly:

"A fool's paradise!"

"Is ever green," he said whimsically. "Faith, it's no place at all for cynics. Shall we go hand in hand to find it then— in case you miss the way?"

She laughed again at the quaint adroitness of his speech. But her lips were curiously unsteady, and she found the darkness very comforting. There was no moon, and the sky was veiled. She suffered the strong dasp of his fingers about her own without protest. What did it matter— for just one night?

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Wait till we get there!" murmured her companion. "We are just within the magic circle. Una has escaped from the lion."

She felt turf beneath her feet, and once or twice the brushing of twigs against her hand. She began to have a faint suspicion as to whither he was leading her. But she would not ask a second time. She had yielded to his guidance, and though her heart fluttered strangely she would not seem to doubt. The dread of Sir Roland's displeasure had receded to the back of her mind. Surely there was indeed magic abroad that night! It seemed diffused in the very air she breathed. In silence they moved along the dim grass path. From far away there came to them fitfully the sound of music, remote and wonderful, like straying echoes of paradise. A soft wind stirred above them, lingering secretly among opening leaves. There was a scent of violets almost intoxicatingly sweet.

The silence seemed magnetic. It held them like a spell. Through it, vague and intangible as the night at first, but gradually taking definite shape, strange thoughts began to rise in the girl's heart.

She had consented to this adventure from sheer lack of purpose. But whither was it leading her? She was a married woman, with her shackles heavy upon her. Yet she walked that night with a stranger, as one who owned her freedom. The silence between them was intimate and wonderful, the silence which only kindred spirits can ever know. It possessed her magically, making her past life seem dim and shadowy, and the present only real.

And yet she knew that she was not free. She trespassed on forbidden ground. She tasted the forbidden fruit, and found it tragically sweet.

Suddenly and softly he spoke:

"Does the magic begin to work?"

She started and tried to stop. Surely it were wiser to go back while she had the will! But he drew her forward still. The mist overhead was faintly silver. The moon was rising.

"We will go to the heart of the tangle," he said. ''There is nothing to fear. The lion himself could not frighten you here."

Again she yielded to him. There was a suspicion of raillery in his voice that strangely reassured her. The grasp of his hand was very close.

"We are in the maze," she said at last, breaking her silence. "Are you sure of the way?"

He answered her instantly with complete selfassurance.

''Like the heart of a woman, it's hard, that it is, to find. But I think I have the key. And if  not, by the saints, I'm near enough now to break through."

The words thrilled her inexplicably. Truly the magic was swift and potent. A few more steps, and she was aware of a widening of the hedge. They were emerging into the centre of the maze.

"Ah," said the jester, "I thought I should win through!"

He led her forward into the shadow of a great tree. The mist was passing very slowly from the sky. By the silvery light that filtered down from the hidden moon Naomi made out the strong outline of his shoulders as he stood before her, and the vague darkness of his mask.

She put up her free hand and removed her own. The breeze had died down. The atmosphere was hushed and airless.

"Do you know the way back?" she asked him, in a voice that sounded unnatural even to herself.

"Do you want to go back, then?" he queried keenly.

There was something in his tone— a subtle something that she had not detected before. She began to tremble. For the first time, actual fear took hold of her.

"You must know the way back!" she exclaimed. "This is folly! They will be wondering where we are.

"Faith, Lady Una! It is the fool's paradise," he told her coolly. "They will not wonder. They know too well that there is no way back."

His manner terrified her. Its very quietness seaned a menace. Desperately she tore herself from his hold, and turned to escape. But it was as though she fled in a nightmare. Whichever way she turned she met only the impenetrable ramparts of the hedge that surrounded her. She could find neither entrance nor exit. It was as though the way by which she had come had been closed behind her.

But the brightness above was growing. She whispered to herself that she would soon be able to see, that she could not be a prisoner for long.

Suddenly she heard her captor close to her, and, turning in terror, she found him erect and dominating against the hedge. With a tremendous effort she controlled her rising panic to plead with him.

"Indeed, I must go back!" she said, her voice unsteady, but very urgent. ''I have already stayed too long. You cannot wish to keep me here against my will?"

She saw him shrug his shoulders slightly.

"There is no way back," he said, "or, if there is, I do not know it."

There was no dismay in his voice, but neither was there exultation. He simply stated the fact with absolute composure. Her heart gave a wild throb of misgiving. Was the man wholly sane?

Again she paught wildly at her failing courage, and drew herself up to her full height. Perhaps she might awe him, even yet.

"Sir," she said, "I am Sir Roland Brooke's wife. And I—"

"Egad!" he broke in banteringly, "that was yesterday. You are free to-day. I have brought you out of bondage. We have found paradise together, and, my pretty Lady Una, there is no way back."

"But there is, there is!" she cried desperately. "And I must find it! I tell you I am Sir Roland Brooke's wife. I belong to him. No one can keep me from him ! "

It was as though she beat upon an iron door.

"There is no way out of the magic circle," said the jester inexorably.

A white shaft of light illumined the mist above them, revealing the girl's pale face, making sinister the man's masked one. He seemed to be smiling. He bent towards her.

"You seem amazingly fond of your chains," he said softly. "And yet, from what I have heard, Sir Roland is no gentle tyrant. How is it, pretty one? What makes you cling to your bondage so?"

"He is my husband!" she said, through white lips.

"Faith, that is no answer," he declared. "Own, now, that you hate him, that you loathe his presence and shudder at his touch! I told you I was a magician. Lady Una; but you wouldn't believe me at all."

She confronted him with a sudden fury that marvellously reinforced her failing courage.

"You lie, sir!" she cried, stamping passionately upon the soft earth. "I do none of these things. I have never hated him. I have never shrunk from his touch. We have not understood each other, perhaps, but that is a different matter, and no concern of yours."

"He has not made you happy," said the jester persistently. "You will never go back to him now that you are free!"

"I will go back to him!" she cried stormily. "How dare you say such a thing to me? How dare you?"

He came nearer to her.

"Listen!" he said. "It is deliverance that I am offering you. I ask nothing at all in return, simply to make you happy, and to teach you the blessed magic which now you scorn. Faith! It's the greatest game in the world. Lady Una; and it only takes two players, dear, only two players!"

There was a subtle, caressing quality in his voice. His masked face was bending close to hers. She felt trapped and helpless, but she forced herself to stand her ground.

"You insult me!" she said, her voice quivering, but striving to be calm.

"Never a bit!" he declared. "Since I am the truest friend you have!"

She drew away from him with a gesture of repulsion.

"You insult me!" she said again. "I have my husband, and I need no other."

He laughed sneeringly, the insinuating banter all gone from his manner.

"You know he is nothing to you," he said. He neglects you. He bullies you. You married him because you wanted to be a married woman. Be honest, now! You never loved him. You do not know what love is!"

"It is false!" she cried. "I will not listen to you. Let me go!"

He took a sudden step forward.

"You refuse deliverance?" he questioned harshly.

She did not retreat this time, but faced him proudly.

"I do!"

"Listen!" he said again, and his voice was stem. "Sir Roland Brooke has returned home. He knows that you have disobeyed him. He knows that you are here with me. You will not dare to face him. You have gone too far to return."

She gasped hysterically, and tottered for an instant, but recovered herself.

"I will — I will go back!" she said.

"He will beat you like a labourer's wife," warned the jester. " He may do worse."

She was swaying as she stood.

"He will do — as he sees fit," she said.

He stooped a little lower.

"I would make you happy, Lady Una," he whispered. "I would protect you— shelter you— love you!"

She flung out her hands with a wild and do perate gesture. The magnetism of his presence had become horrible to her.

"I am going to him— now," she said.

Behind him she saw, in the brightening moonlight, the opening which she had vainly sought a few minutes before. She sprang for it, darting past him like a frightened bird seeking refuge, and in another moment she was lost in the green labyrinths.

THE MOONLIGHT had become clear and strong, casting black shadows all about her. Twice, in her frantic efforts to escape, she ran back into the centre of the maze. The jester had gone, but she imagined him lurking behind every corner, and she impotently recalled his words: "There is no way out of the magic circle."

At last, panting and exhausted, she knew that she was unwinding the puzzle. Often as its intricacies baffled her, she kept her head, rectifying each mistake and pressing on, till the wider curve told her that she was very near the entrance. She came upon it finally quite suddenly, and f crund herself, to her astonishment, close to the terrace steps.

She mounted them with trembling limbs, and paused a moment to stunmon her composure. Then, outwardly calm, she traversed the terrace and entered the house.

Lady Blythebury was dancing, and she felt she could not wait. She scribbled a few hasty words of farewell, and gave them to a servant as she entered her carriage. Hers was the first departure, and no one noted it.

She sank back at length, thankfully, in the darkness, and closed her eyes. Whatever lay before her, she had escaped from the nightmare horror of the shadowy garden.

But as the brief drive neared its end, her anxiety revived. Had Sir Roland indeed returned and discovered her absence? Was it possible?

Her face was white and haggard as she entered the hall at last. Her eyes were hunted.

The servant who opened to her looked at her oddly for a moment.

''What is it?" she said nervously.

"Sir Roland has returned, my lady," he said. He arrived two hours ago, and went straight to his room, saying he would not disturb your ladyship."

She turned away in silence, and mounted the stairs. Did he know? Had he guessed? Was it that that had brought him back?

She entered her room, and dismissed the maid she found awaiting her.

Swiftly she threw off the pink domino, and began to loosen her hair with stiff, fumbling fingers, then shook it about her shoulders, and sank quivering upon a couch. She could not go to bed. The terror that possessed her was too intense, too overmastering.

Ah! What was that ? Every pulse in her body leaped and stood still at sound of a low knock at he door. Who could it be? gasped her fainting heart. Not Sir Roland, surely! He never came to her room now.

Softly the door opened. It was Sir Roland and none other — Sir Roland wearing an old velvet smoking-jacket, composed as ever, his grey eyes very level and inscrutable.

He paused for a single instant upon the threshold, then came noiselessly in and closed the door.

Naomi sat motionless and speechless. She lacked the strength to rise. Her hands were pressed upon her heart. She thought its beating would suffocate her.

He came quietly across the room to her, not seeming to notice her agitation.

"I should not have disturbed you at this hour if I had not been sure that you were awake," he said.

Reaching her, he bent and touched her white cheek.

"Why, child, how cold you are!" he said.

She started violently back, and then, as a sudden memory assailed her, she caught his hand and hdd it for an instant.

"It is nothing," she said with an effort. "You— you startled me."

"You are nervous to-night," said Sir Roland.

She shrank under his look.

"You see, I did not expect you," she murmured.

"Evidently not." Sir Roland stood gravdy considering her. "I came back," he said, after a moment, "because it occurred to me that you might be lonely after all, in spite of your assurance to the contrary. I did not ask you to accompany me, Naomi. I did not think you would care to do so. But I regretted it later, and I have come back to remedy the omission. Will you come with me to Scotland?"

His tone was quiet and somewhat formal, but there was in it a kindliness that sent the blood pulsing through her veins in a wave of relief even greater than her astonishment at his words. He did not know, then. That was her one all-possessing thought. He could not know, or he had not spoken to her thus.

She sat slowly forward, drawing her hair about her shoulders like a cloak. She felt for the moment an overpowering weakness, and she could not look up.

"I will come, of course," she said at last, her voice very low, "if you wish it."

Sir Roland did not respond at once. Then, as his silence was beginning to disquiet her again, he laid a steady hand upon the shadowing hair.

"My dear," he said gently, "have you no wishes upon the subject?"

Again she started at his touch, and again, as if to rectify the start, drew ever so slightly nearer to him. It was many, many days since she had heard that tone from him.

"My wishes are yours," she told him faintly.

His hand was caressing her softly, very softly. Again he was silent for a while, and into her heart there began to creep a new feeling that made her gradually forget the immensity of her relief. She sat motionless, save that her head drooped a little lower, ever a little lower.

"Naomi," he said, at last, "I have been thinking, a good deal lately . We seem to have been wandering round and round in a circle. I have been wondering if we could not by any means find a way out?"

She made a sharp, involuntary movement.  What was this that he was saying to her?

"I don't quite understand," she murmured.

His hand pressed a little upon her, and she knew that he was bending down.

"You are not happy," he said, with grave conviction.

She could not contradict him.

"It is my own fault," she managed to say, without lifting her head.

"I do not think so," he returned, "at least, not entirely. I know that there have frequently been times when you have regretted your marriage. For that you were not to blame." He paused an instant. "Naomi," he said, a new note in his voice, "I think I am right in believing that, notwithstanding this regret, you do not in your heart wish to leave me?"

She quivered, and hid her face in silence.

He waited a few seconds, and finally went on aa if she had answered in the affirmative.

"That being so, I have a foundation on which to build. I would not ask of you anything which you fed unable to grant. But there is only one way for us to get out of the circle that I can see. Will you take it with me, Naomi? Shall we go away together, and leave this miserable estrangement behind us?"

His voice was low and tender. Yet she felt instinctively that he had not found it easy to expose his most sacred reserve thus. She moved convulsively, trying to answer him, trying for several unworthy moments to accept in silence the shelter his generosity had offered her. But her efforts failed, for she had not been moulded for deception; and this new weapon of his had cut her to the heart. Heavy, shaking sobs overcame her.

"Hush!" he said. "Hush! I never dreamed you felt it so."

"Ah, you don't know me!" she whispered. "I — I am not what you think me. I have disobeyed you, deceived you, cheated you!" Humbled to the earth, she made piteous, halting confession before her tyrant. "I was at the masquerade tonight. I waltzed— and afterwards went into the maze— in the dark— with a stranger— who made love to me. I never— meant you— to know."

Silence succeeded her words, and, as she waited for him to rise and spurn her, she wondered how she had ever brought herself to utter them. But she would not have recalled them even then. He moved at last, but not as she had anticipated. He gathered the timibled hair back from her face, and, bending over her, he spoke. Even in her agony of apprehensioh she noted the curious huskiness of his voice.

"And yet you told me," he said. "Why?"

She could not answer him, nor could she raise her face. He was not angry, she knew now; but yet she felt that she could not meet his eyes.

There was a short silence, then he spoke again, close to her ear:

"You need not have told me, Naomi."

The words amazed her. With a great start of bewilderment she lifted her head and looked at him. He put his hands upon her shoulders. She thought she saw a smile hovering about his lips, but it was of a species she had never seen there before.

"Because," he explained gently, "I knew."

She stared at him in wonder, scarcely breathing, the tears all gone from her eyes.

"You— knew!" she said slowly, at last.

"Yes, I knew," he said. He looked deep into her eyes for seconds, and then she felt him drawing her irresistibly to him. She yielded herself as driftwood yields to a racing flood, no longer caring for the interpretation of the riddle, scarcely remembering its existence; heard him laugh above her head— a brief, exultant laugh— as he clasped her. And then came his lips upon her own....

" You see, dear," he said later, a quiver that was not all laughter in his voice, "it is not so remarkably wonderful, after all, that I should know all about it, when you come to consider that I was there— there with you in the magic circle all the time."

"You were there!" she echoed, turning in his arms. "But how was it I never knew? Why did I not see you?"

"Faith, sweetheart, I think you did!" said Sir Roland. Then, at her quick cry of amazed understanding: "I wanted to teach you a lesson, but, sure, I'm thinking it's myself that learned one, after all." And, as she clung to him, still hardly believing: "We have found our paradise together, my Lady Una," he whispered softly. "And, love, there is no way back."

___________________

11: The Curse of True Love

Harold Mercer

1882-1952

The Bulletin, 27 Nov 1929

Harold Mercer

"THE Bible says," my landlady told me, "that the curse of true love always runs to smoodge; and," she added,"there was never a truer word spoke. It was no wonder the Egyptians let the Israelikes go when that was one of the plagues. I've kep' apartments for years and I've often had to give people notice fer the same thing.

"You see, I won't 'ave my tenants disturbed. I'm that soft-'earted. There was one couple I 'ad 'ad to put out came back to me again. 'Well,' I says, 'you can 'ave your old room, but it will be four shillings a week extra for breakages.' As you know, jealousy is a green-eyed lobster going about seeking whom it may devour; and it 'ad bit them so bad if he was a minute late she'd think he'd been out with another girl, and he'd get serspicious about 'er— it didn't matter what— they always found something to fight about. Love will find a way, as the saying is.

"But I 'ad to get rid of 'em again. They'd agreed to pay the four shillings extra, but after that they seemed trying to get their money's worth. 'l'm sorry,' I says to them; 'I know you're very fond of each other, but the other tenants won't stand it.' So they seek French beans and pastures new from which no traveller returns.

"They was a queer pair, both of them. I met them afterwards in the street and they told me they had a 'ome of their own out at Paddington. So 'appy they looked, 'anging on to one another like they always did when they weren't throwing things at one another. 'l'm afraid we were trying tenants, Mrs. Parsley,' 'e said with a nice smile. 'But Mary was not to blame. It was all my fault; I was always making 'er jealous.' 'You make me jealous!' she says. 'The foot was on the other leg!' And the nex' minute they was at it 'ammer an' tongues, an' I 'ad to give 'em good advice. ''Ome is the place for domestic quarrels,' I tells them. An' so it is, even if it's only a room, when people really love one another.

"OF COURSE, there are people who don't 'ave rows. There was a couple I 'ad in number 21. They used ter come down the stairs with 'is arm round 'er waist.

" 'Don't tell me they're married!' says Miss Perry to me. 'You never see decently married people so fond of each other.' Now, I can't abide people who won't let sleeping dogs delight to bite. 'l'm sure they're married,' I said; 'why, they showed me the receipt they 'ad, made out to Mister and Missus, from the 'otel they stayed at the night before they came 'ere. It's a respectable 'otel, an' what is good enough for the goose is good enough for the gander, I says. 'Let him who is without sin amongst you,' as the Good Book says, 'live in glass 'ouses.'

"All the same, that was only a superfloot on my part; I 'ad a pretty good idea that Miss Perry was right, but as they was perfectly respectable but for being so affectionate, it was no business of mine.

"You could 'ave knocked me flat with a feather, as the sayin' is, when one night, gettin' out of me bed to see where the row was, I found it was at their room. Lestways, it was outside their room, being a rather fine-looking woman banging at the door and screaming through the key'ole.

" 'What woman 'ave you got in there?' she screamed. ' 'Ow dare you lock your door against your lawful, wedded wife, you reprorake? You can't pay your money into the court,' she says, 'but 'ere you are with another woman.'

" 'Now, Madam,' I says, 'you can't make a disturbance like this. This is a respectable—' "She wouldn't even let me finish it. 'You've got my husband here with a strange woman,' she says. At least, she didn't say 'woman'; in fact, some of the language she used was outragious. And she seemed so ladylike, too.

"I told her I had no time to look at marriage certificates, an' 'is word was as good as 'ers, at any rate. She made a fearful to-do —scandalous, it was, as I told her, makin' a disturbance like that in a decent 'ouse. When Mr. Carter opens the door to 'ave a word with me, she pushes in; and, of course, I went in, too, to throw my oar on the troubled waters.

" 'No, I am not his wife!' says my Mrs. Carter —not knowing any other name, I 'ad to call 'er that. 'I did not nag 'im till he 'ad to leave me for peace.'

" 'You, Hilda, who I thought was my best friend! Oh !' she says, 'your 'usband will know about this!'

" 'I don't care,' she retortoised. 'You did not depreciate your 'usband, but I do, and I love him, and am willin' to go to the gates of 'Ell fer 'is sake.'

" 'Don't you dare mention a place like that in my 'ouse,' I said, indignant; but it was no use. Much as I like to keep my 'ouse respectable, I 'ad to call a policeman in before I could get them to stop ; an' even 'e 'ad a lot of trouble to get Mrs. Carter— not my Mrs. Carter, the other one— to go away quiet. I told 'er off before she went, I promise you. 'lt's no wonder with raging females like you,' I says, 'that men are infidels to their wives. A woman's crowning glory,' I says, 'is 'er 'air ; an' she shouldn't get it off,' I says."

Mrs. Parsley was obviously proud of this bit of philosophy and repeated it twice for my benefit.

" 'I must say that Mr. Carter be'aved like a gentleman right through; 'e told them 'e would knock their 'eads off if they didn't stop, but 'e didn't lift 'is 'and, not though both of them smacked 'is face— the strange Mrs. Carter because 'e wouldn't let 'er say the things she wanted to say about my Mrs. Carter, and the other one because she thought 'e was sticking up for 'is wife. 'E was between two stools, you see, and the onlooker always gets the worst of the game.

" 'After that matters became rather upsetting in the 'ouse, what with the strange Mrs. Carter coming -back off and on an' avin' to be turned out, an' her bringin' along a Mr. Corless, who I understand was my Mrs. Carter's 'usband. These trirangles make one confused, an' some'ow I can never think of 'er even now except as my Mrs. Carter. Later on this man comes back again very drunk an' goes wanderin' about the 'ouse talking about shootin' people, as if my 'ouse is the 'appy 'unting-grounds where the lion lies down with the lamb. I got 'im put out; but in the mornin' Paddy, th' 'andy man, finds 'im asleep in the bathroom. 'E'd 'id 'imself there to get more evidence, he said, an' gone to sleep over it.

" 'I think it best, too,' I says, 'when Mr. Carter, most gentleman-like, comes to me an' suggests that they 'ad better go. 'l've 'ad weddin's from my 'ouse, but I don't want no divorces,' I says. Still, I couldn't help liking him, 'e was so promp' and genteel. 'The curse of true love always runs to smoodge,' I tells 'im, 'so don't be discouraged, for there may be darker days before the dawn. You love your little lady, Mr. Carter, an' you're quite right to stick to 'er through fat an' lean. If you love true she's yours in the sight of 'Eaven. After all, a marriage certificate isn't everythin', although I do say it meself, what 'as always been a respectable woman. An' that wife of yours—'

" 'She was in a temper last night,' 'e says, 'and you saw the worst side of 'er. She's a nice little woman, really. Of course, she's long ceased to love me, and she's been a milestone to me, cold and thinking of nothing but money; and this poor little girl o' mine, with 'er drunken 'usband—'

"I squeezed 'is 'and to show my sympathy, an' I 'adn't the 'eart to stop them when they went away without payin' the last week's rent.

"To my supprise, the strange Mrs. Carter comes up one day, months later, very quiet an' respectable, and looking so sad, me 'eart went out to 'er.

" 'I divorced me 'usband,' she says, as if she 'as tears in 'er throat, 'an' now 'e's free to marry this woman— 'er 'usband 'as divorced 'er, too. I thought I'd like to have a room 'ere. Have you got the room 'e used to live in vacant?'

" 'lt's a double room,' I says.

" 'I don't mind payin'!' she says. She was pulling away at 'er gloves, as women will when they're feelin' things 'ard. ' 'E was a fine, dear man,' she says, 'an' I never woke up to it till the other woman took 'im from me. I'd like to 'ave the room 'e used to 'ave.'

"The next moment she was sobbin' on my shoulder: "But I always did love 'im. though I was nasty to 'im because 'e seemed to 'ave grown cold on me.'

" 'You poor thing!' I says. 'lf you still love 'im 'e is yours in the sight of 'Eaven, even if 'e 'as gone an' married another. An' 'oo knows, when we find refluge in that hark Avhere the 'erald angels sing, what will 'appen.'

" 'I will never see 'im again !' she sobs. " 'ln the bright mexico of youth there is no such word as nil desperandia,' I tells 'er.

"An', sure enough, there wasn't. There you are, the curse of true love again, an' it's always runnin' to smoodge, as the Bible says as I was always taught to believe in.

"One night, late, bless me if Carter 'imself doesn't come in, lookin' 'aggard-eyed an' famisliin'.

" 'Mrs. Parsley,' 'e says, 'l'm throwin' myself on your mercy. I want a room; but I may not be able to pay you for a couple of weeks— l'm broke. As you know me, I thought I might come to you.'

"Thinkin' of the week's rent 'e went without payin', I says to myself, 'I do know you.' But I says to 'im : 'Wait a minute an' I'll see'; an', goin' out of my room, I meets 'is wife —'is wife that used ter be —just outside my door.

" 'Don't let 'im know I'm here,' she whispers.

"Well, I give 'im a room; an' later on she comes into the kitchen with a kimono over the dinkiest nightgown you ever see— although, if you don't mind my saying it, I don't put it past you that you've seen a few—an' she commences cookin' chops.

" 'The poor darling,' she says. *'E looks as if he 'asn't 'ad a good feed for a week. That woman! She drove 'er 'usband to drink, an' now she's making poor 'Arry's life an 'ell. So I thought I'd cook 'im something an' take it to 'im.'

" 'ln your nightie!' I says.

" 'Mrs. Parsley—darling!' she whispers; an' kissed me. 'You won't mind. I'm sure. Remember, I am 'is wife in the eyes of Heaven, whatever the law 'as done.'

"Noav, what could I say to that? It seemed respectable enough to me. But I followed along to the bathroom, which was alongside '.is room —just to see there wasn't any row. So I 'eard 'im cry out as she stepped into the room with the tray.

" 'Get out of this!' I 'ears 'im say.

" 'Arry!' she says.

" 'lt's you that's the cause of the mess I'm in!' 'e says. 'The divorce expenses an' all. An' that damn woman!'

" 'l've loved you all the time, 'Arry! 'Arry, dear! 'Arry!' is what I 'ear, an' there's a sort of tenderness in the way she says it that must 'ave been a world of comfort to 'im.

"I went back later and knocked at the door. Mrs. Carter comes, lookin' 'appy, an' 'ugs me.

" 'I was goin' to suggest, Mrs. Carter,' I says, 'that now you an' your 'usband 'as made it up again 'e might go to Room 21— it will save the rent of the extra room.'

"You see, I knew 'e was up against it, an' I 'ad a new tenant waiting fer the room. It seemed respectable enough to me, them bein' married in 'Eaven, an' lovin' one another, in spite of the divorce.

"She 'ugged me again, an' 'e came out an' called me a good soul (which, thank God, I am, 'aving been confirmed), an' shook my 'and."

With which assurance Mrs. Parsley remembered she had household duties waiting for her, and left me to reflect upon the romance of Room 21.

_____________

12: A Schoolmaster Abroad

E. W. Hornung

1866-1921

In: The Crime Doctor, 1914

Ernest William Hornung

Best remembered for his long series of stories about Raffles, the gentleman crook, Hornung also created Dr. Dollar, a medical detective.  Dr. Dollar appeared in just 8 stories, collected in "The Crime Doctor".

IT IS a small world that flocks to Switzerland for the Christmas holidays. It is also a world largely composed of that particular class which really did provide Dr Dollar with the majority of his cases. He was therefore not surprised, on the night of his arrival at the great Excelsior Hotel, in Winterwald, to feel a diffident touch on the shoulder, and to look round upon the sunburnt blushes of a quite recent patient.

George Edenborough had taken Winterwald on his wedding trip, and nothing would suit him and his nut-brown bride but for the doctor to join them at their table. It was a slightly embarrassing invitation, but there was good reason for not persisting in a first refusal. And the bride carried the situation with a breezy vitality, while her groom chose a wine worthy of the occasion, and the newcomer explained that he had arrived by the afternoon train, but had not come straight to the hotel.

'Then you won't have heard of our great excitement,' said Mrs Edenborough, 'and I'm afraid you won't like it when you do.'

'If you mean the strychnine affair,' returned Dollar, with a certain deliberation, 'I heard one version before I had been in the place an hour. I can't say that I did like it. But I should be interested to know what you both think about it all.'

Edenborough returned the wine-list to the waiter with sepulchral injunctions.

'Are you telling him about our medical scandal?' he inquired briskly of the bride. 'My dear doctor, it'll make your professional hair stand on end! Here's the local practitioner been prescribing strychnine pills warranted to kill in twenty minutes!'

'So I hear,' said the crime doctor, drily.

'The poor brute has been frightfully overworked,' continued Edenborough, in deference to a more phlegmatic front than he had expected of the British faculty. 'They say he was up two whole nights last week; he seems to be the only doctor in the place, and the hotels are full of fellows doing their level best to lay themselves out. We've had two concussions of the brain and one complicated fracture this very week. Still, to go and give your patient a hundred times more strychnine than you intended—'

And he stopped himself, as though the subject, which he had taken up with a purely nervous zest, was rather near home after all.

'But what about his patient?' adroitly inquired the doctor. 'If half that one hears is true, he wouldn't have been much loss.'

'Not much, I'm afraid,' said Lucy Edenborough, with the air of a Roman matron turning down her thumbs.

'He's a fellow who was at my private school, just barely twenty-one, and making an absolute fool of himself,' explained Edenborough, touching his wine-glass. 'It's an awful pity. He used to be such a nice little chap, Jack Laverick.'

'He was nice enough when he was out here a year ago,' the bride admitted, 'and he's still a sportsman. He won half the toboggan races last season, and took it all delightfully; he's quite another person now, and gives himself absurd airs on top of everything else. Still, I shall expect Mr Laverick either to sweep the board or break his neck. He evidently wasn't born to be poisoned.'

'Did he come to grief last year, Mrs Edenborough?'

'He only nearly had one of his ears cut off, in a spill on the ice-run. So they said; but he was tobogganing again the next day.'

'Dr Alt looked after him all right then, I hear,' added Edenborough, as the champagne arrived. 'But I only wish you could take the fellow in hand! He really used to be a decent chap, but it would take even you all your time to make him one again, Dr Dollar.'

The crime doctor smiled as he raised his glass and returned compliments across the bubbles. It was the smile of a man with bigger fish to fry. Yet it was he who came back to the subject of young Laverick, asking if he had not a tutor or somebody to look after him, and what the man meant by not doing his job.

In an instant both the Edenboroughs had turned upon their friend. Poor Mr Scarth was not to blame! Poor Mr Scarth, it appeared, had been a master at the preparatory school at which Jack Laverick and George Edenborough had been boys. He was a splendid fellow, and very popular in the hotel, but there was nothing but sympathy with him in the matter under discussion. His charge was of age, and in a position to send him off at any moment, as indeed he was always threatening in his cups. But there again there was a special difficulty: one cup was more than enough for Jack Laverick, whose weak head for wine was the only excuse for him.

'Yet there was nothing of the kind last year,' said Mrs Edenborough, in a reversionary voice; 'at least, one never heard of it. And that makes it all the harder on poor Mr Scarth.'

Dollar declared that he was burning to meet the unfortunate gentleman; the couple exchanged glances, and he was told to wait till after the concert, at which he had better sit with them. Was there a concert? His face lengthened at the prospect, and the bride's eyes sparkled at his expense. She would not hear of his shirking it, but went so far as to cut dinner short in order to obtain good seats. She was one of those young women who have both a will and a way with them, and Dollar soon found himself securely penned in the gallery of an ambitious ball-room with a stage at the other end.

The concert came up to his most sardonic expectations, and he resigned himself to a boredom only intensified by the behaviour of some crude humorists in the rows behind. Indifferent song followed indifferent song, and each earned a more vociferous encore from those gay young gods. A not unknown novelist told dialect stories of purely territorial interest; a lady recited with astounding spirit; another fiddled, no less courageously; but the back rows of the gallery were quite out of hand when a black-avised gentleman took the stage, and had not opened his mouth before those back rows were rows of Satans reproving sin and clapping with unsophisticated gusto.

'Who's this?' asked Dollar, instantly aware of the change behind him; but even Lucy Edenborough would only answer, 'Hush, doctor!' as she bent forward with shining eyes. And certainly a hairpin could not have dropped unheard before the dark performer relieved the tension by plunging into a scene from Pickwick.

It was the scene of Mr Jingle's monologue on the Rochester coach—and the immortal nonsense was inimitably given. Yet nobody could have been less like the emaciated prototype than this tall tanned man, with the short black moustache, and the flashing teeth that bit off every word with ineffable snap and point.

'Mother— tall lady, eating sandwiches— forgot the arch— crash— knock— children look round— mother's head off— sandwich in her hand— no mouth to put it in—' and his own grim one only added to the fun and swelled the roar.

He waited darkly for them to stop, the wilful absence of any amusement on his side enormously increasing that of the audience. But when it came to the episode of Donna Christina and the stomach-pump, with the culminating discovery of Don Bolaro Fizzgig in the main pipe of the public fountain, the guffaws of half the house eventually drew from the other half the supreme compliment of exasperated demands for silence. Mrs George Edenborough was one of the loudest offenders. George himself had to wipe his eyes. And the crime doctor had forgotten that there was such a thing as crime.

'That chap's a genius!' he exclaimed, when a double encore had been satisfied by further and smaller doses of Mr Jingle, artfully held in reserve. 'But who is he, Mrs Edenborough?'

'Poor Mr Scarth!' crowed the bride, brimming over with triumphant fun.

But the doctor's mirth was at an end.

'That the fellow who can't manage a bit of a boy, when he can hold an audience like this in the hollow of his hand?'

And at first he looked as though he could not believe it, and then all at once as though he could. But by this time the Edenboroughs were urging Scarth's poverty in earnest, and Dollar could only say that he wanted to meet him more than ever.

The wish was not to be gratified without a further sidelight and a fresh surprise. As George and the doctor were repairing to the billiard-room, before the conclusion of the lengthy programme, they found a group of backs upon the threshold, and a ribald uproar in full swing within. One voice was in the ascendant, and it was sadly indistinct; but it was also the voice of the vanquished, belching querulous futilities. The cold steel thrusts of an autocratic Jingle cut it shorter and shorter. It ceased altogether, and the men in the doorway made way for Mr Scarth, as he hurried a dishevelled youth off the scene in the most approved constabulary manner.

'Does it often happen, George?' Dollar's arm had slipped through his former patient's as they slowly followed at their distance.

'Most nights, I'm afraid.'

'And does Scarth always do what he likes with him—afterwards?'

'Always; he's the sort of fellow who can do what he likes with most people,' declared the young man, missing the point. 'You should have seen him at the last concert, when those fools behind us behaved even worse than tonight! It wasn't his turn, but he came out and put them right in about a second, and had us all laughing the next! It was just the same at school; everybody was afraid of Mostyn Scarth, boys and men alike; and so is Jack Laverick still— in spite of being of age and having the money-bags— as you saw for yourself just now.'

'Yet he lets this sort of thing happen continually?'

'It's pretty difficult to prevent. A glass about does it, as I told you, and you can't be at a fellow's elbow all the time in a place like this. But some of Jack's old pals have had a go at him. Do you know what they've done? They've taken away his Old Etonian tie, and quite right too!'

'And there was nothing of all this last year?'

'So Lucy says. I wasn't here. Mrs Laverick was, by the way; she may have made the difference. But being his own master seems to have sent him to the dogs altogether. Scarth's the only person to pull him up, unless— unless you'd take him on, doctor! You— you've pulled harder cases out of the fire, you know!'

They had been sitting a few minutes in the lounge. Nobody was very near them; the young man's face was alight and his eyes shining. Dollar took him by the arm once more, and they went together to the lift.

'In any case I must make friends with your friend Scarth,' said he. 'Do you happen to know his number?'

Edenborough did— it was 144— but he seemed dubious as to another doctor's reception after the tragedy that might have happened in the adjoining room.

'Hadn't I better introduce you in the morning?' he suggested with much deference in the lift. 'I— I hate repeating things— but I want you to like each other, and I heard Scarth say he was fed up with doctors!'

This one smiled.

'I don't wonder at it.'

'Yet it wasn't Mostyn Scarth who gave Dr Alt away.'

'No?'

Edenborough shook his head as they left the lift together. 'No, doctor. It was the chemist here, a chap called Schickel; but for him, Jack Laverick would be a dead man; and but for him again, nobody need ever have heard of his narrow shave. He spotted the mistake, and then started all the gossip.'

'I know,' said the doctor, nodding.

'But it was a terrible mistake! Decigrams instead of milligrams, so I heard. Just a hundred times too much strychnine in each pill.'

'You are quite right,' said John Dollar quietly. 'I have the prescription in my pocket.'

'You have, doctor?'

'Don't be angry with me, my dear fellow! I told you I had heard one version of the whole thing. It was Alt's. He's an old friend— but you wouldn't have said a word about him if I had told you that at first— and I still don't want it generally known.'

'You can trust me, doctor, after all you've done for me.'

'Well, Alt once did more for me. I want to do something for him, that's all.'

And his knuckles still ached from the young man's grip as they rapped smartly at the door of No. 144.

ii

IT WAS opened a few inches by Mostyn Scarth. His raiment was still at concert pitch, but his face even darker than it had been as the crime doctor saw it last.

'May I ask who you are and what you want?' he demanded—not at all in the manner of Mr Jingle— rather in the voice that most people would have raised.

'My name's Dollar and I'm a doctor.'

The self-announcement, pat as a polysyllable, had a foreseen effect only minimised by the precautionary confidence of Dr Dollar's manner.

'Thanks very much. I've had about enough of doctors.'

And the door was shutting when the intruder got in a word like a wedge.

'Exactly!'

Scarth frowned through a chink just wide enough to show both his eyes. It was the intruder's tone that held his hand.

'What does that mean?' he demanded with more control.

'That I want to see you about the other doctor— this German fellow,' returned Dollar, against the grain. But the studious phrase admitted him.

'Well, don't raise your voice,' said Scarth, lowering his own as he shut the door softly behind them. 'I believe I saw you downstairs outside the bar. So I need only explain that I've just got my bright young man off to sleep, on the other side of those folding doors.'

Dollar could not help wondering whether the other room was as good as Scarth's, which was much bigger and better appointed than his own. But he sat down at the oval table under the electrolier, and came abruptly to his point.

'About that prescription,' he began, and straightway produced it from his pocket.

'Well, what about it?' the other queried, but only keenly, as he sat down at the table, too.

'Dr Alt is a very old friend of mine, Mr Scarth.'

Mostyn Scarth exhibited the slight but immediate change of front due from gentleman to gentleman on the strength of such a statement. His grim eyes softened with a certain sympathy; but the accession left his gravity the more pronounced.

'He is not only a friend,' continued Dollar, 'but the cleverest and best man I know in my profession. I don't speak from mere loyalty; he was my own doctor before he was my friend. Mr Scarth, he saved more than my life when every head in Harley Street had been shaken over my case. All the baronets gave me up; but chance or fate brought me here, and this little unknown man performed the miracle they shirked, and made a new man of me off his own bat. I wanted him to come to London and make his fortune; but his work was here, he wouldn't leave it; and here I find him under this sorry cloud. Can you wonder at my wanting to step in and speak up for him, Mr Scarth?'

'On the contrary, I know exactly how you must feel, and am very glad you have spoken,' rejoined Mostyn Scarth, cordially enough in all the circumstances of the case. 'But the cloud is none of my making, Dr Dollar, though I naturally feel rather strongly about the matter. But for Schickel, the chemist, I might be seeing a coffin to England at this moment! He's the man who found out the mistake, and has since made all the mischief.'

'Are you sure it was a mistake, Mr Scarth?' asked Dollar quietly.

'What else?' cried the other, in blank astonishment. 'Even Schickel has never suggested that Dr Alt was trying to commit a murder!'

'Even Schickel!' repeated Dollar, with a sharp significance. 'Are you suggesting that there's no love lost between him and Alt?'

'I was not, indeed!' Scarth seemed still more astonished. 'No. That never occurred to me for a moment.'

'Yet it's a small place, and you know what small places are. Would one man be likely to spread a thing like this against another if there were no bad blood between them?'

Scarth could not say. The thing happened to be true, and it made such a justifiable sensation. He was none the less frankly interested in the suggestion. It was as though he had a tantalising glimmer of the crime doctor's meaning. Their heads were closer together across the end of the table, their eyes joined in mutual probation.

'Can I trust you with my own idea, Mr Scarth?'

'That's for you to decide, Dr Dollar.'

'I shall not breathe it to another soul— not even to Alt himself— till I am sure.'

'You may trust me, doctor. I don't know what's coming, but I sha'n't give it away.'

'Then I shall trust you even to the extent of contradicting what I just said. I am sure— between ourselves— that the prescription now in my hands is a clever forgery.'

Scarth held out his hand for it. A less deliberate announcement might have given him a more satisfactory surprise; but he could not have looked more incredulous than he did, or subjected Dollar to a cooler scrutiny.

'A forgery with what object, Dr Dollar?'

'That I don't pretend to say. I merely state the fact— in confidence. You have your eyes upon a flagrant forgery.'

Scarth raised them twinkling. 'My dear Dr Dollar, I saw him write it out myself!'

'Are you quite sure?'

'Absolutely, doctor. This lad, Jack Laverick, is a pretty handful; without a doctor to frighten him from time to time, I couldn't cope with him at all. His people are in despair about him— but that's another matter. I was only going to say that I took him to Dr Alt myself, and this is the prescription they refused to make up. Schickel may have a spite against Alt, as you suggest, but if he's a forger I can only say he doesn't look the part.'

'The only looks I go by,' said the crime doctor, 'are those of the little document in your hand.'

'It's on Alt's paper.'

'Anybody could get hold of that.'

'But you suggest that Alt and Schickel have been on bad terms?'

'That's a better point, Mr Scarth, that's a much better point,' said Dollar, smiling and then ceasing to smile as he produced a magnifying lens. 'Allow me to switch on the electric standard, and do me the favour of examining that handwriting with this loop; it's not very strong, but the best I could get here at the photographer's shop.'

'It's certainly not strong enough to show anything fishy, to my inexperience,' said Scarth, on a sufficiently close inspection.

'Now look at this one.'

Dollar had produced, a second prescription from the same pocket as before. At first sight they seemed identical.

'Is this another forgery?' inquired Scarth, with a first faint trace of irony.

'No. That's the correct prescription, rewritten by Alt, at my request, as he is positive he wrote it originally.'

'I see now. There are two more noughts mixed up with the other hieroglyphs.'

'They happen to make all the difference between life and death,' said Dollar, gravely. 'Yet they are not by any means the only difference here.'

'I can see no other, I must confess.' And Scarth raised stolid eyes to meet Dollar's steady gaze.

'The other difference is, Mr Scarth, that the prescription with the strychnine in deadly decigrams has been drawn backwards instead of being written forwards.'

Scarth's stare ended in a smile.

'Do you mind saying all that again, Dr Dollar?'

'I'll elaborate it. The genuine prescription has been written in the ordinary way— currente calamo. But forgeries are not written in the ordinary way, much less with running pens; the best of them are written backwards, or rather they are drawn upside down. Try to copy writing as writing, and your own will automatically creep in and spoil it; draw it upside down and wrong way on, as a mere meaningless scroll, and your own formation of the letters doesn't influence you, because you are not forming letters at all. You are drawing from a copy, Mr Scarth.'

'You mean that I'm deriving valuable information from a handwriting expert,' cried Scarth, with another laugh.

'There are no such experts,' returned Dollar, a little coldly. 'It's all a mere matter of observation, open to everybody with eyes to see. But this happens to be an old forger's trick; try it for yourself, as I have, and you'll be surprised to see how much there is in it.'

'I must,' said Scarth. 'But I can't conceive how you can tell that it has been played in this case.'

'No? Look at the start, "Herr Laverick," and at the finish, "Dr Alt." You would expect to see plenty of ink in the "Herr" wouldn't you? Still plenty in the "Laverick," I think, but now less and less until the pen is filled again. In the correct prescription, written at my request to-day, you will find that this is so. In the forgery the progression is precisely the reverse; the t in "Alt" is full of ink, but you will find less and less till the next dip in the middle of the word "Mahlzeit" in the line above. The forger, of course, dips oftener than the man with the running pen.'

Scarth bent in silence over the lens, his dark face screwed awry. Suddenly he pushed back his chair.

'It's wonderful!' he cried softly. 'I see everything you say. Dr Dollar, you have converted me to your view. I should like you to allow me to convert the hotel.'

'Not yet,' said Dollar rising, 'if at all as to the actual facts of the case. It's no use making bad worse, Mr Scarth, or taking a dirty trick too seriously. It isn't as though the forgery had been committed with a view to murdering your young Laverick.'

'I never dreamt of thinking that it was!'

'You are quite right, Mr Scarth. It doesn't bear thinking about. Of course, any murderer ingenious enough to concoct such a thing would have been far too clever to drop out two noughts; he would have been content to change the milligrams into centigrams, and risk a recovery. No sane chemist would have dispensed the pills in decigrams. But we are getting off the facts, and I promised to meet Dr Alt on his last round. If I may tell him, in vague terms, that you at least think there may have been some mistake, other than the culpable one that has been laid at his door, I shall go away less uneasy about my unwarrantable intrusion than I can assure you I was in making it.'

It was strange how the balance of personality had shifted during an interview which Scarth himself was now eager to extend. He was no longer the mesmeric martinet who had tamed an unruly audience at sight; the last of Mr Jingle's snap had long been in abeyance. And yet there was just one more suggestion of that immortal, in the rather dilapidated trunk from which the swarthy exquisite now produced a bottle of whisky, very properly locked up out of Laverick's reach. And weakness of will could not be imputed to the young man who induced John Dollar to cement their acquaintance with a thimbleful.

iii

IT WAS early morning in the same week; the crime doctor lay brooding over the most complicated case that had yet come his way. More precisely it was two cases, but so closely related that it took a strong mind to consider them apart, a stronger will to confine each to the solitary brain-cell that it deserved. Yet the case of young Laverick was not only much the simpler of the two, but infinitely the more congenial to John Dollar, and not the one most on his nerves.

It was too simple altogether. A year ago the boy had been all right, wild only as a tobogganer, lucky to have got off with a few stitches in his ear. Dollar heard all about that business from Dr Alt, and only too much about Jack Laverick's subsequent record from other informants. It was worthy of the Welbeck Street confessional. His career at Oxford had come to a sudden ignominious end. He had forfeited his motoring licence for habitually driving to the public danger, and on the last occasion had barely escaped imprisonment for his condition at the wheel. He had caused his own mother to say advisedly that she would 'sooner see him in his coffin than going on in this dreadful way'; in writing she had said it, for Scarth had shown the letter addressed to him as her 'last and only hope' for Jack; and yet even Scarth was powerless to prevent that son of Belial from getting 'flown with insolence and wine' more nights than not. Even last night it had happened, at the masked ball, on the eve of this morning's races! Whose fault would it be if he killed himself on the ice-run after all?

Dollar writhed as he thought upon this case; yet it was not the case that had brought him out from England, not the reason of his staying out longer than he had dreamt of doing when Alt's telegram arrived. It was not, indeed, about Jack Laverick that poor Alt had telegraphed at all. And yet between them what a job they could have made of the unfortunate youth!

It was Dollar's own case over again— yet he had not been called in— neither of them had!

Nevertheless, when all was said that could be said to himself, or even to Alt— who did not quite agree— Laverick's was much the less serious matter; and John Dollar had turned upon the other side, and was grappling afresh with the other case, when his door opened violently without a knock, and an agitated voice spoke his name.

'It's me—Edenborough,' it continued in a hurried whisper. 'I want you to get into some clothes and come up to the ice-run as quick as possible!'

'Why? What has happened?' asked the doctor, jumping out of bed as Edenborough drew the curtains.

'Nothing yet. I hope nothing will—'

'But something has!' interrupted the doctor. 'What's the matter with your eye?'

'I'll tell you as you dress, only be as quick as you can. Did you forget it was the toboggan races this morning? They're having them at eight instead of nine, because of the sun, and it's ten to eight now. Couldn't you get into some knickerbockers and stick a sweater over all the rest? That's what I've done—wish I'd come to you first! They'll want a doctor if we don't make haste!'

'I wish you'd tell me about your eye,' said Dollar, already in his stockings.

'My eye's all right,' returned Edenborough, going to the glass. 'No, by Jove, it's blacker than I thought, and my head's still singing like a kettle. I shouldn't have thought Laverick could hit so hard— drunk or sober.'

'That madman?' cried Dollar, looking up from his laces. 'I thought he turned in early for once?'

'He was up early, anyhow,' said Edenborough, grimly; 'but I'll tell you the whole thing as we go up to the run, and I don't much mind who hears me. He's a worse hat even than we thought. I caught him tampering with the toboggans at five o'clock this morning!'

'Which toboggans?'

'One of the lot they keep in a shed just under our window, at the back of the hotel. I was lying awake and I heard something. It was like a sort of filing, as if somebody was breaking in somewhere. I got up and looked out, and thought I saw a light. Lucy was fast asleep; she is still, by the way, and doesn't know a thing.'

'I'm ready,' said Dollar. 'Go on when we get outside.'

It was a very pale blue morning, not a scintilla of sunlight in the valley, neither shine nor shadow upon clambering forest or overhanging rocks. Somewhere behind their jagged peaks the sun must have risen, but as yet no snowy facet winked the news to Winterwald, and the softer summits lost all character against a sky only less white than themselves.

The village street presented no difficulties to Edenborough's gouties and the doctor's hobnails; but there were other people in it, and voices travel in a frost over silent snow. On the frozen path between the snowfields, beyond the village, nails were not enough, and the novice depending upon them stumbled and slid as the elaborated climax of Edenborough's experience induced even more speed.

'It was him all right— try the edge, doctor, it's less slippy. It was that little brute in his domino, as if he'd never been to bed at all, and me in my dressing-gown not properly awake. We should have looked a funny pair in—have my arm, doctor.'

'Thanks, George.'

'But his electric lamp was the only light. He didn't attempt to put it out. "Just tuning up my toboggan," he whispered. "Come and have a look." I didn't and don't believe it was his own toboggan; it was probably that Captain Strong's, he's his most dangerous rival; but, as I tell you, I was just going to look when the young brute hit me full in the face without a moment's warning. I went over like an ox, but I think the back of my head must have hit something. There was daylight in the place when I opened the only eye I could.'

'Had he locked you in?'

'No; he was too fly for that; but I simply couldn't move till I heard voices coming, and then I only crawled behind a stack of garden chairs and things. It was Strong and another fellow— they did curse to find the whole place open! I nearly showed up and told my tale, only I wanted to tell you first.'

'I'm glad you have, George.'

'I knew your interest in the fellow— besides, I thought it was a case for you,' said George Edenborough simply. 'But it kept me prisoner till the last of the toboggans had been taken out— I only hope it hasn't made us too late!'

His next breath was a devout thanksgiving, as a fold in the glistening slopes showed the top of the ice-run, and a group of men in sweaters standing out against the fir-trees on the crest. They seemed to be standing very still. Some had their padded elbows lifted as though they were shading their eyes. But there was no sign of a toboggan starting, no sound of one in the invisible crevice of the run. And now man after man detached himself from the group, and came leaping down the subsidiary snow-track meant only for ascent.

But John Dollar and George Edenborough did not see all of this. A yet more ominous figure had appeared in their own path, had grown into Mostyn Scarth, and stood wildly beckoning to them both.

'It's Jack!' he shouted across the snow. 'He's had a smash— self and toboggan— flaw in a runner. I'm afraid he's broken his leg.'

'Only his leg!' cried Dollar, but not with the least accent of relief. The tone made Edenborough wince behind him, and Scarth in front look round. It was as though even the crime doctor thought Jack Laverick better dead.

He lay on a litter of overcoats, the hub of a wheel of men that broke of itself before the first doctor on the scene. He was not even insensible, neither was he uttering moan or groan; but his white lips were drawn away from his set teeth, and his left leg had an odd look of being no more a part of him than its envelope of knickerbocker and stocking.

'It's a bust, doctor, I'm afraid,' the boy ground out as Dollar knelt in the snow. 'Hurting? A bit— but I can stick it.'

Courage was the one quality he had not lost during the last year; nobody could have shown more during the slow and excruciating progress to the village, on a bobsleigh carried by four stumbling men; everybody was whispering about it. Everybody but the crime doctor, who headed the little procession with a face in keeping with the tone which had made Edenborough wince and Scarth look round.

The complex case of the night— this urgent one— both were forgotten for Dollar's own case of years ago. He was back again in another Winterwald, another world. It was no longer a land of Christmas-trees growing out of mountains of Christmas cake; the snow melted before his mind's eye; he was hugging the shadows in a street of toy-houses yielding resin to an August sun, between green slopes combed with dark pines, under a sky of intolerable blue. And he was in despair; all Harley Street could or would do nothing for him. And then— and then— some forgotten ache or pain had taken him to the little man— the great man—down this very turning to the left, in the little wooden house tucked away behind the shops.

How he remembered every landmark— the handrail down the slope— the little porch—the bare stairs, his own ladder between death and life— the stark surgery with its uncompromising appliances in full view! And now at last he was there with such another case as his own— with the minor case that he had yet burned to bring there— and there was Alt to receive them in the same white jacket and with the same simple countenance as of old!

They might have taken him on to the hotel, as Scarth indeed urged strongly; but the boy himself was against another yard, though otherwise a hero to the end.

'Chloroform?' he cried faintly. 'Can't I have my beastly leg set without chloroform? You're not going to have it off, are you? I can stick anything short of that.'

The two doctors retired for the further consideration of a point on which they themselves were not of one mind.

'It's the chance of our lives, and the one chance for him,' urged Dollar vehemently. 'It isn't as if it were such a dangerous operation, and I'll take sole responsibility.'

'But I am not sure you have been right,' demurred the other. 'He has not even had concussion, a year ago. It has been only the ear.'

'There's a lump behind it still. Everything dates from when it happened; there's some pressure somewhere that has made another being of him. It's a much simpler case than mine, and you cured me. Alt, if you had seen how his own mother wrote about him, you would be the very last man to hesitate!'

'It is better to have her consent.'

'No— nobody's— the boy himself need never know. There's a young bride here who'll nurse him like an angel and hold her tongue till doomsday. She and her husband may be in the secret, but not another soul!'

And when Jack Laverick came out of chloroform, to feel a frosty tickling under the tabernacle of bedclothes in which his broken bone was as the Ark, the sensation was less uncomfortable than he expected. But that of a dull deep pain in the head drew his first complaint, as an item not in the estimate.

'What's my head all bandaged up for?' he demanded, fingering the turban on the pillow.

'Didn't you know it was broken, too?' said Lucy Edenborough gravely. 'I expect your leg hurt so much more that you never noticed it.'

iv

TEN DAYS later Mostyn Scarth called at Doctor Alt's, to ask if he mightn't see Jack at last. He had behaved extremely well about the whole affair; others in his position might easily have made trouble. But there had been no concealment of the fact that injuries were not confined to the broken leg, and the mere seat of the additional mischief was enough for a man of sense. It is not the really strong who love to display their power. Scarth not only accepted the situation, but voluntarily conducted the correspondence which kept poor Mrs Laverick at half Europe's length over the critical period. He had merely stipulated to be the first to see the convalescent, and he took it as well as ever when Dollar shook his head once more.

'It's not our fault this time, Mr Scarth. You must blame the sex that is privileged to change its mind. Mrs Laverick has arrived without a word of warning. She is with her son at this moment, and you'll be glad to hear that she thinks she finds him an absolutely changed character— or, rather, what he was before he ever saw Winterwald a year ago. I may say that this seems more or less the patient's own impression about himself.'

'Glad!' cried Scarth, who for the moment had seemed rather staggered. 'I'm more than glad; I'm profoundly relieved! It doesn't matter now whether I see Jack or not. Do you mind giving him these magazines and papers, with my love? I am thankful that my responsibility's at an end.'

'The same with me,' returned the crime doctor. 'I shall go back to my work in London with a better conscience than I had when I left it— with something accomplished— something undone that wanted undoing.'

He smiled at Scarth across the flap of an unpretentious table, on which lay the literary offering in all its glory of green and yellow wrappers; and Scarth looked up without a trace of pique, but with an answering twinkle in his own dark eyes.

'Alt exalted— restored to favour— Jack reformed character— born again— forger forgotten— forging ahead, eh?'

It was his best Mr Jingle manner; indeed, a wonderfully ready and ruthless travesty of his own performance on the night of Dollar's arrival. And that kindred critic enjoyed it none the less for a second strain of irony, which he could not but take to himself.

'I have not forgotten anybody, Mr Scarth.'

'But have you discovered who did the forgery?'

'I always knew.'

'Have you tackled him?'

'Days ago!'

Scarth looked astounded. 'And what's to happen to him, doctor?'

'I don't know.' The doctor gave a characteristic shrug. 'It's not my job; as it was I'd done all the detective business, which I loathe.'

'I remember,' cried Scarth. 'I shall never forget the way you went through that prescription, as though you had been looking over the blighter's shoulder! Not an expert —modest fellow— pride that apes!'

And again Dollar had to laugh at the way Mr Jingle wagged his head, in spite of the same slightly caustic undercurrent as before.

'That was the easiest part of it,' he answered, 'although you make me blush to say so. The hard part was what reviewers of novels call the "motivation."'

'But you had that in Schickel's spite against Alt.'

'It was never quite strong enough to please me.'

'Then what was the motive, doctor?'

'Young Laverick's death.'

'Nonsense!'

'I wish it were, Mr Scarth.'

'But who is there in Winterwald who could wish to compass such a thing?'

'There were more than two thousand visitors over Christmas, I understand,' was the only reply.

It would not do for Mostyn Scarth. He looked less than politely incredulous, if not less shocked and rather more indignant than he need have looked. But the whole idea was a reflection upon his care of the unhappy youth. And he said so in other words, which resembled those of Mr Jingle only in their stiff staccato brevity.

'Talk about "motivation"!— I thank you, doctor, for that word— but I should thank you even more to show me the thing itself in your theory. And what a way to kill a fellow! What a roundabout, risky way!'

'It was such a good forgery,' observed the doctor, 'that even Alt himself could hardly swear that it was one.'

'Is he your man?' asked Scarth, in a sudden whisper, leaning forward with lighted eyes.

The crime doctor smiled enigmatically. 'It's perhaps just as lucky for him, Scarth, that at least he could have had nothing to do with the second attempt upon his patient's life.'

'What second attempt?'

'The hand that forged the prescription, Scarth, with intent to poison young Laverick, was the one that also filed the flaw in his toboggan, in the hopes of breaking his neck.'

'My dear doctor,' exclaimed Mostyn Scarth, with a pained shake of the head, 'this is stark, staring madness!'

'I only hope it was— in the would-be murderer,' rejoined Dollar gravely. 'But he had a lot of method: he even did his bit of filing— a burglar couldn't have done it better— in the domino Jack Laverick had just taken off!'

'How do you know he had taken it off? How do you know the whole job wasn't one of Jack's drunken tricks?'

'What whole job?'

'The one you're talking about— the alleged tampering with his toboggan,' replied Scarth, impatiently.

'Oh! I only thought you meant something more.' Dollar made a pause. 'Don't you feel it rather hot in here, Scarth?'

'Do you know, I do!' confessed the visitor, as though it were Dollar's house and breeding had forbidden him to volunteer the remark. 'It's the heat of this stove, with the window shut. Thanks so much, doctor!'

And he wiped his strong, brown, beautifully shaven face; it was one of those that require shaving more than once a day, yet it was always glossy from the razor; and he burnished it afresh with a silk handkerchief that would have passed through a packing-needle's eye.

'And what are you really doing about this— monster?' he resumed, as one who should accept the monster's existence for the sake of argument.

'Nothing, Scarth.'

'Nothing? You intend to do nothing at all?'

Scarth had started, for the first time; but he started to his feet, while he was about it, as though in overpowering disgust.

'Not if he keeps out of England,' replied the crime doctor, who had also risen. 'I wonder if he's sane enough for that?'

Their four eyes met in a protracted scrutiny, without a flicker on either side.

'What I am wondering,' said Scarth deliberately, 'is whether this Frankenstein effort of yours exists outside your own imagination, Dr Dollar.'

'Oh! he exists all right,' declared the doctor. 'But I am charitable enough to suppose him mad— in spite of his method and his motive.'

'Did he tell you what that was?' asked Scarth with a sneer.

'No; but Jack did. He seems to have been in the man's power— under his influence— to an extraordinary degree. He had even left him a wicked sum in a will made since he came of age. I needn't tell you that he has now made another, revoking—'

'No, you need not!' cried Mostyn Scarth, turning livid at the last moment. 'I've heard about enough of your mares' nests and mythical monsters. I wish you good morning, and a more credulous audience next time.'

'That I can count upon,' returned the doctor at the door. 'There's no saying what they won't believe— at Scotland Yard!'

______________

13: Jack's as Good as His Master

Sumner Locke

1881-1917

Weekly Times (Vic), 4 Dec 1915

Australian writer and dramatist, Helena Sumner Locke was the mother of Sumner Locke Elliot, the Australian-American novelist and playwright (1917–1991)

FOUR TIMES the new dam had been held up for want of cement, and Marlow had, with insistent doggedness, approached John Varne, the boss, and let fly a few red-hot hints about the kind of year they might expect if a big drought set upon the land and there was a shortage of water.

As Marlow was only the overseer, and as John Varne was a man who carried about with him nine fine, fat opinions as to his management of the station, the first resentment showed up when Marlow said pretty hotly that he would not take his money for the job, and neither would the men, unless there was a job to work on. No cement means no work, and, as a special regiment of good laborers had been engaged to carry on the building of a huge dam in the first five-mile radius of tne home paddocks, it wasn't an easy job to sit by hour after hour, sometimes in the rain, just waiting for Providence or John Varne to attend to things.

The boss showed a line of even teeth, that were cleaned night and morning and after meals, whether there was a snortage of water or not, and, with some special expressions of contempt for the apparent hurry of the overseer, stepped into the diningroom of the nouse to join his people. What he said about that cement was nothing very important, but what he said about Marlow following him about like a dog, when his meal was already on the table, was a joke well upholstered with a side line in a cheap philosophy which Varne turned on specially for the benefit of two ladies visiting his sister and waiting in the room.

Marlow had broken away In a fury of impatience, and somebody In a lounge chair, yawning beautifully in the clear country air, asked the meaning of the discussion.

"These fellows," said Varne, easily, again showing his piano-key teeth in a kind of trial smile, "get cold feet about things the very minute I take an hour off. Anyone would think that they were building a town hall to hold their socialistic meetings in, instead of a dam. Marlow has been after me every time I leave my room, and I shall be forced to run a line of barbed wire round my house soon, to avoid the contact with his temper."

The young lady lounging with her feet up laughed crisply.

"Has he got a temper? He looks like a good-natured bear to me. You know the sort— never roused unless there is a reason."

"I might admit the reason," said Varne taking his place after the ladies had sat down, "only it does not do in my position, with several hundred men under me to let one of them think he knows best. The only successful way to run a concern with laborers, Is to absolutely crush any idea that Jack is as good as his master and by well, in this country one has to do that or go under. My experience has taught me that when the men want a thing and make a complaint every ten minutes about not getting it the only thing is—to keep them waiting." He laughed and carved a huge round of beef, the ladie3 for the most part admiring him.

But the little girl who thought the overseer perhaps worth fighting for, still kept up the thing.

"But, isn't it something about cement and the building of the dam? We were over looking at it last week, and someone said they would just about finish it by the Judgment Day."

Varne smiled into her face.

"And a few of them would like to spin it out till then, no doubt. A lazy lot of rotters mostly that stamp of man is. You can't hurry them, and all the time they want to hustle me. I will teach Marlow a lesson. He is too self-confident by far. It's only the importance of his position that makes him ferret round and worry over that cement."

As a matter of fact John Varne had only just taken up the run a short time. He had come from the old country with a supply of cash, bought extensively, laid out a neat homestead with. acetylene gas plant, and every convenience, and asked his friends up every month or so to applaud his doings. The matter of the dam was only one of the things that might have been a point in the direction of failure. Varne had been told that in that part of the country you only had to drop the sheep down like grass seed and they would sprout wool as thick and long as that on an island nigger's scalp, but he had not taken Into consideration that there might be birds of prey about waiting to devour the seed. In this instance there were more than birds about — there were congested opinions and arguments such as might lead to the downfall of |hlngs indirectly in a very short time.

It was true that Varne had sent a man down to telephone through for some hundred bags more of cement, but the man had been a kind of non-commissioned chap on the job, and had stayed at the refreshment half-way shanty; and cement was not in his mind at all.

Marlow began to haunt the house at last when two more days had gone, and the man had been sitting idly smoking about the dam, and the carting of earth and sediments had been all finished. He didn't care a cent about whether the dam was finished now or not, but he hated to be beaten by John Varne. He meant to get that cement up in another day or so, even if he had to drag Varne by the ears to the town and make him hoist it on his back. With such a mood on him the overseer stamped right into the diningroom just as the visitors had finished ! late dinner one night. The ladies were specially dressed in low-cut sleeveless bodices; and for a minute he seemed to be suffocating, as if he had stepped Into a church without washing his hands.

The little girl, who had upheld the work of the dam earlier in the week, began to show a lively interest. She sat forward with her bright eyes well set on Marlow, who was powerfully big and took up such a lot of the space between the table and the door.

John Varne was pleasantly happy. He had opened up some wine to celebrate something he had had on his mind for a period of the ladies' visit. That something began and ended with the little girl so enthusiastically watching things.

Varne saw the overseer stare right at his guest, and then noticed him turn livid. The girl had deliberately smiled, and he had taken it as a laugh against him. Varne, however, was furious at the entrance.

"There is a tradesmen's entrance at the back," he said, with some force, really absurd. "I object to talking business in presence of my guests. Kindly wait outside till I have finished my dinner."

But the blood of a thousand years dominated this injustice, and Marlow calmly removed a chair near him and sat down.

"About that cement," he began.

"You will get that cement when I am ready, not before."

Not before... then every man leaves tonight. They are sick of fooling and there are other jobs along the line."

Varne turned in his chair and crossed his black cloth legs. He smiled that easy smile to assure his guests that he would see this thing through in his own optimistic fashion. He would not admit the importance of the overseer.

"Other jobs." he said." If the men leave tonight on your authority, they leave without half their pay."

"I think not," said Marlow, and his eyes burned at the sudden clasping of the small hands that the girl was trying to keep still. She had never seen such magnificent strength of purpose as this working man carried in his face and she oould scarcely sit silent while the affair took different turns.

"I think not— besides, pay doesn't matter when it comes to a crisis like this. There has been a kind of unsettled feeling among most of them for weeks, but your contract held 'em like a dog holds a bone." His eyes turned like electric globes on the boss. "Yes, a kind of unsettled feeling to go down and sign on for the front."

Very carefully Varne shifted his legs. He put his polished boots down on the floor with scarce a sound.

"Of course, I should never dream of stopping any of the men going to the fight if they want to," he said; "but— it isn't time yet. Britain has not called for more men and when that time comes I trust the dam will be through."

Marlow rose, laughing.

"Your dam won't be through unless you go down tonight, or send me, and see that the cement is sent up first chance. We've made a working committee and an executive out there in the huts, and we are determined. You get that cement through by the day after tomorrow, Mr Varne, or the pick of us men goes to the town to sign on for the front. Maybe you did not notice in reading your weekly papers that the names of recruits were being as much sought after as the lambs mustered after a good season?"

To Varne this was a direct Insult, and he jumped to his feet. With almost shaking hands he gripped the table, and the little girl watching gripped her teeth too, and breathed shortly and quickly.

"I know this— that, for months past vou have been trying to teach me that Jack is as good as his master. Now I will show you. No man shall leave his job or break his contract unless I give him leave. You can go if you want to now—we don't want riots and labor agitators on my run."

Marlow swept his hand through his hair.

"I intend to go, and to take the pick of the men with me. You can sue for your contract, but you will find it does not hold water, or ink when the matter of the delay and the cement business comes to light. As for Jack being as good as his master— well, I  never thought about it, but as you've mentioned the subject I will keep it in memory. There might he occasion to prove that sometimes he is, if not, perhaps, better."

He strode rapidly away, and that night he and a small army of dam-builders went down to the town to sign on for the front.

THE Queen Elizabeth was vomiting great bursts of booming shell intermittently from the rear as three battalions of men marched up the ridge to the left, right and centre from the beach. As they gained the heights of the peninsula they met In spreading lines and advanced like a great crawling body, swarming the ridge in preparation for a magnificent dash over and down the descent.

Immediately the first line of swinging brown men tipped the skyline edge of the range a perfect curtain of perpetual shrapnel seemed to drop between them and the opposite hill. The line went down man after man almost as if the wind had blown them over, and the second and third quick on their heels, struck the blasting rain of shot as if the storm of stinging lead was working up to a furious deluge of death blows.

The other lines, rushing behind, surged over the ridge and over the bodies of their brothers, helter skelter, almost individually, scarce waiting an order to "charge" or retreat, and scurrying away down the slope to gain the advantage point of the hidden devils the other side. While the men beat on in the face of the storming death, some dropping in their oompanions' tracks and some weirdly laughing with a kind of unsuppressed hysteria born of absolute grit and determination to get across and defy the enemy, the booming of the big war ship way out thundered dully over the whole country, punctuated right through with the insistent battering of field guns and the heavier artillery In between.

The lines of brown men no longer advanced methodically, but stormed down the slope like scurrying rabbits hither and thither, widening and diverging, stumbling, jumping and hurling forcefully on in the fierce draught of the pelting bullets and slashing shrapnel. Down into the valley and up the side of the second hill they went with the impetus that is born of strength of iron minds and the force of sheer determination.   Up... up... up... with, hearts thumping and beating out each breath with as much fierceness as the great war vessel was throwing out shells... up.... with the position ahead of them seeming to retreat like a mirage and the distance widening back so that it almost appeared as if that chancing body of reckless Australians would never do it in the time. From the point of the first ridge to the second, down those slopes, in between and on the face of the steep wall opposite, the earth was dotted by those that had fallen, some half sitting up with disabled limbs, others huddled down like beaten dogs, crouched together or apart waiting the stretchers and the Red Cross saviours that might or might not be in time to relieve them.

The last inquisitive gleam of a blood red sunset caught the advancing men nearly at the top of the second ridge and a darting sudden zigzag of flashing light cut over everything as the fixed bayonets threw back the reflected sunset.

The curtain of shot was lifted gradually, and many men lay on the stage of life and death, inanimate to the applause of deafening shouting fellow comrades who were taking the last scene through. The raining, beating rifle fire began to lessen, dropping off gradually as that army of brown men ripped through the scrub and fought tooth and nail and bayonet and stock for the last shred of honor and prestige. Like the turning off a streaming tap of bullets, the battle began to grow less, with just an occasional rip-zipp of a sniper hidden somewhere, and taking a last chance, and the boom plunk of the great shells lobbing right away inland as the Queen Elizabeth kept on her dominating note of warning.

From the huddled mass of inanimate men one dilapidated khaki figure struggled to sit up and take a last breath with his face set towards a little sloop of a moon just tipping the blood-stained ridge with a silver trickle. He seemed to be the only living breathing entity in that small heap, and he knew that he, too, was setting his feet into the long, long way that his comrades had taken. But out of the blank darkness he had been plunged into, something of a dreadful loneliness began to ache through him. something fiercer than the pain of his sightlessness. He retained his hold on the ground long enough to call out weakly, and his voice just reached across the others... sleeping.

"Is—there anyone near me?"

Private Harlow, wounded in the head, heard the voice, and recognised it, though he could not crawl towards where the lonely man crouched.

He answered as well as he could.

"Yes— I seem to know your voice. Who is it?"

"Varne, John Varne— fourteenth battalion. I came out with the reinforcements only a day or so ago and I am blind already. Could you come up a bit? I don't— like— going— out— alone."

Private Marlow tried to move towards the man who had once been his boss on the Queensland run but fell back into his former position

"No good," he said, "Try and crawl to where you hear me speaking."

The blind man managed to do this in stages, and by sheer persuasion of the voice of the overseer. "When touched the hand outstretched to receive him, he clung like a child

"Who is it?"

"Marlow— you remember."

It was almost as if the overseer was trying to laugh, though he held the blind man in his arms soothingly.

"We are— both going out." Marlow spoke again.

"Yes— and I am not quite sure— about it, Marlow."

The overseer gripped the blind man's hand firmer.

"It's all right, Varne... we are going together... you know, list of honor, and... all that kind of thing... you've nothing to fear... you've done your best... Then, " he added, faintly, "...we ...both stand ...the same ...chance ...up there."

"The blind man just repeated this, clinging to his comrade. "Same chance up there. Do you— really think so?"

He coughed a little, rather uneasily. "I fancy there is something up against me— something big. I got wiped out so quickly... besides..."

Marlow struggled to comfort his comrade.

"Don't you fret, Varne. A man goes out of this thing much the same as he comes into it, you know... with the best in him uppermost... hold on to me and perhaps we may slip out together."

LATER, when the stretcher bearers gathered in the brave men who had sacrificed their lives so earnestly, so readily, one of the division remarked, with, some fervor: "You remember how things were out in Queensland... the old argument about Jack being as good as his master. And now here they are brothers in arms... in a common grave..."

For Varne and Marlow had started out on the one road hand in hand as men who had gone to reap their reward, according to their deeds. And, the same grave in Gallipoli, with its headpiece of wood, told the tale and settled that old argument for good.

______________

14: And the Dead Spake

E. F. Benson

1867-1940

Hutchinson’s Magazine Oct 1922

Edward Frederic Benson

THERE IS NOT in all London a quieter spot, or one, apparently, more withdrawn from the heat and bustle of life than Newsome Terrace. It is a cul-de-sac, for at the upper end the roadway between its two lines of square, compact little residences is brought to an end by a high brick wall, while at the lower end, the only access to it is through Newsome Square, that small discreet oblong of Georgian houses, a relic of the time when Kensington was a suburban village sundered from the metropolis by a stretch of pastures stretching to the river. Both square and terrace are most inconveniently situated for those whose ideal environment includes a rank of taxicabs immediately opposite their door, a spate of 'buses roaring down the street, and a procession of underground trains, accessible by a station a few yards away, shaking and rattling the cutlery and silver on their dining tables. In consequence Newsome Terrace had come, two years ago, to be inhabited by leisurely and retired folk or by those who wished to pursue their work in quiet and tranquillity. Children with hoops and scooters are phenomena rarely encountered in the Terrace and dogs are equally uncommon.

In front of each of the couple of dozen houses of which the Terrace is composed lies a little square of railinged garden, in which you may often see the middle-aged or elderly mistress of the residence horticulturally employed. By five o'clock of a winter's evening the pavements will generally be empty of all passengers except the policeman, who with felted step, at intervals throughout the night, peers with his bull's-eye into these small front gardens, and never finds anything more suspicious there than an early crocus or an aconite. For by the time it is dark the inhabitants of the Terrace have got themselves home, where behind drawn curtains and bolted shutters they will pass a domestic and uninterrupted evening. No funeral (up to the time I speak of) had I ever seen leave the Terrace, no marriage party had strewed its pavements with confetti, and perambulators were unknown. It and its inhabitants seemed to be quietly mellowing like bottles of sound wine. No doubt there was stored within them the sunshine and summer of youth long past, and now, dozing in a cool place, they waited for the turn of the key in the cellar door, and the entry of one who would draw them forth and see what they were worth.

Yet, after the time of which I shall now speak, I have never passed down its pavement without wondering whether each house, so seemingly-tranquil, is not, like some dynamo, softly and smoothly bringing into being vast and terrible forces, such as those I once saw at work in the last house at the upper end of the Terrace, the quietest, you would have said, of all the row. Had you observed it with continuous scrutiny, for all the length of a summer day, it is quite possible that you might have only seen issue from it in the morning an elderly woman whom you would have rightly conjectured to be the housekeeper, with her basket for marketing on her arm, who returned an hour later. Except for her the entire day might often pass without there being either ingress or egress from the door. Occasionally a middle-aged man, lean and wiry, came swiftly down the pavement, but his exit was by no means a daily occurrence, and indeed when he did emerge, he broke the almost universal usage of the Terrace, for his appearances took place, when such there were, between nine and ten in the evening. At that hour sometimes he would come round to my house in Newsome Square to see if I was at home and inclined for a talk a little later on. For the sake of air and exercise he would then have an hour's tramp through the lit and noisy streets, and return about ten, still pale and unflushed, for one of those talks which grew to have an absorbing fascination for me. More rarely through the telephone I proposed that I should drop in on him: this I did not often do, since I found that if he did not come out himself, it implied that he was busy with some investigation, and though he made me welcome, I could easily see that he burned for my departure, so that he might get busy with his batteries and pieces of tissue, hot on the track of discoveries that never yet had presented themselves to the mind of man as coming within the horizon of possibility.

My last sentence may have led the reader to guess that I am indeed speaking of none other than that recluse and mysterious physicist Sir James Horton, with whose death a hundred half-hewn avenues into the dark forest from which life comes must wait completion till another pioneer as bold as he takes up the axe which hitherto none but himself has been able to wield.

Probably there was never a man to whom humanity owed more, and of whom humanity knew less. He seemed utterly independent of the race to whom (though indeed with no service of love) he devoted himself: for years he lived aloof and apart in his house at the end of the Terrace.

Men and women were to him like fossils to the geologist, things to be tapped and hammered and dissected and studied with a view not only to the reconstruction of past ages, but to construction in the future. It is known, for instance, that he made an artificial being formed of the tissue, still living, of animals lately killed, with the brain of an ape and the heart of a bullock, and a sheep's thyroid, and so forth. Of that I can give no first-hand account; Horton, it is true, told me something about it, and in his will directed that certain memoranda on the subject should on his death be sent to me. But on the bulky envelope there is the direction, "Not to be opened till January, 1925." He spoke with some reserve and, so I think, with slight horror at the strange things which had happened on the completion of this creature. It evidently made him uncomfortable to talk about it, and for that reason I fancy he put what was then a rather remote date to the day when his record should reach my eye. Finally, in these preliminaries, for the last five years before the war, he had scarcely entered, for the sake of companionship, any house other than his own and mine. Ours was a friendship dating from school-days, which he had never suffered to drop entirely, but I doubt if in those years he spoke except on matters of business to half a dozen other people. He had already retired from surgical practice in which his skill was unapproached, and most completely now did he avoid the slightest intercourse with his colleagues, whom he regarded as ignorant pedants without courage or the rudiments of knowledge. Now and then he would write an epoch-making little monograph, which he flung to them like a bone to a starving dog, but for the most part, utterly absorbed in his own investigations, he left them to grope along unaided. He frankly told me that he enjoyed talking to me about such subjects, since I was utterly unacquainted with them. It clarified his mind to be obliged to put his theories and guesses and confirmations with such simplicity that anyone could understand them.

I well remember his coming in to see me on the evening of the 4th of August, 1914.

"So the war has broken out," he said, "and the streets are impassable with excited crowds."

"Odd, isn't it? Just as if each of us already was not a far more murderous battlefield than any which can be conceived between warring nations."

"How's that?" said I.

"Let me try to put it plainly, though it isn't that I want to talk about. Your blood is one eternal battlefield. It is full of armies eternally marching and counter-marching. As long as the armies friendly to you are in a superior position, you remain in good health; if a detachment of microbes that, if suffered to establish themselves, would give you a cold in the head, entrench themselves in your mucous membrane, the commander-in-chief sends a regiment down and drives them out. He doesn't give his orders from your brain, mind you— those aren't his headquarters, for your brain knows nothing about the landing of the enemy till they have made good their position and given you a cold."

He paused a moment.

"There isn't one headquarters inside you," he said, "there are many. For instance, I killed a frog this morning; at least most people would say I killed it. But had I killed it, though its head lay in one place and its severed body in another? Not a bit: I had only killed a piece of it. For I opened the body afterwards and took out the heart, which I put in a sterilised chamber of suitable temperature, so that it wouldn't get cold or be infected by any microbe. That was about twelve o'clock to-day. And when I came out just now, the heart was beating still. It was alive, in fact."

"That's full of suggestions, you know. Come and see it."

The Terrace had been stirred into volcanic activity by the news of war: the vendor of some late edition had penetrated into its quietude, and there were half a dozen parlour-maids fluttering about like black and white moths. But once inside Horton's door isolation as of an Arctic night seemed to close round me. He had forgotten his latch-key, but his housekeeper, then newly come to him, who became so regular and familiar a figure in the Terrace, must have heard his step, for before he rang the bell she had opened the door, and stood with his forgotten latch-key in her hand.

"Thanks, Mrs. Gabriel," said he, and without a sound the door shut behind us. Both her name and face, as reproduced in some illustrated daily paper, seemed familiar, rather terribly familiar, but before I had time to grope for the association, Horton supplied it.

"Tried for the murder of her husband six months ago," he said. "Odd case. The point is that she is the one and perfect housekeeper. I once had four servants, and everything was all mucky, as we used to say at school. Now I live in amazing comfort and propriety with one. She does everything. She is cook, valet, housemaid, butler, and won't have anyone to help her. No doubt she killed her husband, but she planned it so well that she could not be convicted. She told me quite frankly who she was when I engaged her."

Of course I remembered the whole trial vividly now. Her husband, a morose, quarrelsome fellow, tipsy as often as sober, had, according to the defence cut his own throat while shaving; according to the prosecution, she had done that for him. There was the usual discrepancy of evidence as to whether the wound could have been self-inflicted, and the prosecution tried to prove that the face had been lathered after his throat had been cut. So singular an exhibition of forethought and nerve had hurt rather than helped their case, and after prolonged deliberation on the part of the jury, she had been acquitted. Yet not less singular was Horton's selection of a probable murderess, however efficient, as housekeeper.

He anticipated this reflection.

"Apart from the wonderful comfort of having a perfectly appointed and absolutely silent house," he said, "I regard Mrs. Gabriel as a sort of insurance against my being murdered. If you had been tried for your life, you would take very especial care not to find yourself in suspicious proximity to a murdered body again: no more deaths in your house, if you could help it. Come through to my laboratory, and look at my little instance of life after death."

Certainly it was amazing to see that little piece of tissue still pulsating with what must be called life; it contracted and expanded faintly indeed but perceptibly, though for nine hours now it had been severed from the rest of the organisation. All by itself it went on living, and if the heart could go on living with nothing, you would say, to feed and stimulate its energy, there must also, so reasoned Horton, reside in all the other vital organs of the body other independent focuses of life.

"Of course a severed organ like that," he said, "will run down quicker than if it had the co-operation of the others, and presently I shall apply a gentle electric stimulus to it. If I can keep that glass bowl under which it beats at the temperature of a frog's body, in sterilised air, I don't see why it should not go on living. Food— of course there's the question of feeding it. Do you see what that opens up in the way of surgery? Imagine a shop with glass cases containing healthy organs taken from the dead. Say a man dies of pneumonia. He should, as soon as ever the breath is out of his body, be dissected, and though they would, of course, destroy his lungs, as they will he full of pneumococci, his liver and digestive organs are probably healthy. Take them out, keep them in a sterilised atmosphere with the temperature at 98.4, and sell the liver, let us say, to another poor devil who has cancer there. Fit him with a new healthy liver, eh?"

"And insert the brain of someone who has died of heart disease into the skull of a congenital idiot?" I asked.

"Yes, perhaps; but the brain's tiresomely complicated in its connections and the joining up of the nerves, you know. Surgery will have to learn a lot before it fits new brains in. And the brain has got such a lot of functions. All thinking, all inventing seem to belong to it, though, as you have seen, the heart can get on quite well without it. But there are other functions of the brain I want to study first. I've been trying some experiments already."

He made some little readjustment to the flame of the spirit lamp which kept at the right temperature the water that surrounded the sterilised receptacle in which the frog's heart was beating.

"Start with the more simple and mechanical uses of the brain," he said. "Primarily it is a sort of record office, a diary. Say that I rap your knuckles with that ruler. What happens? The nerves there send a message to the brain, of course, saying— how can I put it most simply— saying, 'Somebody is hurting me.' And the eye sends another, saying 'I perceive a ruler hitting my knuckles,' and the ear sends another, saying 'I hear the rap of it.' But leaving all that alone, what else happens? Why, the brain records it. It makes a note of your knuckles having been hit."

He had been moving about the room as he spoke, taking off his coat and waistcoat and putting on in their place a thin black dressing-gown, and by now he was seated in his favourite attitude cross-legged on the hearth-rug, looking like some magician or perhaps the afrit which a magician of black arts had caused to appear. He was thinking intently now, passing through his fingers his string of amber beads, and talking more to himself than to me.

"And how does it make that note?" he went on. "Why, in the manner in which phonograph records are made. There are millions of minute dots, depressions, pockmarks on your brain which certainly record what you remember, what you have enjoyed or disliked, or done or said."

"The surface of the brain anyhow is large enough to furnish writing-paper for the record of all these things, of all your memories. If the impression of an experience has not been acute, the dot is not sharply impressed, and the record fades: in other words, you come to forget it. But if it has been vividly impressed, the record is never obliterated. Mrs. Gabriel, for instance, won't lose the impression of how she lathered her husband's face after she had cut his throat. That's to say, if she did it.

"Now do you see what I'm driving at? Of course you do. There is stored within a man's head the complete record of all the memorable things he has done and said: there are all his thoughts there, and all his speeches, and, most well-marked of all, his habitual thoughts and the things he has often said; for habit, there is reason to believe, wears a sort of rut in the brain, so that the life principle, whatever it is, as it gropes and steals about the brain, is continually stumbling into it..There's your record, your gramophone plate all ready. What we want, and what I'm trying to arrive at, is a needle which, as it traces its minute way over these dots, will come across words or sentences which the dead have uttered, and will reproduce them. My word, what Judgment Books! What a resurrection!"

Here in this withdrawn situation no remotest echo of the excitement which was seething through the streets penetrated; through the open window there came in only the tide of the midnight silence. But from somewhere closer at hand, through the wall surely of the laboratory, there came a low, somewhat persistent murmur.

"Perhaps our needle— unhappily not yet invented— as it passed over the record of speech in the brain, might induce even facial expression," he said. "Enjoyment or horror might even pass over dead features. There might be gestures and movements even, as the words were reproduced in our gramophone of the dead. Some people when they want to think intensely walk about: some, there's an instance of it audible now, talk to themselves aloud."

He held up his finger for silence.

"Yes, that's Mrs. Gabriel," he said. "She talks to herself by the hour together. She's always done that, she tells me. I shouldn't wonder if she has plenty to talk about."

It was that night when, first of all, the notion of intense activity going on below the placid house-fronts of the Terrace occurred to me. None looked more quiet than this, and yet there was seething here a volcanic activity and intensity of living, both in the man who sat cross-legged on the floor and behind that voice just audible through the partition wall. But I thought of that no more, for Horton began speaking of the brain-gramophone again...Were it possible to trace those infinitesimal dots and pock-marks in the brain by some needle exquisitely fine, it might follow that by the aid of some such contrivance as translated the pock-marks on a gramophone record into sound, some audible rendering of speech might be recovered from the brain of a dead man. It was necessary, so he pointed out to me, that this strange gramophone record should be new; it must be that of one lately dead, for corruption and decay would soon obliterate these infinitesimal markings. He was not of opinion that unspoken thought could be thus recovered: the utmost he hoped for from his pioneering work was to be able to recapture actual speech, especially when such speech had habitually dwelt on one subject, and thus had worn a rut on that part of the brain known the speech-centre.

"Let me get, for instance," he said, "the brain of a railway porter, newly dead, who has been accustomed for years to call out the name of a station, and I do not despair of hearing his voice through my gramophone trumpet. Or again, given that Mrs. Gabriel, in all her interminable conversations with herself, talks about one subject, I might, in similar circumstances, recapture what she had been constantly saying. Of course my instrument must be of a power and delicacy still unknown, one of which the needle can trace the minutest irregularities of surface, and of which the trumpet must be of immense magnifying power, able to translate the smallest whisper into a shout. But just as a microscope will show you the details of an object invisible to the eye, so there are instruments which act in the same way on sound. Here, for instance, is one of remarkable magnifying power. Try it if you like."

He took me over to a table on which was standing an electric battery connected with a round steel globe, out of the side of which sprang a gramophone trumpet of curious construction. He adjusted the battery, and directed me to click my fingers quite gently opposite an aperture in the globe, and the noise, ordinarily scarcely audible, resounded through the room like a thunderclap.

"Something of that sort might permit us to hear the record on a brain," he said. After this night my visits to Horton became far more common than they had hitherto been.

Having once admitted me into the region of his strange explorations, he seemed to welcome me there. Partly, as he had said, it clarified his own thought to put it into simple language, partly, as he subsequently admitted, he was beginning to penetrate into such lonely fields of knowledge by paths so utterly untrodden, that even he, the most aloof and independent of mankind, wanted some human presence near him. Despite his utter indifference to the issues of the war— for, in his regard, issues far more crucial demanded his energies— he offered himself as surgeon to a London hospital for operations on the brain, and his services, naturally, were welcomed, for none brought knowledge or skill like his to such work. Occupied all day, he performed miracles of healing, with bold and dexterous excisions which none but he would have dared to attempt. He would operate, often successfully, for lesions that seemed certainly fatal, and all the time he was learning. He refused to accept any salary; he only asked, in cases where he had removed pieces of brain matter, to take these away, in order by further examination and dissection, to add to the knowledge and manipulative skill which he devoted to the wounded. He wrapped these morsels in sterilised lint, and took them back to the Terrace in a box, electrically heated to maintain the normal temperature of a man's blood. His fragment might then, so he reasoned, keep some sort of independent life of its own, even as the severed heart of a frog had continued to beat for hours without connection with the rest of the body. Then for half the night he would continue to work on these sundered pieces of tissue scarcely dead, which his operations during the day had given him. Simultaneously, he was busy over the needle that must be of such infinite delicacy.

One evening, fatigued with a long day's work, I had just heard with a certain tremor of uneasy anticipation the whistles of warning which heralded an air-raid, when my telephone bell rang. My servants, according to custom, had already betaken themselves to the cellar, and I went to see what the summons was, determined in any case not to go out into the streets. I recognised Horton's voice. "I want you at once," he said.

"But the warning whistles have gone," said I. "And I don't like showers of shrapnel."

"Oh, never mind that," said he. "You must come. I'm so excited that I distrust the evidence of my own ears. I want a witness. Just come."

He did not pause for my reply, for I heard the click of his receiver going back into its place.

Clearly he assumed that I was coming, and that I suppose had the effect of suggestion on my mind. I told myself that I would not go, but in a couple of minutes his certainty that I was coming, coupled with the prospect of being interested in something else than air-raids, made me fidget in my chair and eventually go to the street door and look out. The moon was brilliantly bright, the square quite empty, and far away the coughings of very distant guns. Next moment, almost against my will, I was running down the deserted pavements of Newsome Terrace. My ring at his bell was answered by Horton, before Mrs. Gabriel could come to the door, and he positively dragged me in.

"I shan't tell you a word of what I am doing," he said. "I want you to tell me what you hear. Come into the laboratory."

The remote guns were silent again as I sat myself, as directed, in a chair close to the gramophone trumpet, but suddenly through the wall I heard the familiar mutter of Mrs. Gabriel's voice. Horton, already busy with his battery, sprang to his feet.

"That won't do," he said. "I want absolute silence."

He went out of the room, and I heard him calling to her. While he was gone I observed more closely what was on the table. Battery, round steel globe, and gramophone trumpet were there, and some sort of a needle on a spiral steel spring linked up with the battery and the glass vessel, in which I had seen the frog's heart beat. In it now there lay a fragment of grey matter.

Horton came back in a minute or two, and stood in the middle of the room listening.

"That's better," he said. "Now I want you to listen at the mouth of the trumpet. I'll answer any questions afterwards."

With my ear turned to the trumpet, I could see nothing of what he was doing, and I listened till the silence became a rustling in my ears. Then suddenly that rustling ceased, for it was overscored by a whisper which undoubtedly came from the aperture on which my aural attention was fixed. It was no more than the faintest murmur, and though no words were audible, it had the timbre of a human voice.

"Well, do you hear anything?" asked Horton.

"Yes, something very faint, scarcely audible."

"Describe it," said he.

"Somebody whispering."

"I'll try a fresh place," said he.

The silence descended again; the mutter of the distant guns was still mute, and some slight creaking from my shirt front, as I breathed, alone broke it. And then the whispering from the gramophone trumpet began again, this time much louder than it had been before— it was as if the speaker (still whispering) had advanced a dozen yards— but still blurred and indistinct.

More unmistakable, too, was it that the whisper was that of a human voice, and every now and then, whether fancifully or not, I thought I caught a word or two. For a moment it was silent altogether, and then with a sudden inkling of what I was listening to I heard something begin to sing. Though the words were still inaudible there was melody, and the tune was "Tipperary."

From that convolvulus-shaped trumpet there came two bars of it.

"And what do you hear now?" cried Horton with a crack of exultation in his voice. "Singing, singing! That's the tune they all sang. Fine music that from a dead man. Encore! you say? Yes, wait a second, and he'll sing it again for you. Confound it, I can't get on to the place. Ah! I've got it: listen again."

Surely that was the strangest manner of song ever yet heard on the earth, this melody from the brain of the dead. Horror and fascination strove within me, and I suppose the first for the moment prevailed, for with a shudder I jumped up.

"Stop it!" I said. "It's terrible."

His face, thin and eager, gleamed in the strong ray of the lamp which he had placed close to him. His hand was on the metal rod from which depended the spiral spring and the needle, which just rested on that fragment of grey stuff which I had seen in the glass vessel.

"Yes, I'm going to stop it now," he said, "or the germs will be getting at my gramophone record, or the record will get cold. See, I spray it with carbolic vapour, I put it back into its nice warm bed. It will sing to us again. But terrible? What do you mean by terrible?"

Indeed, when he asked that I scarcely knew myself what I meant. I had been witness to a new marvel of science as wonderful perhaps as any that had ever astounded the beholder, and my nerves— these childish whimperers— had cried out at the darkness and the profundity.

But the horror diminished, the fascination increased as he quite shortly told me the history of this phenomenon. He had attended that day and operated upon a young soldier in whose brain was embedded a piece of shrapnel. The boy was in extremis, but Horton had hoped for the possibility of saving him. To extract the shrapnel was the only chance, and this involved the cutting away of a piece of brain known as the speech-centre, and taking from it what was embedded there. But the hope was not realised, and two hours later the boy died. It was to this fragment of brain that, when Horton returned home, he had applied the needle of his gramophone, and had obtained the faint whisperings which had caused him to ring me up, so that he might have a witness of this wonder. Witness I had been, not to these whisperings alone, but to the fragment of singing.

"And this is but the first step on the new road," said he. "Who knows where it may lead, or to what new temple of knowledge it may not be the avenue? Well, it is late: I shall do no more to-night."

"What about the raid, by the way?"

To my amazement I saw that the time was verging on midnight. Two hours had elapsed since he let me in at his door; they had passed like a couple of minutes. Next morning some neighbours spoke of the prolonged firing that had gone on, of which I had been wholly unconscious.

Week after week Horton worked on this new road of research, perfecting the sensitiveness and subtlety of the needle, and, by vastly increasing the power of his batteries, enlarging the magnifying power of his trumpet. Many and many an evening during the next year did I listen to voices that were dumb in death, and the sounds which had been blurred and unintelligible mutterings in the earlier experiments, developed, as the delicacy of his mechanical devices increased, into coherence and clear articulation. It was no longer necessary to Impose silence on Mrs. Gabriel when the gramophone was at work, or now the voice we listened to had risen to the pitch of ordinary human utterance, while as for the faithfulness and individuality of these records, striking testimony was given more than once by some living friend of the dead, who, without knowing what he was about to hear, recognised the tones of the speaker. More than once also, Mrs. Gabriel, bringing in syphons and whisky, provided us with three glasses, for she had heard, so she told us, three different voices in talk. But for the present no fresh phenomenon occurred; Horton was but perfecting the mechanism of his previous discovery and, rather grudging the time, was scribbling at a monograph, which presently he would toss to his colleagues, concerning the results he had already obtained. And then, even while Horton was on he threshold of new wonders, which he had already foreseen and spoken of as theoretically possible, there came an evening of marvel and of swift catastrophe.

I had dined with him that day, Mrs. Gabriel deftly serving the meal that she had so daintily prepared, and towards the end, as she was clearing the table for our dessert, she stumbled, I supposed, on a loose edge of carpet, quickly recovering herself. But instantly Horton checked some half-finished sentence, and turned to her.

"You're all right, Mrs. Gabriel?" he asked quickly.

"Yes, sir, thank you," said she, and went on with her serving.

"As I was saying," began Horton again, but his attention clearly wandered, and without concluding his narrative, he relapsed into silence, till Mrs. Gabriel had given us our coffee and left the room.

"I'm sadly afraid my domestic felicity may be disturbed," he said. "Mrs. Gabriel had an epileptic fit yesterday, and she confessed when she recovered that she had been subject to them when a child, and since then had occasionally experienced them."

"Dangerous, then?" I asked.

"In themselves not in the least," said he. "If she was sitting in her chair or lying in bed when one occurred, there would be nothing to trouble about. But if one occurred while she was cooking my dinner or beginning to come downstairs, she might fall into the fire or tumble down the whole flight. We'll hope no such deplorable calamity will happen. Now, if you've finished your coffee, let us go into the laboratory. Not that I've got anything very interesting in the way of new records. But I've introduced a second battery with a very strong induction coil into my apparatus. I find that if I link it up with my record, given that the record is a— a fresh one, it stimulates certain nerve centres. It's odd, isn't it, that the same forces which so encourage the dead to live would certainly encourage the living to die, if a man received the full current. One has to be careful in handling it. Yes, and what then? you ask."

The night was very hot, and he threw the windows wide before he settled himself cross-legged on the floor.

"I'll answer your question for you," he said, "though I believe we've talked of it before.

"Supposing I had not a fragment of brain-tissue only, but a whole head, let us say, or best of all, a complete corpse, I think I could expect to produce more than mere speech through the gramophone. The dead lips themselves perhaps might utter— God! what's that?"

From close outside, at the bottom of the stairs leading from the dining room which we had just quitted to the laboratory where we now sat, there came a crash of glass followed by the fall as of something heavy which bumped from step to step, and was finally flung on the threshold against the door with the sound as of knuckles rapping at it, and demanding admittance. Horton sprang up and threw the door open, and there lay, half inside the room and half on the landing outside, the body of Mrs. Gabriel. Round her were splinters of broken bottles and glasses, and from a cut in her forehead, as she lay ghastly with face upturned, the blood trickled into her thick grey hair.

Horton was on his knees beside her, dabbing his handkerchief on her forehead.

"Ah! that's not serious," he said; "there's neither vein nor artery cut. I'll just bind that up first."

He tore his handkerchief into strips which he tied together, and made a dexterous bandage covering the lower part of her forehead, but leaving her eyes unobscured. They stared with a fixed meaningless steadiness, and he scrutinised them closely.

"But there's worse yet," he said. "There's been some severe blow on the head. Help me to carry her into the laboratory. Get round to her feet and lift underneath the knees when I am ready. There! Now put your arm right under her and carry her."

Her head swung limply back as he lifted her shoulders, and he propped it up against his knee, where it mutely nodded and bowed, as his leg moved, as if in silent assent to what we were doing, and the mouth, at the extremity of which there had gathered a little lather, lolled open. He still supported her shoulders as I fetched a cushion on which to place her head, and presently she was lying close to the low table on which stood the gramophone of the dead. Then with light deft fingers he passed his hands over her skull, pausing as he came to the spot just above and behind her right ear. Twice and again his fingers groped and lightly pressed, while with shut eyes and concentrated attention he interpreted what his trained touch revealed.

"Her skull is broken to fragments just here," he said. "In the middle there is a piece completely severed from the rest, and the edges of the cracked pieces must be pressing on her brain."

Her right arm was lying palm upwards on the floor, and with one hand he felt her wrist with fingertips.

"Not a sign of..." he said. "She's dead in the ordinary sense of the word. But life persists in an extraordinary manner, you may remember. She can't be wholly dead: no one is wholly dead in a moment, unless every organ is blown to bits. But she soon will be dead, if we don't relieve the pressure on the brain. That's the first thing to be done. While I'm busy at that, shut the window, will you, and make up the fire. In this sort of case the vital heat, whatever that is, leaves the body very quickly. Make the room as hot as you can— fetch an oil-stove, and turn on the electric radiator, and stoke up a roaring fire. The hotter the room is the more slowly will the heat of life leave her."

Already he had opened his cabinet of surgical instruments, and taken out of it two drawers full of bright steel which he laid on the floor beside her. I heard the grating chink of scissors severing her long grey hair, and as I busied myself with laying and lighting the fire in the hearth, and kindling the oil-stove, which I found, by Horton's directions, in the pantry, I saw that his lancet was busy on the exposed skin. He had placed some vaporising spray, heated by a spirit lamp close to her head, and as he worked its fizzing nozzle filled the air with some clean and aromatic odour. Now and then he threw out an order.

"Bring me that electric lamp on the long cord," he said. "I haven't got enough light. Don't look at what I'm doing if you're squeamish, for if it makes you feel faint, I shan't be able to attend to you."

I suppose that violent interest in what he was doing overcame any qualm that I might have had, for I looked quite unflinching over his shoulder as I moved the lamp about till it was in such a place that it threw its beam directly into a dark hole at the edge of which depended a flap of skin. Into this he put his forceps, and as he withdrew them they grasped a piece of blood-stained bone.

"That's better," he said, "and the room's warming up well. But there's no sign of pulse yet.

"Go on stoking, will you, till the thermometer on the wall there registers a hundred degrees."

When next, on my journey from the coal-cellar, I looked, two more pieces of bone lay beside the one I had seen extracted, and presently referring to the thermometer, I saw, that between the oil-stove and the roaring fire and the electric radiator, I had raised the room to the temperature he wanted. Soon, peering fixedly at the seat of his operation, he felt for her pulse again.

"Not a sign of returning vitality," he said, "and I've done all I can. There's nothing more possible that can be devised to restore her."

As he spoke the zeal of the unrivalled surgeon relaxed, and with a sigh and a shrug he rose to his feet and mopped his face. Then suddenly the fire and eagerness blazed there again. "The gramophone!" he said. "The speech centre is close to where I've been working, and it is quite uninjured. Good heavens, what a wonderful opportunity. She served me well living, and she shall serve me dead. And I can stimulate the motor nerve-centre, too, with the second battery. We may see a new wonder tonight."

Some qualm of horror shook me.

"No, don't!" I said. "It's terrible: she's just dead. I shall go if you do."

"But I've got exactly all the conditions I have long been wanting," said he. "And I simply can't spare you. You must be witness: I must have a witness. Why, man, there's not a surgeon or a physiologist in the kingdom who would not give an eye or an ear to be in your place now.

"She's dead. I pledge you my honour on that, and it's grand to be dead if you can help the living."

Once again, in a far fiercer struggle, horror and the intensest curiosity strove together in me.

"Be quick, then," said I.

"Ha! That's right," exclaimed Horton. "Help me to lift her on to the table by the gramophone. The cushion too; I can get at the place more easily with her head a little raised."

He turned on the battery and with the movable light close beside him, brilliantly illuminating what he sought, he inserted the needle of the gramophone into the jagged aperture in her skull.

For a few minutes, as he groped and explored there, there was silence, and then quite suddenly Mrs. Gabriel's voice, clear and unmistakable and of the normal loudness of human speech, issued from the trumpet. "Yes, I always said that I'd be even with him," came the articulated syllables. "He used to knock me about, he did, when he came home drunk, and often I was black and blue with bruises.

"But I'll give him a redness for the black and blue."

The record grew blurred; instead of articulate words there came from it a gobbling noise. By degrees that cleared, and we were listening to some dreadful suppressed sort of laughter, hideous to hear. On and on it went.

"I've got into some sort of rut," said Horton. "She must have laughed a lot to herself."

For a long time we got nothing more except the repetition of the words we had already heard and the sound of that suppressed laughter. Then Horton drew towards him the second battery.

"I'll try a stimulation of the motor nerve-centres," he said. "Watch her face."

He propped the gramophone needle in position, and inserted into the fractured skull the two poles of the second battery, moving them about there very carefully. And as I watched her face, I saw with a freezing horror that her lips were beginning to move.

"Her mouth's moving," I cried. "She can't be dead."

He peered into her face.

"Nonsense," he said. "That's only the stimulus from the current. She's been dead half an hour. Ah! what's coming now?"

The lips lengthened into a smile, the lower jaw dropped, and from her mouth came the laughter we had heard just now through the gramophone. And then the dead mouth spoke, with a mumble of unintelligible words, a bubbling torrent of incoherent syllables.

"I'll turn the full current on," he said.

The head jerked and raised itself, the lips struggled for utterance, and suddenly she spoke swiftly and distinctly.

"Just when he'd got his razor out," she said, "I came up behind him, and put my hand over his face, and bent his neck back over his chair with all my strength. And I picked up his razor and with one slit— ha, ha, that was the way to pay him out. And I didn't lose my head, but I lathered his chin well, and put the razor in his hand, and left him there, and went downstairs and cooked his dinner for him, and then an hour afterwards, as he didn't come down, up I went to see what kept him. It was a nasty cut in his neck that had kept him—"

Horton suddenly withdrew the two poles of the battery from her head, and even in the middle of her word the mouth ceased working, and lay rigid and open.

"By God!" he said. "There's a tale for dead lips to tell. But we'll get more yet."

Exactly what happened then I never knew. It appeared to me that as he still leaned over the table with the two poles of the battery in his hand, his foot slipped, and he fell forward across it.

There came a sharp crack, and a flash of blue dazzling light, and there he lay face downwards, with arms that just stirred and quivered. With his fall the two poles that must momentarily have come into contact with his hand were jerked away again, and I lifted him and laid him on the floor. But his lips as well as those of the dead woman had spoken for the last time.

________________

15: The Ghost

Max Brand

1892-1944

All-Story Weekly, 3 May 1919

Max Brand (Frederick Schiller Faust)

THE GOLD STRIKE which led the fortune-hunters to Murrayville brought with them the usual proportion of bad men and outlaws. Three months after the rush started a bandit appeared so consummate in skill and so cool in daring that all other offenders against the law disappeared in the shade of his reputation. He was a public dread. His comings were unannounced; his goings left no track. Men lowered their voices when they spoke of him. His knowledge of affairs in the town was so uncanny that people called him the "Ghost."

The stages which bore gold to the railroad one hundred and thirty miles to the south left at the most secret hours of the night, but the Ghost knew. Once he "stuck up" the stage not a mile from town while the guards were still occupied with their flasks of snakebite. Again, when the stage rolled on at midday, eighty miles south of Murrayville, and the guards nodded in the white-hot sun, the Ghost rose from behind a bush, shot the near-leader, and had the cargo at his mercy in thirty seconds.

He performed these feats with admirable finesse. Not a single death lay charged to his account, for he depended upon surprise rather than slaughter. Yet so heavy was the toll he exacted that the miners passed from fury to desperation.

They organized a vigilance committee. They put a price on his head. Posses scoured the region of his hiding-place, Hunter's Cañon, into which he disappeared when hard pressed, and left no more trace than the morning mist which the sun disperses. A hundred men combed the myriad recesses of the cañon in vain. Their efforts merely stimulated the bandit.

While two-score men rode almost within calling distance, the Ghost appeared in the moonlight before Pat McDonald and Peters and robbed them of eighteen pounds of gold-dust which they carried in their belts. When the vigilance committee got word of this insolent outrage they called a mass-meeting so large that even drunken Geraldine was enrolled.

Never in the history of Murrayville had there been so grave and dry-throated an affair. William Collins, the head of the vigilantes, addressed the assembly. He rehearsed the list of the Ghost's outrages, pointed out that what the community needed was an experienced man-hunter to direct their efforts, and ended by asking Silver Pete to stand up before them. After some urging Pete rose and stood beside Collins, with his hat pushed back from his gray and tousled forelock and both hands tugging at his cartridge-belt.

"Men," went on Collins, placing one hand on the shoulder of the man-killer, "we need a leader who is a born and trained fighter, a man who will attack the Ghost with system and never stop after he takes up the trail. And I say the man we need is Silver Pete!"

Pete's mouth twitched back on one side into the faint semblance of a grin, and he shrugged off the patronizing hand of the speaker. The audience stirred, caught each other with side-glances, and then stared back at Silver Pete. His reputation gave even Murrayville pause, for his reputed killings read like the casualty list of a battle.

"I repeat," said Collins, after the pause, in which he allowed his first statement to shudder its way home, "that Silver Pete is the man for us.  I've talked it over with him before this, and he'll take the job, but he needs an inducement. Here's the reward I propose for him or for any other man who succeeds in taking the Ghost prisoner or in killing him. We'll give him any loot which may be on the person of the bandit. If the Ghost is disposed of in the place where he has cached his plunder, the finder gets it all. It's a high price to pay, but this thing has to be stopped. My own opinion is that the Ghost is a man who does his robbing on the side and lives right here among us. If that's the case, we'll leave it to Silver Pete to find him out, and we'll obey Pete's orders. He's the man for us. He's done work like this before. He has a straight eye, and he's fast with his six-gun. If you want to know Pete's reputation as a fighting man—"

"He'll tell you himself," said a voice, and a laugh followed.

Silver Pete scowled in the direction of the laugh, and his right hand caressed the butt of his gun, but two miners rose from the crowd holding a slender fellow between them.

"It's only Geraldine," said one of them. "There ain't no call to flash your gun, Pete."

"Take the drunken fool away," ordered Collins angrily. "Who let him in here? This is a place for men and not for girl-faced clowns!"

"Misher Collins," said Geraldine, doffing his broad-brimmed hat and speaking with a thick, telltale accent— "Misher Collins, I ask your pardon, shir."

He bowed unsteadily, and his hat brushed the floor.

"I plumb forgot I was in church with Silver Pete for a preacher!" he went on.

The audience turned their heads and chuckled deeply.

"Take him out, will you?" thundered Collins. "Take him out, or I'll come down there and kick him out myself!"

The two men at Geraldine's side turned him about and led him toward the door. Here he struggled away from his guides. "Misher Collins!" he cried in a voice half-whining and half-anger, "if I capture the Ghost do I get the loot?"

A yell of laughter drowned the reply, and Geraldine staggered from the room.

"What do you say, men?" roared Collins, enraged by these repeated interruptions. "Is Silver Pete the man for us?"

There was no shout of approval but a deep muttering of consent.

"I'd hire the devil himself," murmured one man, "if he'd get rid of the Ghost."

"All right," said Collins, and he turned to Pete. "You're in charge here, and it's up to you to tell us what to do. You're the foreman, and we're all in your gang."

The crowd was delighted, for Pete, finding himself deserted before the mass of waiting men, shifted uneasily from one foot to the other and kept changing the angle of the hat upon his mop of gray hair.

"Speech!" yelled a miner. "Give us a speech, Pete!" Silver Pete favored the speaker with a venomous scowl.

"Speech nothin'," he answered. "I ain't here to talk. I ain't no gossipin' bit of calico. I got a hunch my six-gun'll do my chatterin' for me."

"But what do you want us to do, Pete?" asked Collins. "How are we going to help you?"

"Sit tight and chaw your own tobacco," he said amiably. "I don't want no advice. There's been too many posses around these diggin's. Maybe I'll start and hunt the Ghost by myself. Maybe I won't. If I want help I'll come askin' it."

As a sign that the meeting had terminated he pulled his hat farther down over his eyes, hitched his belt, and stalked through the crowd without looking to either side.

Thereafter Murrayville saw nothing of him for a month, during which the Ghost appeared five times and escaped unscathed. The community pondered and sent out to find Pete, but the search was vain. There were those who held that he must have been shot down in his tracks by the Ghost, and even now decorated some lank hillside. The majority felt that having undertaken his quest alone Pete was ashamed to appear in the town without his victim.

On the subject of the quest Geraldine composed a ballad which he sang to much applause in the eight saloons of the town. It purported to be the narrative of Silver Pete's wanderings in search of the Ghost. In singing it Geraldine borrowed a revolver and belt from one of the bystanders, pushed back his hat and roughed up his hair, and imitated the scowling face of Pete so exactly that his hearers fairly wept with pleasure. He sang his ballad to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne," and the sad narrative concluded with a wailing stanza:

"I don't expect no bloomin' tears;

The only thing I ask

Is something for a monument

In the way of a whisky flask."

Geraldine sang himself into popularity and many drinks with his song, and for the first time the miners began to take him almost seriously. He had appeared shortly after old John Murray struck gold six months before, a slender man of thirty-five, with a sadly drooping mouth and humorous eyes.

He announced himself as Gerald Le Roy Witherstone, and was, of course, immediately christened "Geraldine."

Thereafter he wandered about the town, with no apparent occupation except to sing for his drinks in the saloons. Hitherto he had been accepted as a harmless and amusing man-child, but his ballad gave him at once an Homeric repute, particularly when men remembered that the song was bound to come sooner or later to the ear of Silver Pete.

For the time being Pete was well out of ear-shot. After the meeting, at which he was installed chief man-hunter of the community, he spent most of the evening equipping himself for the chase. Strangely enough, he did not hang a second revolver to his belt nor strap a rifle behind his saddle; neither did he mount a fleet horse. To pursue the elusive Ghost he bought a dull-eyed mule with a pendulous lower lip. On the mule he strapped a heavy pack which consisted chiefly of edibles, and in the middle of the night he led the mule out of Murrayville in such a way as to evade observation. Once clear of the town he headed straight for Hunter's Cañon.

Once inside the mouth of the cañon he began his search. While he worked he might have been taken for a prospector, for there was not a big rock in the whole course of the cañon which he did not examine from all sides. There was not a gully running into Hunter's which he did not examine carefully. He climbed up and down the cliffs on either side as if he suspected that the Ghost might take to wings and fly up the sheer rock to a cave.

The first day he progressed barely a half-mile. The second day he covered even less ground. So his search went on. In the night he built a fire behind a rock and cooked. Through four weeks his labor continued without the vestige of a clue to reward him. Twice during that time he saw posses go thundering through the valley and laughed to himself. They did not even find him, and yet he was making no effort to elude them. What chance would they have of surprising the Ghost?

This thought encouraged him, and he clung to the invisible trail, through the day and through the night, with the vision of the outlaw's loot before him. He ran out of bacon. Even his coffee gave out. For ten days he lived on flour, salt, and water, and then, as if this saintly fast were necessary before the vision, Pete saw the Ghost.

It was after sunset, but the moon was clear when he saw the fantom rider race along the far side of the valley. The turf deadened the sound of the horse's hoofs, and, like another worldly apparition, the Ghost galloped close to the wall of the valley— and disappeared.

Peter rubbed his eyes and looked again. It give him a queer sensation, as if he had awakened suddenly from a vivid dream, for the horse, with its rider, had vanished into thin air between the eyes of Peter and the sheer rock of the valley wall. A little shudder passed through his body, and he cursed softly to restore his courage.

Yet the dream of plunder sent his blood hotly back upon its course. He carefully observed the marks which should guide him to the point on the rock at which the rider disappeared. He hobbled the mule, examined his revolver, and spun the cylinder, and then started down across the cañon.

He had camped upon high ground, and his course led him on a sharp descent to the stream which cut the heart of the valley. Here, for two hundred yards, trees and the declivity of the ground cut off his view, but when he came to the higher ground again he found that he had wandered only a few paces to the left of his original course.

The wall of the valley was now barely fifty yards away, and as nearly as he could reckon the landmarks, the point at which the rider vanished was at or near a shrub which grew close against the rock. For an instant Pete thought that the tree might be a screen placed before the entrance of a cave. Yet the rider had made no pause to set aside the screen. He walked up to it and peered beneath the branches. He even fumbled at the base of the trunk, to make sure that the roots actually entered the earth. After this faint hope disappeared, Pete stepped back and sighed. His reason vowed that it was at this point that the horse turned to air, and Pete's was not a nature which admitted the supernatural.

He turned to the left and walked along the face of the cliff for fifty paces. It was solid rock. A chill like a moving piece of ice went up Pete's back.

He returned to the shrub and passed around it to the right.

At first he thought it merely the black shadow of the shrub. He stepped closer and then crouched with his revolver raised, for before him opened a crevice directly behind the shrub. It was a trifle over six feet high and less than half that in width; a man could walk through that aperture and lead a horse. Pete entered the passage with cautious steps.

Between each step he paused and listened. He put forth a foot and felt the ground carefully with it, for fear of a pebble which might roll beneath his weight, or a twig which might snap. His progress was so painfully slow that he could not even estimate distances in the pitch-dark. The passage grew higher and wider— it turned sharply to the right— a faint light shone.

Pete crouched lower and the grin of expectancy twisted at his lips. At every step, until this moment; he had scarcely dared to breathe, for fear of the bullet which might find him out. Now all the advantage was on his side. Behind him was the dark. Before him was the light which must outline, however faintly, the figure of any one who lurked in wait. With these things in mind he went on more rapidly. The passage widened again and turned to the left. He peered cautiously around the edge of rock and looked into as comfortable a living-room as he had ever seen.

The rock hung raggedly from the top of the cave, but the sides were smooth from the action of running water through long, dead ages. The floor was of level-packed gravel. Silver Pete remained crouched at the sharp angle of the passage until he heard the stamp and snort of a horse. It gave him heart and courage to continue the stealthy progress, inch by inch, foot by foot, pace by pace toward the light, and as he stole forward more and more of the cave developed before him.

A tall and sinewy horse was tethered at one end, and at the opposite side sat a man with his back to Pete, who leveled his revolver and drew a bead on a spot between the shoulder blades. Yet he did not fire, for the thought came to him that if it were an honor to track the Ghost to his abode and kill him, it would be immortal glory to bring back the bandit alive, a concrete testimony to his own prowess.

Once more that catlike progress began until he could see that the Ghost sat on his saddle in front of a level-topped boulder in lieu of a table. The air was filled with the sweet savor of fried bacon and coffee. Pete had crawled to the very edge of the cave when the horse threw up its head and snorted loudly. The Ghost straightened and tilted back his head to listen.

"Up with yer hands!" snarled Silver Pete.

He had his bead drawn and his forefinger tightened around the trigger, but the Ghost did not even turn. His hands raised slowly above his shoulders to the level of his head and remained there.

"Stand up!" said Pete, and rose himself from the ground, against which he had flattened himself. For if the Ghost had decided to try a quick play with his gun the shot in nine cases out of ten would travel breast-high.

"Turn around!" ordered Pete, feeling more and more sure of himself as he studied the slight proportions of the outlaw.

The Ghost turned and showed a face with a sad mouth and humorous eyes.

"By God!" cried Silver Pete, and took a pace back which brought his shoulders against the wall of rock, "Geraldine!"

If the Ghost had had his gun on his hip he could have shot Pete ten times during that moment of astonishment, but his belt and revolver hung on a jutting rock five paces away. He dropped his hands to his hips and smiled at his visitor.

"When they put you on the job, Pete," he said, "I had a hunch I should beat it."

At this inferred compliment the twisted smile transformed one side of Silver Pete's face with sinister pleasure, but there was still wonder in his eyes.

"Damn me, Geraldine," he growled, "I can't believe my eyes!"

Geraldine smiled again.

"Oh, it's me, all right," he nodded. "You got me dead to rights, Pete. What do you think the boys will do with me?"

"And you're— the Ghost?" sighed Silver Pete, pushing back his hat as though to give his thoughts freer play. He had met many a man of grim repute along the "border," but never such nonchalance as he found in the Ghost.

"What'll they do with you?" he repeated, "I dunno. You ain't plugged nobody, Geraldine. I reckon they'll ship you South and let the sheriff handle you. Git away from that gun!"

For Geraldine had stepped back with apparent unconcern until he stood within a yard of his revolver. He obeyed the orders with unshaken good humor, but it seemed to Silver Pete that a yellow light gleamed for an instant in the eyes of the Ghost. It was probably only a reflection from the light of the big torch that burned in a corner of the cave.

"Gun?" grinned Geraldine. "Say, Pete, do you think I'd try and gunplay while you have the drop on me?"

He laughed.

"Nope," he went on. "If you was one of those tinhorn gunmen from the town over yonder, I'd lay you ten to one I could drill you and make a getaway, but you ain't one of them, Pete, and, seeing it's you, I ain't going to try no funny stuff. I don't hanker after no early grave, Pete!"

This tribute set a placid glow of satisfaction in Pete's eyes.

"Take it from me, Geraldine," he said, "you're wise. But there ain't no need for you to get scared of me so long as you play the game square and don't try no fancy moves. Now show me where you got the loot stowed and show it quick. If you don't—"

The threat was unfinished, for Geraldine nodded.

"Sure I'll show it to you, Pete," he said. "I know when I got a hand that's worth playing, and I ain't a guy to bet a measly pair of treys against a full house. Take a slant over there behind the rock and you'll find it all."

He indicated a pile of stones of all sizes which lay heaped in a corner. Pete backed toward it with his eye still upon the Ghost. A few kicks scattered the rocks and exposed several small bags. When he stirred these with his foot their weight was eloquent, and the gun-fighter's smile broadened.

"Think of them tin-horns," he said, "that offered all your pickings to the man that got you dead or alive, Geraldine!"

The Ghost sighed.

"Easy pickings," he agreed. "No more strong-arm work for you, Pete!"

The jaw of Silver Pete set sternly again.

"Lead your hoss over here," he said, "and help me stow this stuff in the saddlebags. And if you make a move to get the hoss between me and you—"

The Ghost grinned in assent, saddled his mount, and led him to Pete. Then in obedience to orders he unbuckled the slicker strapped behind the saddle and converted it into a strong bag which easily held the bags of loot. It made a small but ponderous burden, and he groaned with the effort as he heaved it up behind the saddle and secured it. Pete took the bridle and gestured at the Ghost with the revolver.

"Now git your hands up over your head agin, Geraldine," he said, "and go out down the tunnel about three paces ahead of me."

"Better let me take the torch," suggested the Ghost, "it'll show us the way."

Pete grunted assent, and Geraldine, on his way toward the torch, stopped at the boulder to finish off his coffee. He turned to Pete with the cup poised at his lips.

"Say, Pete," he said genially. "Anything wrong with a cup of coffee and a slice of bacon before we start back?"

"By God, Geraldine," grinned the gun-fighter, "you're a cool bird, but your game is too old!"

Nevertheless his very soul yearned toward the savor of bacon and coffee.

"Game?" repeated the Ghost, who caught the gleam of Pete's eye. "What game? I say let's start up the coffee-pot and the frying-pan. I can turn out flapjacks browner than the ones mother used to make, Pete!"

Pete drew a great breath, for the taste of his flour and water diet of the past few days was sour in his mouth.

"Geraldine," he said at last, "it's a go! But if you try any funny passes I ain't going to wait for explanations. Slide out the chow!"

He rolled a large stone close to the boulder which served as dining-table to the bandit, and sat down to watch the preparations. The Ghost paid little attention to him, but hummed as he worked. Soon a fire snapped and crackled. The coffee can straddled one end of the fire; the frying-pan occupied the other. While the bacon fried he mixed self-rising pancake flour in a tin plate, using water from a tiny stream which trickled down from the rocks at one side of the cave, disappearing again through a fissure in the floor. Next he piled the crisp slices of bacon on a second tin plate and used the fried-out fat to cook the flapjacks.

"What I can't make out," said Geraldine, without turning to his guest, "is why you'd do this job for those yellow livers over in the town."

Pete moved the tip of his tongue across his lips, for his mouth watered in anticipation.

"Why, you poor nut," he answered compassionately, "I ain't working for them. I'm working for the stuff that's up there behind the saddle."

Geraldine turned on him so suddenly that Pete tightened his grip upon the revolver, but the Ghost merely stared at him.

"Say," he grinned at last, "have you got a hunch they'll really let you walk off with all that loot?"

The face of the gunman darkened.

"I sure think they'll let me," he said with a sinister emphasis. "That was the way they talked."

Geraldine sighed in apparent bewilderment, but turned back to his work without further comment. In a few moments he rose with the plates of bacon and flapjacks piled on his left arm and the can of coffee in his right hand. He arranged them on the boulder before Silver Pete, and then sat on his heels on the other side of the big stone. The gun-fighter laid his revolver beside his tin cup and attacked the food with the will of ten. Yet even while he ate the eye which continually lingered on the Ghost noted that the latter stared at him with a curious and almost pitying interest. He came to a pause at last, with a piece of bacon folded in a flapjack.

"Look here," he said, "just what were you aiming at a while ago?"

Geraldine shrugged his shoulders and let his eye wander away as though the subject embarrassed him.

"Damn it!" said Pete with some show of anger, "don't go staring around like a cross-eyed girl. What's biting you?"

"It ain't my business," he said. "As long as I'm done for, I don't care what they do to you."

He stopped and drummed his finger-tips against his chin while he scowled at Pete.

"If it wasn't for you I'd be a free bird," he went on bitterly. "Do you think I'm goin' to weep any of the salt and briny for you, what?"

"Wha'd'ya mean?" Pete blurted. "D'ya mean to say them quitters are going to double-cross me?"

The Ghost answered nothing, but the shrug of his shoulders was eloquent. Pete started up with his gun in his hand.

"By God, Geraldine," he said, "you ain't playin' fair with me! Look what I done for you. Any other man would of plugged you the minute they seen you, but here I am lettin' you walk back safe and sound— treating you as if you was my own brother, almost!"

He hesitated a trifle over this simile. Legend told many things of what Silver Pete had done to his own brother. Nevertheless, Geraldine met his stare with an eye full as serious.

"I'm going to do it," he said in a low voice, as if talking to himself. "Just because you come out here and caught me like a man there ain't no reason I should stand by and see you made a joke of. Pete, I'm going to tell you!"

Pete settled back on his stone with his fingers playing nervously about the handle of his gun.

"Make it short, Geraldine," he said with an ominous softness. "Tell me what the wall-eyed cayuses figure on doin'!"

The Ghost studied him as if he found some difficulty in opening his story in a delicate manner.

"Look here, Pete," he said at last. "There ain't no getting out of it that some of the things you've done read considerable different from Bible stories."

"Well?" snarled Silver Pete.

"Well," said the Ghost, "those two-card Johnnies over to town know something of what you've done, and they figure to double-cross you."

He paused, and in the pause Pete's mouth twitched so that his teeth glinted yellow.

"Anybody could say that," he remarked. "What's your proof?"

"Proof?" echoed the Ghost angrily. "Do you think I'm telling you this for fun? No, Pete," he continued with a hint of sadness in his voice, "it's because I don't want to see those guys do you dirt. You're a real man and they're only imitation-leather. The only way they're tough is their talk."

"Damn them!" commented Pete.

"Well," said Geraldine, settling into the thread of his narrative, "they knew that once you left the town on this job you wouldn't come back until you had the Ghost. Then when you started they got together and figured this way. They said you was just a plain man-killer and that you hadn't any more right to the reward than the man in the moon. So they figured that right after you got back with the Ghost, dead or alive, they'd have the sheriff pay you a little visit and stick you in the coop. They've raked up plenty of charges against you, Peter."

"What?" asked Pete hoarsely.

The Ghost lowered his voice to an insinuating whisper.

"One thing is this. They say that once you went prospecting with a guy called Red Horry. Horace was his right name."

Silver Pete shifted his eyes and his lips fixed in a sculptured grin.

"They say that you went with him and that you was pals together for months at a time. They say once you were bit by a rattler and Red Horry stuck by you and saved you and hunted water for you and cared for you like a baby. They say you got well and went on prospecting together and finally he struck a mine. It looked rich. Then one day you come back to Truckee and say that Red Horry got caught in a landslide and was killed and you took the mine. And they say that two years later they found a skeleton, and through the skull, right between the eyes, was a little round hole, powerful like a hole made by a .45. They say—"

"They lie!" yelled Silver Pete, rising. "And you lie like the rest of them. I tell you it was— it was—"

"Huh!" said Geraldine, shrugging away the thought with apparent scorn. "Of course they lie. Nobody could look at you and think you'd plug a pal— not for nothing."

Pete dropped back to his stone.

"Go on," he said. "What else do they say?"

"I don't remember it all," said the Ghost, puckering his brows with the effort of recollection, "but they got it all planned out when you come back with the loot they'll take it and split it up between them— one-third to Collins, because he made the plan first.

"They even made up a song about you," went on Geraldine, "and the song makes a joke out of you all the way through, and it winds up like this— you're supposed to be talking, see?

"I don't expect no bloomin' tears;

The only thing I ask

Is something for a monument

In the way of a whisky flask."

"Who made up the song, Geraldine?" asked Pete.

"I dunno," answered the Ghost. "I reckon Collins had a hand in it."

"Collins," repeated the gun-fighter. "It sounds like him. I'll get him first!"

"And it was Collins," went on the Ghost, leaning a little forward across the boulder, while he lowered his voice for secrecy. "It was Collins who got them to send out three men to watch you from a distance. They was to trail you and see that if you ever got to the Ghost you didn't make off with the loot without showing up in town. Ever see anybody trailing you, Pete?"

The gun-fighter flashed a glance over his shoulder toward the dark and gaping opening of the passage from the cave. Then he turned back to the Ghost.

"I never thought of it," he whispered. "I didn't know they was such skunks. But, by God, they won't ever see the money! I'll take it and line out for new hunting grounds."

"And me?" asked the Ghost anxiously.

"You?" said Silver Pete, and the whisper made the words trebly sinister. "I can't leave you free to track me up, can I? I'll just tie you up and leave you here."

"To starve?" asked the Ghost with horror.

"You chose your own house," said Pete, "an" now I reckon it's good enough for you to live in it."

"But what'll you do if they're following you up?" suggested the Ghost. "What'll you do if they've tracked you here and the sheriff with them? What if they get you for Red Horry?"

The horse had wandered a few paces away. Now its hoof struck a loose pebble which turned with a crunching sound like a footfall.

"My God!" yelled the Ghost, springing up and pointing toward the entrance passage, "they've got you, Pete!"

The gun-fighter whirled to his feet, his weapon poised and his back to the Ghost. Geraldine drew back his arm and lunged forward across the boulder. His fist thudded behind Silver Pete's ear. The revolver exploded and the bullet clicked against a rock, while Pete collapsed upon his face, with his arms spread out crosswise. The Ghost tied his wrists behind his back with a small piece of rope. Silver Pete groaned and stirred, but before his brain cleared his ankles were bound fast and drawn up to his wrists, so that he lay trussed and helpless. The Ghost turned him upon one side and then, strangely enough, set about clearing up the tinware from the boulder. This he piled back in its niche after he had rinsed it at the runlet of water. A string of oaths announced the awakening of Silver Pete. Geraldine went to him and leaned over his body.

Pete writhed and cursed, but Geraldine kneeled down and brushed the sand out of the gun-fighter's hair and face. Then he wiped the blood from a small cut on his chin where his face struck a rock when he fell.

"I have to leave you now, Pete," he said, rising from this work of mercy. "You've been good company, Pete, but a little of you goes a long way."

He turned and caught his horse by the bridle.

"For God's sake!" groaned Silver Pete, and Geraldine turned. "Don't leave me here to die by inches. I done some black things, Geraldine, but never nothing as black as this. Take my own gun and pull a bead on me and we'll call everything even."

The Ghost smiled on him.

"Think it over, Pete," he said. "I reckon you got enough to keep your mind busy. So-long!"

He led his horse slowly down the passage, and the shouts and pleadings of Silver Pete died out behind him. At the mouth of the passage his greatest shout rang no louder than the hum of a bee.

Grimly silent was the conclave in Billy Hillier's saloon. That evening, while the sunset was still red in the west, the Ghost had stopped the stage scarcely a mile from Murrayville, shot the sawed-off shotgun out of the very hands of the only guard who dared to raise a weapon, and had taken a valuable packet of the "dust." They sent out a posse at once, which rode straight for Hunter's Cañon, and arrived there just in time to see the fantom horseman disappear in the mouth of the ravine. They had matched speed with that rider before, and they gave up the vain pursuit. That night they convened in Hillier's, ostensibly to talk over new plans for apprehending the outlaw, but they soon discovered that nothing new could be said. Even Collins was silent, twisting his glass of whisky between his fingers and scowling at his neighbors along the bar. It was small wonder, therefore, if not a man smiled when a singing voice reached them from a horseman who cantered down the street:

"I don't expect no bloomin' tears;

The only thing I ask

Is something for a monument

In the way of a whisky flask."

The sound of the gallop died out before the saloon, the door opened, and Geraldine staggered into the room, carrying a small but apparently ponderous burden in his arms. He lifted it to the bar which creaked under the weight.

"Step up and liquor!" cried Geraldine in a ringing voice. "I got the Ghost!"

A growl answered him. It was a topic over which they were not prepared to laugh.

"Get out and tell that to your hoss, son," said one miner. "We got other things to think about than your damfoolery."

"Damfoolery?" echoed Geraldine. "Step up and look at the loot! Dust, boys, real dust!"

He untied the mouth of a small buckskin bag and shoved it under the nose of the man who had spoken to him. The latter jumped back with a yell and regarded Geraldine with fascinated eyes.

"By God, boys," he said, "it is dust!"

Geraldine fought off the crowd with both hands.

"All mine!" he cried. "Mine, boys! You voted the loot to the man who caught the Ghost!"

"And where's the Ghost?" asked several men together.

"Geraldine," said Collins, pushing through the crowd, "if this is another joke we'll hang you for it!"

"It's too heavy for a joke," grinned Geraldine. "I'll put the loot in your hands, Collins, and when I show you the Ghost I'll ask for it again."

Collins caught his shoulder in a strong grasp.

"Honest to God?" he asked. "Have you got him?"

"I have," said Geraldine, "and I'll give him to you on one ground."

"Out with it," said Collins.

"Well," said Geraldine, "when you see him you'll recognize him. He's been one of us!"

"I knew it," growled Collins; "some dirty dog that lived with us and knifed us in the back all the time."

"But, remember," said Geraldine, "he never shot to kill, and that's why you sha'n't string him up. Is it a bargain?"

"It's a bargain," said Collins, "we'll turn him over to the sheriff. Are you with me, boys?"

They yelled their agreement, and in thirty seconds every man who had a horse was galloping after Collins and Geraldine. At the shrub beside the wall of the valley Geraldine drew rein, and they followed him in an awed and breathless body into the passage.

"I went out scouting on my own hook," explained Geraldine, as he went before them, "and I saw the Ghost ride down the cañon and disappear in here. I followed him."

"Followed up this passage all alone?" queried Collins.

"I did," said Geraldine.

"And what did you do to him?"

"You'll see in a minute. There was only one shot fired, and it came from his gun."

They turned the sharp angle and entered the lighted end of the passage. In another moment they crowded into the cave and stood staring at the tightly bound figure of Silver Pete. His eyes burned furiously into the face of Geraldine. The men swarmed about his prostrate body.

"Untie his feet, boys," said Collins, "and we'll take him back. Silver Pete, you can thank your lucky stars that Geraldine made us promise to turn you over to the law."

"How did you do it?" he continued, turning to Geraldine.

"I'm not very handy with a gun," said the Ghost, "so I tackled him with my fists. Look at that cut on his jaw. That's where I hit him!"

A little murmur of wonder passed around the group. One of them cut the rope which bound Pete's ankles together, and two more dragged him to his feet.

"Stand up like a man, Pete," said Collins, "and thank Geraldine for not cutting out your rotten heart!"

But Silver Pete, never moving his eyes from the face of the Ghost, broke into a long and full-throated laugh.

"Watch him, boys!" called Collins sharply. "He's going looney! Here, Jim, grab on that side and I'll take him here. Now start down the tunnel."

Yet, as they went forward, the rumbling laugh of the gun-fighter broke out again and again.

"I got to leave you here," said the Ghost, when they came out from the mouth of the passage. "My way runs east, and I got a date at Tuxee for to-night. I'll just trouble you for that there slicker with the dust in it, Collins."

Without a word the vigilance men unstrapped the heavy packet which he had tied behind his saddle. He fastened it behind Geraldine's saddle and then caught him by the hand.

"Geraldine," he said, "you're a queer cuss! We haven't made you out yet, but we're going to take a long look at you when you come back to Murrayville to-morrow."

"When I come back," said Geraldine, "you can look at me as long as you wish."

His eyes changed, and he laid a hand on Collins's shoulder.

"Take it from me," he said softly, "you've given me your word that the boys won't do Pete dirt. Remember, he never plugged any of you. He's got his hands tied now, Collins, and if any of the boys try fancy stunts with him— maybe I'll be making a quick trip back from Tuxee. Savvy?"

His eyes held Collins for the briefest moment, and then he swung into his saddle and rode east with the farewell yells of the posse ringing after him. By the time they were in their saddles Geraldine had topped a hill several hundred yards away and his figure was black against the moon. A wind from the east blew back his song to them faintly:

"I don't expect no bloomin' tears;

The only thing I ask

Is something for a monument

In the way of a whisky flask."

"Look at him, boys," said Collins, turning in his saddle. "If it wasn't for what's happened to-night, I'd lay ten to one that that was the Ghost on the wing for his hiding-place!"

___________________

16: "Seven, Seven, Seven— City"

A Tale of the Telephone

Julius Chambers

1850-1920

I WENT to my telephone exactly at eleven o'clock on the night of December 30th last winter to call up the editor of my paper. My  house was on the west side of Regent's Park and the wire ran to the City telephone exchange.

Apparently my line was switched into connection with the Fleet Street exchange. But delay followed. I was familiar with the peculiar hum caused by the induction on the wires, but that night the sounds were of an unusual character. The operator at the City office had given me an unused wire.

As I awaited the answering signal to indicate that the desired connection had been made, I heard two people talking in loud whispers, to me unintelligible. Then I heard a door, swinging on a squeaky hinge, hastily closed with a muffled sound— a cupboard door. Then silence. One of the people had entered the cupboard and closed the door. Then a knock, unanswered.

Immediately followed a crash at the other end of the wire. I heard the breaking in of a door.

"John!" exclaimed a woman.

"Ah! my lady, I have caught you at last," were the words of the intruder as he strode into the apartment, slamming the broken door against the wall behind. There was a metallic tone in that voice that made me chilly when he added "Where is the scoundrel?"

"I don't understand;" were the affrighted words of the woman.

"Well, I do. He's in that cupboard."

I heard the door squeak again, and the man in the cupboard step out. "At your service, sir," said a strange voice, low and with a shiver in it.

"I knew it, woman," fairly screamed the head of the family.

"Don't be a brute," said the calm, low voice. " I am here, settle with me."

"You dog!" hissed the first speaker, as he sprang for the offender, overturning a table covered with bric-a-brac, and a mortal combat began.

In a momentary lull, while I could distinguish the breathing of the two infuriated combatants, I heard the rustle of a woman's dress as she swept across the floor, the opening and closing of a door. The unfaithful creature had abandoned her lover. Not a sob nor an entreaty for mercy.

I was as sure of the facts and understood the situation as if I had been in that apartment.

The contest was resumed, and crash after crash of broken furniture attested its savage character.

Who were these men? And where? Unquestionably, in a house where a telephone had been left open, or an interruption had occurred during its use. Had the receiver been hung up, communication with that room of mystery would have been severed. The wire leading thereto was "crossed" with the one given me to use.

The struggle was to the death. I could hear the breathing of the contestants as they lay on the floor, but neither man asked quarter. The door re-opened and to a woman's sobs were added appeals for forgiveness. One of the two men had overpowered the other! Which was the victor?

A pistol shot, sharp and crisp! Then, the stillness of death. It was death! The hush could be felt over the unknown length of the wire connecting me with the murder chamber. I was ear-witness to the crime.

Whispers broke the silence; a window was raised. Now, shall I hear the cry of "Murder!"? No. Somebody looked into the street— presumably to ascertain if the pistol-shot had been heard by passing pedestrians. That indicated the home to be in a populous neighbourhood, although the opened window did not admit sounds of passing vehicles. Then the window was slowly closed.

Next, I heard a match struck. Merciful Heavens! This deadly conflict had taken place in the dark!

The lover had been killed; but would that lighted match reveal to the husband the face of a stranger, or of a well-known friend? What would be done with the body—?

"Are you through?" asked the telephone clerk at the City exchange.

"No, mark that wire with which I am connected. It doesn't go to Fleet Street, but I must know where it runs. Mark it, as you value a five-pound note. I'll be at your office as soon as I can get there."

"All right!" was the prompt reply.

The clerk at the City exchange tied a ribbon round the plug that carried the end of the wire leading me into the unknown house. I related the entire incident and appealed to his curiosity and avarice. As I had divined, he, inadvertently, had switched me upon an abandoned line— it had been put up for a special occasion and "cut out" thereafter. It was a lost wire, and did not lead to the Fleet Street exchange or anywhere else'!"

After making tests, the clerk reported that communication with "the house of the crime" no longer existed, but, as an explanation, he pointed to a
thermometer outside the window.

"Make a memorandum of the temperature," said he.

"What's the use?"

"You understand how you got into that house on the lost wire?"

"No."

"At a certain degree of cold, that house-line contracted sufficiently to 'cut in' on the dead wire and thus connect us, for a brief space, with the chamber of the murder— wherever it may be."

"We must be careful to have this correct," said I, now comprehending the operator's meaning. "What does the instrument register?"

"Exactly zero."

THE BODY of a young physician of social prominence, Henry Clay Stanage (brother of Dr. Oscar Stanage, so prominently identified with the Jasper case), was found at the side of a path in Hyde Park next morning. He had died from a pistol shot in the right temple, and near the corpse was a weapon with one chamber discharged. Evidence in support of the theory of suicide was so strong that a verdict to that effect by the Coroner's jury disposed of the case in the public mind. I saw the body and found finger marks on the throat and a rent in the back of the dress-coat.

The young gallant had died at the hand of "my murderer." Stanage bore the reputation of a "gay boy." All attempts to establish the whereabouts of the physician on the previous night came to naught.

The ease with which the body might have been placed in a carriage and driven to the spot where it was found became apparent on the most casual consideration.

The only clue I possessed was the abandoned wire. I engaged a telephone-man to find the house of the crime, hoping thereby to bring the murderer to justice, and, incidentally, to secure a piece of sensational and exclusive news for my journal.

The lineman was zealous and over-confident, but at the end of two weeks he had lost the wire near the " Elephant and Castle." He believed the house we sought to be in Brixton. He sneered at all suggestions from the telephone-operator.

"An ear-trumpet chap can't tell me how to work," said he contemptuously.

"I didn't learn my trade that way."

Another wire expert was hired, and I told him the story. Perhaps I had not been sufficiently frank with the first man. The new telegraphist adopted the suggestion of the exchange-operator, and said: "An accidental crossing of the wires, caused by contraction, admitted you to that room, and enabled you to hear the murder done. We have only to wait, Mr. North, until the thermometer registers zero, then ring up that dead wire from the City exchange and ask, ' What number is that?' You will have landed your game."

That seemed simple. But the winter was unusually mild.

Although I retained the man in my pay for a month, there wasn't a moment in which the thermometer touched zero. We kept ceaseless vigil, one relieving the other at the City telephone office during enforced absence for sleep and meals. I took a room in a boarding house near the exchange, that I might be within easy call. Nothing must thwart me.

One night the weather moderated, and I deemed it safe to go to Kensington to pay a call I had owed for a long time. While I was away, the temperature fell so rapidly that it was within one degree of the desired point. The clerk at the exchange hurried a messenger to the address I had left with him.

In the warm house of my friend, the condition of the weather had been forgotten, but in the street the night was bitterly cold. Possibly the hour had come! At the first chemist's, I saw a thermometer outside the door.

Jupiter! The mercury stood exactly at zero!

A cab carried me to the City telephone exchange in half an hour. I stepped inside and, connecting the dead wire rang.

No answer.

Glancing through the window-glass at a thermometer outside, I saw that the weather had slightly moderated; the reading thereon was two degrees above zero. There it hovered for an hour. Then the mercury slowly descended into the bulb. Now, it stood at one and a half degrees! Ten minutes later me record was less than a degree above!

I rang vigorously, but did not hear any sound at the other end.

In my anxiety, I forgot the thermometer. When I looked again, the mercury had moved up half a degree.

Another wait succeeded, and I had almost decided to give up the vigil for the night, when the bell connected with the dead wire rang. Snatching up the receiver, I asked, my voice almost tremulous: " Well? What number do you want?"

"Who are you?" was the rejoinder.

"This is the exchange. What number do you want?"

"You're Kensington," was the cautious query, after a moment's hesitation.

"Yes, what is your number?" I asked, in hopes of obtaining from an unguarded answer the information I had been so anxiously seeking.

"Ah! you want to know what number this is?"

I recognised the voice!

I was talking to the murderer— "my murderer," as I had often mentally designated him, to distinguish him from everybody else's murderer.

And wasn't he mine? Only one other living person knew him beside me— the woman who had witnessed the killing, and had remained silent as the price of forgiveness!

"What is your number?" I asked again.

"Find out! " was the reply.

Then I heard the 'phone hung up. It seemed to me that I had not learned anything new. I was deeply chagrined for the moment; but, taking stock of my knowledge, I had acquired much valuable information.

First.— I had confirmed the theory that the house I sought had been reached by a wire that hung in close proximity to the abandoned line.

Second.— The short house-wire hung over, not under, the long wire, because the contraction in the copper-wires of which the house connections were made was slight.

Third.— The man and the house I sought were in Kensington, not Brixton, as the first expert had concluded.

Fourth.— "My murderer" was usually at home at night.

Fifth.— His telephonic connection was made through the Kensington exchange.

Sixth.— The man I believed guilty was on his guard and was suspicious of my inquiries. He would probably be wary of the telephone in future. On the other hand, he would not dare to have it removed at this time.

The "dead" wire was the only clue. My next step was to go to the office of the Telephone Company, and secure an appointment as a receiver in the Kensington exchange.

I was inconspicuous, and I donned the remarkable headgear the receivers wear. The wear and worry of the work nearly crazed me the first day. The steel band that encircled my temples completely disorganised my brain. A month passed, and I was no nearer the solution. Despair was overcoming me, when a new suggestion of the greatest importance was made to me.

"Has Moxley tested the wires, as usual?" asked one of the operators during the day.

"Not this week," replied the Exchange Superintendent.

All customers are frequently called up by an expert to ascertain that the wires are in good order. If I could become Moxley's assistant, I reflected, I might be able to hear "my murderer's " voice again.

I secured the place, and made my appearance at the Kensington telephone exchange as Moxley's "helper,"— not a position calculated to turn the head of any man. I was delighted, and believed success assured. My duties were to carry the galvanometer and rheostat; but, by dividing my supposed wages with Moxley, he consented that I should test the wires. I was a bachelor, he assumed, and I could live on little money; besides, he liked to encourage enthusiasm in young men. Moxley guaranteed to make me expert in three years.

"George Reilly is the best lineman in England," said he, "and Reilly began with me as 'helper.' "

Only one operator was in the office when we arrived, because the telephone is not in much demand before ten o'clock. I tested the private lines, of which there were several hundreds.

I sought in vain for "the voice." Sixty-three customers failed to answer when called. I marked these " torpid" wires, hoping that the one I wanted was among them.

Having completed the tests of the private wires, I began making connections with the pay-stations throughout the district. A curious thing occurred.

I rang up a station on Camden Hill; I heard the receiver taken off the hook, but no reply came in answer to my summons. I called again and yet again. No reply.

Warm as was the day, I felt a chill down my spinal marrow. I heard a door unlocked, and, an instant later, the squeaking of a hinge. The wire led into a cupboard.

Again I asked for a response. Finally, the 'phone at the other end, wherever that might be, was replaced on the hook, and— silence.

I left the building, called a cab and drove to the address of the number I had rung up. It proved to be a chemist's shop near Holland Park. Showing my credentials, I demanded to know why the inspection call had not been answered. The chemist was civil, and explained that he had observed, the previous summer, that hot days the communication with the exchange was interrupted at times. He stoutly maintained that the bell had not sounded. I tried it and called up the Kensington exchange without difficulty. The druggist was in nowise nonplussed. He merely pointed towards the street and said, as he turned to wait on a customer:— "You forget that it is raining. The weather is cooler."

True, there had been a heavy shower while I was in the cab, but so intent was I in pursuit of my only object in life that I had hardly observed it. I understood the chemist's meaning. In the case of the first wire I had attempted to run down, the bit of metal I sought doubtless passed over the abandoned line; by the same reasoning, the wire that had again led me into this modern Francesca's chamber by another route was strung under the one that entered this chemist's shop. Zero weather contracted the metal in one case ; summer heat lengthened the line in the other. Contact was made at two different places.

The co-efficient to this last problem was unknown to me. The druggist had not noticed the thermometer just prior to the shower, because he took the temperature only at nine, twelve and three o'clock. I remembered the telephone standard at the top of the London Life Assurance Company's building, where Sergeant Dunn had machinery that automatically recorded every change in the weather on an unimpeachable tally-sheet.

That officer received me courteously. I asked the exact thermometrical reading just before the heavy rainfall. Consulting the cleverly-devised instruments, he replied:

"Exactly 90 degrees Fahrenheit."

The degree of summer contact with the lost wire had been established; but that was all.

I must go on. Had I located the section of the city in which the criminal lived? I feared not. This wasn't a crime of the slums; but the use of a telephone did not necessarily indicate respectability. Why not start at the chemist's and run down the wire from that point?

The end of a rainbow never seems far away.

I sent for Moxley and told him what I wanted to ascertain. He looked knowing; said the task would be easy, and he'd take "a day off" to do it. Although he gave a month to the task, he did not find the house, the man or the woman! But he was full of explanations, and showed how, wholly by accident and not by design, the people at the other end of the wire were absolutely safe if they did not make a "break" themselves.

The days drifted along into September. The warm weather was gone, and I could not hope that ninety degrees of heat would recur. It was equally impossible to restrain my curiosity until mid-winter. I engaged a room in a boarding-house adjoining the Kensington telephone station. The cables came along thereto underground and were carried up the side of the house in a covered box to the roof; there the strands were separated and strung upon a rack, from which they were conducted to the operating-room below. The discovery that all the wires brought into that station were underground complicated matters seriously. The line I wanted was strung aloft at some point of its length, but where did it leave the subway and how could I recognise it when found?

I now did what I ought to have done long before— secured the services of George Reilly, the most expert "trouble-man" in the country. When the whole subject was laid before him he pronounced unequivocally in favour of starting at the City office to run down that wire. A long chase was more likely of success than a short one.

Reilly went to work with zest. With his experienced eye, he had no difficulty in following the abandoned wire along Holborn, thence down New Oxford Street, where, without apparent reason, it switched off to the roofs, which it followed to Victoria, where it returned to the underground. By the end of the third day Reilly was in full cry through Lambeth, into Kennington, down as far as Pearl Street. At Brixton Station it made a long jump from the top of a tall building, over the railway bridge to another building. Reilly believed he was close upon a solution of the mystery. Out of Brixton Road, atop a telephone pole, emerged a bright copper wire; it crossed closely above the line he was following. His practised eye told Reilly that the two wires were liable to have contact by the contraction of the long wire. The stretch previously mentioned was more than a thousand feet in length, and, at zero temperature, contraction would be fully two-thirds of an inch. Nothing could have been easier than to tie the two wires together and to ring up the house of the crime. But Reilly thought that course unwise.

"My murderer," as I still called him, was on his guard. Having kept the secret for eight months, he knew exactly what he was about.

I was waiting at the City exchange the following day, when Reilly called me over a public line, and asked me to "ring up" the dead wire.

I did so, and someone exclaimed : "Is that you, John? When will you return? Better come at once." It was a woman's voice— That of the woman who had begged for mercy!

Standing back from the transmitter, I asked: "Where?"

"To the—" Buzz! whir-r-r! zip!

The contact was broken. I called up Reilly and told him to tie the two wires together. He did so, but I could not get " my lady's" ear again. I asked Reilly what he thought. In his opinion, the woman lived in Brixton. The wire ran in that direction.

Reilly announced later in the day a change of mind. The copper wire was a private one, running from a city office to a private house in Brixton. He had traced it to an office building in Cheapside. The wire did not go to Brixton, as he had supposed, although it ran in that direction for a good way. Telephone wires are often pieced together, he explained, and a lineman will sometimes appropriate an old wire, though it makes a long detour.

The members of the firm in whose office the line ended were easily discovered. Reilly slung a coil of wire over his shoulder next day and entered the office. He asked for the telephone, and was shown into the private room of the firm— "Gasper, Todd, and Markham."

At his desk sat John Perry Gasper, solicitor, aged fifty-seven. Reilly was not a student of men; he could not read character as he could a Morse instrument. But the wire was what he wanted, and now that he had found one end of it, nothing appeared easier than to secure the other one. After having made two or three pretended tests of the machine, he went away.

The instant he reached the landing outside the office, his manner changed. He sprang down the stairs and to the bank on the ground floor, where he asked for a city directory. There the residence of John Perry Gasper was given: "Cheapside, and Kensington."

Madly triumphant, Reilly hurried to my address, and rushed breathlessly into my room. In a few words he revealed his success. I was as jubilant as he. We hurried to Kensington to look at the house. We almost ran.

No difficulty was experienced in finding the building. It was a corner house of splendid proportions, and the name, "Gasper," showed audaciously upon the door-plate. While my thoughts were busy as to my next action, Reilly's were occupied with a different text. He had surveyed the building from all possible points, in a thoroughly appreciative way; but when he came back from a hasty walk down the side street, he was pale and trembling.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Matter? Why, I'm ' knocked out.'"

"I don't understand," was my reply.

"Can't you see that there isn't a telephone wire entering that house?"

"What wire is that?" I asked, in dismay, pointing upward.

"Oh! that's a district-messenger call. Notice, it runs from the pole opposite the stable, and is of the cheapest iron. There isn't any telephone in that house. See! A reference to the telephone catalogue— which we ought to have made earlier— shows that."

The more he was mystified the clearer became the situation to me. It was a case of another woman— another family!

Nevertheless, the other end of the wire and the house of the murder were as far away as ever.

One thing I could establish at once, and I would make the test. Strange that I had allowed a moment to elapse since I had learned of Gasper's connection with the case.

I went to the nearest Call Office, called up Gasper, Todd and Markham, Cheapside, and asked to speak to Mr Gasper. I hadn't thought what I should say, when a voice answered, "I am Mr. Gasper? What is wanted?"

I had only sense enough to reply: "When did you take the telephone out of your house?"

"Never had any in it," was the curt retort; after waiting a moment, he added savagely, "And I don't want any."

This was the voice, and Gasper's name was John!

Reilly went back to Gasper's office to see the telephone. Gasper was not there and the expert examined it more carefully. He discovered that the wires led through the back of the little box in which was the 'phone, thence into a large wardrobe. This was locked, but a moment's examination showed that the two wires left that sealed clothes-press. They went out by different windows, but they came from the same switch— a switch inside the wardrobe, by which a private wire could be "cut in" or "cut out." The line over which I had called up the office obviously was a different one from that leading to the mysterious room where the shooting occurred.

This was really a discovery! I speak of it as a " discovery," although it was, as yet, merely an assumption. But Reilly was as sure that a switch existed in that cupboard as if he had seen it. As he told me his theory, I remembered that the office had not responded when the wires were tied together. The bell hadn't rung, because the private wire had been "switched out! "

"One bold stroke," thought I, "and we shall have this story."

My next step was startling. I had been admitted to the Bar years before. I called upon a prominent K.C. friend of mine and secured letters of introduction to John Perry Gasper, and finally wrote him asking when I might call with a certainty of a private interview. He named the following afternoon. I presented my letters. One was from the Chief of Police. I watched the lawyer's face, and a tremor crossed it as he broke the seal of the big blue envelope bearing the arms of the department.

I waited for an inquiry from him as to my business; but he was stolid, immobile as marble. His dull, grey eyes appeared slowly withdrawing themselves inside his skull ; the eyelids gradually closed to a peculiar squint. Reilly was waiting in the hall, and I knew the moment had come. Now for audacity!

"Will you let me have an expert examine the cupboard immediately behind your telephone?"

"There is no cupboard behind it," was the quick retort.

"Yes, there is right behind that door against which the 'phone box sits."

My voice trembled, and I was very pale ; but my "nerves" did not fail me.

Gasper took up the letters, one by one, read them through more carefully than before, and then muttered: "Go to the— deuce."

"Not until I find the other end of that private wire leading from the next room," I retorted. " If you refuse, I shall return with a search warrant and thoroughly turn over the entire place. The warrant will be based on the charge that you are defrauding the telephone company: but that will not be the real accusation."

"Ah?"

"Your arrest, which will follow, will mean—"

"What?"

"That you are charged with the murder of Henry Stanage, who was found dead in Hyde Park last winter, with a bullet in his head, and— your pistol at his side."

I was sure of a sensation ; but it came in an unexpected way.

"That's your game, is it?" his voice ringing with exultation. "If ever a man deserved to die, that scoundrel did."

It was my turn to be surprised into speechlessness.

"Look here," exclaimed Gasper, rising to his full height behind the desk: "You're after blood ; but, man to man, I stake my life I can convince any judge or jury that that rascal died at the right time. Denounce his murderer, arrest him, indict him— hang him, if you can; I shall defend him to the last extremity, and with every technicality known to the law."

"But you know the murderer?"

"As to who killed Stanage," Gasper fairly screamed, "that is for you to find out."

My K.C. friend assures me that the case is not complete, because evidence heard over a telephone is not admissible in a Court of Law. Gasper knows that as well as the Public Prosecutor.

Therefore, I alone, of all living men, know how Henry Stanage died.

_______________

17: The Mystery Of King's Bench Walk.

Britiffe Constable Skottowe

1857-1925

The Belgravia Annual  Summer 1890

Historian and occasional writer of short stories.

A BARRISTER without chambers in one of the Inns of Court is, briefly speaking, a forensic suicide. The formation of a business connection and practice at the Bar is almost as much dependent on the possession o f chambers, as the attainment o f the dignity of the wig and gown itself is on the eating of dinners. A barrister who received his clients in a three-pair back in some narrow street off the Strand would not be likely to command the confidence of moneyed persons. A barrister who made appointments in the coffee-rooms of public-houses in the same locality could not reasonably expect to be the hope and stay of injured or indignant ladies. The most shining light of the Bar, moreover, would suffer under an imputation of idle frivolity and useless ostentation if, instead of the classic shades of the Inns of Court, he preferred the gilded apartments of the new monster hotels on the Embankment as his place of consultation. So much seemed obvious to the meanest capacity. When therefore I had successfully grappled with the “Bar Exam.,” and emerged — technically at least—from the state of pupilage, I decided that the first and most important step in my career at the Bar must be the acquisition of a tenancy of chambers in the Temple.

Hitherto I had had but a slight acquaintance with the Temple for though I was actually a member of the Inner Division of that Worshipful Society, and had in due course consumed, under the eye of the Benchers in Hall, the exact number of dinners which are supposed to form a firm and suitable foundation for a legal education, I had always “read in chambers” with a well-known man in Gray’s Inn, and in consequence only came within the precincts of my own Alma Mater on very rare occasions. Beyond, therefore, a general knowledge of its geography, and a more intimate acquaintance with one or two sets of rooms which were tenanted by friends of mine, I knew very little more about this ancient structure than an inquiring American tourist might easily pick up in a very short time with the help of a porter and a guide-book. I was, therefore, quite unprepared to find that it was by no means so easy to obtain good residential chambers within the bounds of the Temple as I had imagined. If I had merely wanted a small room as an office with the privilege of putting up my name under that of my landlord on the outer door of the set, my wishes could have been easily satisfied, for quite a dozen full-blown barristers of eminence would have been willing to gratify them with alacrity. Complete sets, however, were few and far between, and those which were vacant, proved to be either the dingiest of attics hidden away in the roof, or so limited in dimensions that they seemed to me only fit for store-closets. I rejected them all in turn, and had almost decided to give up the idea o f residing in the Temple for the present and content myself with an office until a better opportunity offered, when my informant added—apparently quite as an afterthought:

“There’s No. 14 King’s Bench Walk, you know. Would you care for that?”

He spoke so doubtfully, that I answered testily:

“If it is another of those wretched attics, you may save yourself the trouble. That sort of thing won’t do.”

“I don’t mean the attics. They are taken. I mean the— the first floor right.”

Now it was so obvious that he had altered the last words of the sentence by an afterthought, that I scrutinised him inquiringly in the hope of arriving at his motive. It seemed to me that he also scrutinised me inquiringly, nay expectantly. I disappointed his expectation, whatever it was, by remaining silent.

“First floor right, No. 14 King’s Bench Walk— you know,” he repeated in an expressionless voice that was annoying to my curiosity.

“As a matter of fact, I know nothing at all about it,” I returned, “except that if the rooms are a decent size, the first floor will probably suit me ; but if they are not you can save yourself and me the trouble of going over them.”

“Oh Lord love you,” said the man, apparently surprised out of his reserve. It seemed to me that he must have formed a secret conviction that I really did not want rooms, was only playing at taking them in fact.

“They are large enough. It isn’t that—” He stopped abruptly.

“What is it, then?” I demanded, much mystified.

“Nothing,” he replied with suspicious glibness. “Only they— haven’t been let for some little time, and— are consequently a little—out of repair. However, that’s easily remedied— and the rent will be lower of course in consideration.”

“Nothing to do with drains?” I suggested nervously. Drains were the one point on which I was vulnerable, and it seemed to me highly probable that drainage would be bad in the Temple. “Because if so, you arc aware------ ”

“Oh, de—ah, no ! ” he replied eagerly. “Besides,” he added, “the Benchers will put the place in thorough repair for you, and you can have the drains inspected by the sanitary inspector il you like to pay his fee.”

That sounded fair enough. Yet I could have sworn from the man’s manner that there was some decided drawback to those rooms. What it was I could not divine, and it was quite obvious that he would not tell me. The best course, therefore, was to first inspect them superficially myself, and then have them carefully examined by an expert. I suggested this view.

“Of course,” he agreed. “That’s the right way. You ought to see them. But not this evening, not in the dark.”

It was then about five o’clock, but darkness had already closed in on us as is its habit in the London winter. Still it was really quite early.

“Give the rooms a chance,” he continued earnestly. “In this light you will be fancying that they are worse than they are, or may be, better than they are. Call again to-morrow morning and see them in daylight, sir. Then you can form a really fair view. Besides,” he added— seeing that I looked dissatisfied— “office hours are over to-day, and I want to get home.”

More than ever convinced that there was some decided defect which he merely wanted time to cover over, I yielded to the inevitable and made an appointment for the next morning.

It must be confessed that when the rooms were actually exhibited to me, I felt very much inclined to laugh out loud at Mr. Hadgrave’s folly and my own. Hadgrave was the official’s name. The rooms were really very fine rooms, comprising a set of four good chambers, a passage and a box-like arrangement at the end  which was intended as an office for a clerk. The big front room which looked out on the Walk was quite a large apartment— as rooms in the Temple go— and was panelled throughout in a very flat, ugly style with heavy black oak. A more dark, dingy, cold, cheerless, nay positively forbidding abode, however, I had never seen before outside the Tower of London. The chill was so great on entering that I felt a cold shiver stealing convulsively down my spine.

But this was not to be wondered at. The rooms had been unlet for a long time, so Mr. Hadgrave had admitted. For a corresponding period, therefore, they had not been warmed by fire or light of any kind, and it was only natural that in the absence of their hated enemies, the cold and damp should have entered in and settled down there in grim companionship. The windows, moreover, were grimy with accumulated dirt which almost excluded the wholesome light of the sun. They had evidently not been subjected to any process of cleansing for ages, and their dingy condition was quite enough in itself to account for the gloom in which the room was enveloped. The dusky hue of the panelled walls added to the sombre effect, which was completed by the absence of any relief in the shape of furniture with the exception of two heavy old oak presses which might easily have been mistaken for sarcophagi, and some equally heavy shelves fixed into a depression in the wall. A vast chimney-piece of antique style, that would not have done discredit to an old Scotch castle, completed the tout ensemble, which was dreary and desolate in the extreme.

I took in the requirements of the situation at a glance, and with a general’s eye rapidly sketched out my plan of campaign. Soap and water vigorously applied to those grimy windows would work a miracle by itself in the appearance of the room. A roaring fire burning in the grate would soon dispel the influence of the frost and fog demons which now pervaded the atmosphere. A Turkey carpet stretched over the bare boards, a cartload of furniture— old oak, as far as possible, to match the panelling— scattered judiciously about, a portiere disposed gracefully over the door, curtains to match arranged about the windows, a few brass sconces, brackets and shields stuck about in crafty positions, and a good picture or two set against the . panelling— a radical reform of this character would effect wonders, and transform this scene of gloom and desolation into a comfortable nineteenth-century sitting-room, flavoured with a most delightful whiff of antiquity.

I communicated my views to Mr. Hadgrave, but he did not enter into my raptures at all. If his behaviour had been singular before, it was perfectly phenomenal now. He seemed to take a malign and exceedingly unprofessional pleasure in damping my ardour and drawing my attention to unimportant defects. He pointed out that the panelling was probably rotten at the back, and might prove unhealthy, and that it was sure to be full of black beetles and rats, which might make uncanny noises at night. He suggested that these big chimneys really gave out very little heat, and admitted a great deal of draught; and that what I ought to do would be to put in one of the new Oxford fireplaces which gave out so much warmth, and which would, of course, have clashed most hideously with the general effect of antiquity which I was so anxious to preserve. He wound up by saying that if I would take his advice I should pull down all that rotten panelling, have up the boards, scrub and wash the entire room— floor, walls and ceiling— fit it up again with a bright wall-paper, pretty furniture and a modern grate, and then it would be fit to live in. He was evidently a Vandal of the first order, so I did not argue the point. I merely smiled and said I thought I preferred my own scheme.

He replied civilly:

“Very well, sir. O f course you know your own mind best.”

In spite of my entetement, something quite indefinable in his manner affected me so much that I exclaimed:

“I wonder what on earth it is you are hiding from me ? Do you know o f any positive reason why I should not take the rooms?”

He bristled up a little at this and replied stiffly :

“No, sir. I do not know of any positive reason why you should not take the rooms.”

I came to a quick determination. “I will make inquiries,” I said. “I have friends in the Temple. I will consult them. If I am satisfied with the result I will take the rooms.”

He inclined his head with an air of gentle resignation.

“That will be the best way,” he said.

However, my evil fortune willed it that Wilson, who had lived several years in Pump Court and so was quite an old inhabitant, was out of Town, and thus my principal hope was frustrated. Jack Bulteel, whom I called on next, and, by a miracle, found in his chambers, was one of those people who are endowed with such high spirits that it is utterly impossible for them to consider anything seriously. When you wish to be amused their flow of conversation is charming, but when you are in a serious mood they drive you to distraction. Jack, moreover, was one of those so-called barristers who have no practice and never make any effort to obtain any, and who keep rooms in the Temple simply as a reason for coming there as seldom as possible— so far, that is, as their conduct can be said to be guided by any definite motive at all. Jack, moreover, was in his least rational mood. He had just come back from the country. He was off again in two days, and was in the highest spirits. He evidently knew very little about the Temple, and beyond the fact that there was a King’s Bench Walk on the other side— he was in the Garden Court— had never heard anything with regard to the locality in which my chambers (I had already begun to think of them as mine) were situated. This, however, did not prevent his indulging in a dozen grotesque suggestions, each more preposterous than the last, which were all evidently discharged on the inspiration o f the moment from a too fertile imagination. He was especially prolific with ghostly possibilities, and offered to me in turns, as possible bogies for the vacant set, the spectres of the wicked Templar in Ivanhoe, of a judge who had wilfully hanged the wrong man, a briefless barrister who had blown his brains out in despair, and a laundress who had murdered her tenant in order to steal his tea and whisky. I should probably have gone away in an exceedingly bad temper with him, but that, just as my patience was exhausted, a more practical suggestion struck him, prompted, I fancy, by the least practical of those which had preceded.

“Why not consult the present laundress,” he said. “She ought to be able to give you all the information there is to give — and a good deal more.”

The idea seemed a good one. We adjourned, therefore, in search of the laundress of No. 14, King’s Bench Walk.

We found her in her own den at the foot of the stairs. She proved to be a grimy and rather grumpy female, with a hoarse voice and an aggressive manner. She was, apparently, in a bad temper, and was also labouring under a delusion that we were robbers or spies in disguise. Instead of replying to our questions, she insisted on knowing in what way the rooms concerned us. Even the administration of a tip did not mollify her or induce her to talk. Nor was it till I incautiously admitted that I had some intention of taking the rooms myself, that her tongue was loosened.

Then she broke out in unqualified praise of the rooms, and roundly asserted that “that old Hadgrave” had a spite against her, and so wouldn't let them— solely with the view of annoying her. I am afraid that if it had occurred to me at the time that Mrs. Hopkins had a much more tangible interest in inducing me to take the rooms and thereby securing the additional fees, than Mr. Hadgrave could possibly have in “spiting” her, I should not perhaps, have attached so much weight to her harangue. As it was, however, it satisfied me completely, and decided me to follow out the course of action which my own inclination already prompted.

In short I returned again to Mr. Hadgrave’s office and when I emerged from it I was the legal tenant of the first floor light in No. 14, King’s Bench Walk, in the Inner Temple.

A fortnight’s judicious labour produced a marvellous change in the appearance of the rooms, and transformed them not merely into a habitable dwelling, but a very comfortable one. The two big outer chambers were fitted up respectively as a drawing-room and library— the latter being chiefly designed to impress prospective clients— while the two inner ones, which opened one out of the other with an approach from the library, were to be bedroom and snuggery. I had a presentiment that the big drawing-room would prove very difficult to warm thoroughly, and I thought the snuggery would prove a comfortable den in frosty weather. I must add that the oak panelling, which I was so proud of, did not extend beyond the two outer rooms, and I arranged the snuggery therefore as an oriental smoking-room—placed Indian mats on the walls, strewed Persian rugs on the floor, and fitted in divans and inlaid tables wherever there seemed to be a place for them.

Even at this moment, with my vision cleared by experience, I cannot see that during the whole period of preparation, the faintest note of warning was given to me.

It is true that I was at the Temple only during the day, and that I foolishly omitted to make any further inquiries.

I remember that one day as I was bidding the laundress pile up the coals well on the fire before she left for the night, in the hope of driving out some of the damp and intolerable chill which seemed still to pervade the big room, she replied almost insolently:

“ ’Tain’t a bit of use, sir.”

“What do you mean?” I said exceedingly angry, for I fancied I had detected a tendency to covert insolence on her part before and was determined to put an end to it at once.

She saw her mistake, and assuming her most fawning manner assured me that all that she meant was that fires never burnt long when left to themselves.

I also remember that as I was directing one of the workmen how to place the pictures on the walls of the big room, he suddenly turned to me and remarked, as it seemed to me, apropos de rien: “You bain’t a nervous gent at all, be you, sir?”

“No,” I replied, “I should say not” — then, suspecting some covert allusion, I added, “But why do you ask?”

“It strikes me, sir,” he answered with a very grave air, “that this yere ramshackle old Temple must be a lonesome plice to be shut up all alone in at night and this yere part ain’t none the least lonesome.”

“Oh, I’m not afraid,” I said laughing, and then, noticing the exceedingly earnest gaze which he had fixed on me, I became suddenly grave as well. After all, I thought, he may be speaking for conversation’s sake, or there may be some more definite idea in his mind— it is impossible to say what. I continued therefore deliberately: “I am a very light sleeper, and I always have a loaded revolver quite close to me at night. Besides I have been the champion heavy-weight at Jim the Slogger’s boxing-school for the last two years, so I am not likely to be nervous about burglars, if that is what you mean.”

He contemplated me with a ruminating, uncertain air, and then uttering a short laugh, resumed his work with the trite observation:

“Well, sir, you know your own mind best, in course.” It seemed to me, however, to be absolutely meaningless.

In spite of the naturally dilatory habits of the British workingman, the furnishing operations were accomplished at last, and I became the occupant as well as tenant of the renovated rooms.

I was just going to shut my outer door on the world for the first time, when the door opposite opened suddenly, and a jaunty little man came out. He stopped short at the sight of me, stared at me curiously, and then raised his hat politely.

“You are the new tenant, I presume?” I assented. “I admire your enterprise,” he continued, “and should be proud of your acquaintance. We are neighbours, and we ought to be friends.”

In brief this little man’s jaunty manner took my fancy, and we speedily became friends. He invited me into his rooms, and later we adjourned to mine.

“You like them?” he inquired when I had shewn him round my new domain.

“Yes.”

“Find them quite comfortable?”

“They ought to be. If not, it is easily remedied.”

“Ah! Don’t find them at all cold or dark in the evening?” he suggested with a sly look. “The big room is cold, certainly. I don’t expect that I shall use it much in winter. As for it’s being dark in the evening, I should say that that was chiefly a question of lamps;— but I haven’t spent an evening here yet, as it happens.”

“Ah,” he observed, looking at me with extraordinary gravity, as though pondering some weighty problem, “ye— es, exactly. Of course you—” he began abruptly, and then as abruptly stopped.

I gazed at him stupidly. “You were going to say,” I suggested.

“Nothing,” he continued with some slight confusion. “It is no business of mine. That is, I mean that I was going to ask you if you were a stranger here, for I don’t know your face. But of course you have friends in the Temple?”

“Yes.”

“Exactly, of course. You will forgive my curiosity I am sure.”

He seemed quite relieved to find that I had friends in the Temple. Evidently a most philanthropic person. Or possibly, as the attributes arc very indistinctly separated, only a very eccentric or inquisitive one.

He was much pleased with my brand new law library, but suggested that I ought to get a few dusty old tomes at some second-hand shop which would fill up the lower shelves very effectively, and impart an air of graceful antiquity and profound erudition to the whole which could not fail to produce a most salutary impression on my clients.

“When they come,” I added.

“Oh, they’ll come, never fear.”

We passed into the big room and it was borne in upon me more decidedly than before, that it would be very difficult to warm it thoroughly. A big fire had been blazing there intermittently for a week, and yet it had made but a slight impression on the damp chill which pervaded the atmosphere. The fire moreover did not prosper in the huge, draughty fireplace, and it was evident that the pleasure of preserving this picturesque piece of antiquity would have to be purchased at the expense o f a certain amount of discomfort.

“Cold, is’nt it?” said my companion, glancing at me under his eye-brows. He shivered slightly as he spoke.

“Very cold,” I assented. “I expect that I shall be obliged to import a gas-stove.”

He shrugged his shoulders and went out.

On the common landing he turned and said to me with great gravity:

“Of course you are the best judge of your own affairs, but I would’nt live in a place like that if I was paid to do it. That big room is enough to give one the shivers of itself.”

I smiled confidently in reply.

“It will be very different in a week or two.”

“Well, well,” he returned, “I suppose it is bad taste to talk of the gallows in the family of a man who has been hanged.” I laughed feebly at this weak and not very apropos joke.

“I must be off home,” he continued, drawing on his gloves. “Don’t you live here?”

“No!” most emphatically. “Not I— I am only here in the day.”

At the end of my first week’s residence, the conclusions I arrived at were threefold ; first that the big room would never be really a comfortable apartment in winter, secondly, that living alone in the Temple had a tendency to make one unaccountably nervous and imaginative at night, and thirdly, that a private servant, who would be on the premises at all hours, was becoming an absolute necessity if only to keep the fires in when I went out in the evening. It was in fact very annoying to come home, perhaps nearly frozen, about eleven or twelve o’clock at night and find the fire completely out, the embers black in the grate and an atmosphere of frost and fog pervading the room, precisely as if the windows had been thrown open to the night air for hours.

Even if I succeeded in relighting the fire and coaxing some semblance of a cheery blaze back into the grate, experience proved that it took a long time to produce any appreciable impression on the damp chill with which the atmosphere of the room was completely saturated.

It dawned on me one night, to my intense disgust, that I was growing nervous, and that my nervousness was assuming a form which is only excusable in a hysterical woman or a frightened child. On this particular evening I dined in the hall, and instead o f going out afterwards, as was my usual custom, returned to my chambers with the intention of devoting the evening to study.

The fire was laid in the big room, but not in the snuggery— a piece of unwarrantable carelessess on the part of Mrs. Hopkins. However, I felt that it would be an excellent opportunity to give the big room the benefit of a blaze of sustained strength and duration.

There was an ample supply of illuminating power when my preparations were complete, for I lighted three lamps in different parts of the room in order to increase the volume of heat.

I took down Tompkins on Trusts, a very solid legal authority, which I considered it advisable, from a professional point of view, to acquire an intimate acquaintance with, and which with this object I intended to devote the evening to “mugging up.” There was nothing romantic about Tompkins’ subject or imaginative about his style. Both were as dull and prosaic as law itself. There was about as much food for the fancy in his solid pages as might be furnished by a gas-pipe or the butt-end o f a stone-breaker’s hammer.

And yet, by the time I had toiled through half-a-dozen pages, I became aware that the subject had altogether escaped my grasp, and that my brain, instead of pondering on legal axioms and subtleties, was giving way to the most fantastic illusions that ever troubled a monomaniac. I was continually oppressed with the feeling, that out of the corners of my eyes, as it were, I could see a vague, shadowy form bending over my shoulder and standing between me and the light. Again and again I started suddenly round in my chair so vivid was the illusion, only, however, to find that my imagination must have played me a trick, and to vent my denunciations on my folly which allowed me to be thus victimised. But as often as I turned my attention once more to Tompkins, and endeavoured to absorb myself in the relations between trustee and cestui que trust, I became once more aware of that shadowy phantom at my shoulder, while the room all around seemed to sink slowly into a sombre gloom until the very page before me appeared blurred and indistinct.

“Of course the meaning of this,” I mentally determined, when for the tenth time or so I had convinced myself that there was nothing unusual behind me and that the lamps were burning just as brilliantly as ever, “is that I am going to sleep, and that if it wasn’t for this waking nightmare which stirs me up every now and then, I should doze off over Tompkins and sleep away the greater part of the evening. This will never do. It is evidently too soon after dinner to attempt to read, I had better go out.”

I took my own advice with the utmost docility. There was a very popular ballet performing at a well-known house of entertainment. I went in for an hour or so and afterwards looked in at a club.

When I returned home I found the fire out, a polar climate pervading the room, and the wood-bin empty. Exceedingly angry, I invoked maledictions on Mrs. Hopkins forgetful memory, and resolved to get a servant of my own as soon as possible.

I passed an exceedingly disagreeable night, in which the illusion of the evening was repeated with the grotesque extravagance peculiar to nightmare. I dreamt that I was pursued by an enormous shadowy figure, which I could not see, but which I knew was following me with evil intention. I fled through miles and miles of the gloomiest caverns with the greatest velocity, and with a dreadful feeling that if I stopped for a moment the pursuer would overtake me. How long the nightmare lasted I am unable to say, but when I awoke at last I was covered with cold drops and it was broad day.

I saw my neighbour in the afternoon. He had been in the Courts and was returning to deposit his wig and gown.

We talked a little about a case of great interest in which he was retained, and then at last he said, quite abruptly, with a peculiar look: “You know what I am dying to ask you?”

“Indeed, I do not,” I replied in astonishment, both at the question and his manner.

“Well, then— hang it all—have you seen anything?”

“Seen anything?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t quite comprehend,” I replied, with an uneasy speculation whether my neighbour was liable to fits of mental derangement.

He glanced at me incredulously.

“I mean the Shadow, you know.”

“I am afraid I don’t know. What shadow?”

“Don’t you know the story of your rooms?” Words cannot express the accent of astonishment with which he put this question. “No— except that they have been unoccupied for a long time.”

“What a ghastly swindle. Do you mean to say that you were not told that the rooms are supposed to be haunted?”

“Haunted ! My dear sir! Pray forgive me, but—” and I broke into uncontrollable laughter.

“Don’t mention it,” he said, not in the least offended. “I am glad to hear that it is all nonsense.”

“And what are the rooms supposed to be haunted by?” I inquired.

“Oh, there are all sorts of stories. The principal one is a vague yarn about a sort of shadow or darkness, which can be felt, don’t you know, and puts out all the lights and fires in the most inconsiderate way. Why, Great Scott, man,” he cried, with a sudden alteration of voice and demeanour, “what’s the matter? I believe you have seen it after all.”

Involuntarily there had flashed into my brain the memory of the strange phantasy which had beset me on the preceding evening, and close on its heels came the reflection that there really was an extraordinary difficulty in keeping the fires alight.

I communicated my experiences to my companion.

“Strange,” he observed. “Yes, that is much the usual story. And they always turn round in time. But the really creepy idea is to think what might happen, if they did not turn round!" He had sunk his voice to a thrilling whisper which was suggestive of an infinity of horror. An eerie feeling stole over me and an icy hand seemed to clutch my spine. Then my manhood reasserted itself.

“Probably they would have gone to sleep,” I said lightly.

“I don’t know,” he answered gravely ; “but I should be sorry to try the experiment.”

By this time I was so ashamed of having, even momentarily, given way to supernatural terrors, that I was anxious to reassert myself.

“I will try the experiment,” I said recklessly.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I will spend this evening in the big room and that if the illusion occurs again, I will give it a chance. I will not turn round until something definite happens.”

“I think you are very foolish,” he replied. “I wouldn’t do it after what you have told me, for a hundred pounds.”

NINE O’CLOCK that same evening found me seated in my drawing-room fully prepared to carry out my campaign, and inspired with the courage and complete confidence which springs from the absorption of an excellent dinner. A big fire was burning with a nearer approach to a blaze than I had seen as yet within that sombre grate. Three large lamps were lighted in different parts of the room. Altogether I felt, with a satisfied air, as I settled down in the armchair, that it really would require a very powerful illusion to produce the faintest semblance of gloom. I discarded Tompkins, moreover, for this evening, in favour of a two-shilling novel, which I thought would be less provocative of slumber.

The story proved to be a little too interesting. I soon became completely absorbed in it, and forgetting all about the object of my vigil, plunged eagerly into the thick of the mystery which formed its chief ingredient. How long my attention was thus enthralled it is impossible to say, but I suddenly sprang back to consciousness in the very middle of the plot, and flung myself round in the chair with an inarticulate cry of expectation and surprise. Someone had touched me lightly on the shoulder.

Yet no human form was visible.

I gazed blankly round the room. I even got up from my chair and executed a more searching survey. I don’t exactly know what my motive was. It is true that that idiot Jack Bulteel was fond of foolish jokes, but still—

Then I remembered the story which I had been told in the afternoon, and a faint wave of cold fleeted through my veins at the remembrance. Was it possible that—

“Nonsense!” I cried aloud. “Ridiculous! It must have been pure imagination.”

I drew a chair up to the fire and sat down with my feet on the fender. The inclination to read had passed away. I remained gazing vacantly into the red depths of the grate.

Very soon I became conscious that though my feet were toasting there was a curious sensation of cold attacking the region of the back. I shivered slightly and stirred up the fire, drawing nearer to get the full effect of the blaze. A vague idea made itself faintly visible that the cold was unaccountable, that the walls were falling strangely into shadow, that—

Again that light touch on my shoulder.

I sprang to my feet with a cry of fury which changed at once to surprise, not unmingled with fear.

The room was black before me, black with a vague floating shadowy mist, through which the lamps shone with the palest radiance, as if the light were stifled and choked by the darkness. Even at that moment one of them flickered feebly and went out. The rest would soon follow its example.

Petrified with amazement, I stood gazing at the strange sight, while the cold drops gathered on my brow.

Then a blast of chill, noisome, horrible vapour swept towards me like the foul breath of some dreadful charnel and sent an icy thrill of horror shuddering through my frame, stiffening the roots of my hair. I retired a step or two so hastily that my heel struck against the fender. Then the second lamp went out. Darker and darker grew the room, and out of the very miclst of the darkness it seemed to my terrified imagination as if a grim, shadowy figure, bearing a faint resemblance to a human form clothed in long flowing draperies, were growing into visible reality.

The third lamp went out suddenly, as if pinched by spectral fingers. Save for the faint glimmer of the dying embers of the fire the room was in thick darkness.

Fear came strongly upon me and with a wild yell, I fled precipitately ; nor did I stop my headlong flight till I found myself out in the clear, frosty air, under the stars of the midnight sky.

WHAT is the explanation you will ask, in tones of shrill incredulity. There is none. The rooms had been so long unoccupied that only the legend remained; its origin was completely lost.

I had the rooms dismantled throughout, without making any discovery. One of the workmen, who took down the panelling, said that the backs of some of the boards were studded with ornamental nails, almost as if they had once served as coffin-lids, but this was pure conjecture.

The rooms are closed and empty, and the Shadow once more reigns undisturbed. The thought haunts me at times unanswered. What is done there in the silence night after night, when men are asleep ? It is enough to make the blood run cold to think of it.

_______________

18: Blue Mountain Blue

D. H. Souter

1862-1935

The Lone Hand, (Sydney), 7 June 1913

David Henry Souter

IT was indeed a rotten world.

Here was he, Tom Beasley, with a proposition guaranteed to make Lewis and Whitty go green with envy, and for lack of intelligent artistic assistance he was going to be beaten at the post. Perhaps he was too exacting, expecting others to be as enthusiastic as himself whose stake in the game was a possible fortune, while theirs was only five, or ten pounds— fifty dollars at the most.

Was it a fair thing, or was he demanding too much of his fellow man?

He walked despondently, with his shoulders hunched and his hat pulled over his eyes, for the day was bright with the sunshine of early spring. It flooded the street with its glory, and gilded a slab screwed on the side of a doorway on which was written in white letters

I. M. JONES,

Commercial Artist.

and in smaller type underneath, as if it had been an afterthought:—

Top Floor.

"Looks like my man," he growled; "not too artistic, or he wouldn't admit being commercial; not too commercial or he wouldn't have to roost outside the elevator belt, and on the top floor at that. Gee! It must be five storeys, and I. M. Jones! Glory be! That's a name to keep a fellow humble. I'll try him; he can't be worse than the other hoodoos, anyhow!"

The stairs were narrow and sleep, but Blue Mountain Blue was not to be popularised without effort, so Beasley climbed. Past the first floor where cedar doors bore gilt legends on their ground-glass panels, beyond the second, where the gilt was superseded by black paint, and the third, and the fourth, where they were economically scribed in ink on strips of cardboard. Here he breathed, and somewhere on the floor above a canary sang in sheer joyfulness, his cage, surely, of burnished brass must be set in the sunlight, and if the person who admitted being Jones owned the bird, he certainly must be sympathetic enough to see the possibilities of Blue Mountain Blue.

The fifth floor was the last. A Japanese screen in black and gold defended most of the landing, but left one door unguarded and ajar. From its lintel projected a sign indicating that the Jones person was within and ready to do business.

Beasley lurched windedly, and stumbled clumsily across the threshold; but the protest against the length and steepness of the stairs died upon his lips, because, instead of the Jones person whom he expected to see, a tall, slim fair-haired woman stood silhouetted against the window.

"I— l beg pardon," he wheezed. "I'm lookin' for Jones J— Jones, c'mercial artist. I thought this— was th' top floor.

"It is, and I'm Jones. Surely you don't want to climb any higher— won't you sit down?"

Her voice was particularly sweet and modulated, and the room as little like a commercial artist's room as Beasley could have imagined. The walls were colored a dark-green and hung with neatly framed etchings and photogravures. A mirror on the mantel was flanked by a repousse copper jug which held a tall peacock's feather. A green rug on the brown floor, a tapestried chair set invitingly, a broad sofa by one wall, an oaken bookcase by the other, and outside the curtained window the canary— his cage was of brass and canopied by fresh chick weed— cocking his head on one side, and .waiting for the applause which usually followed his song.

"I thought— this— was your studio."

"It is," said the lady; "and you probably thought I was a man; but if I can do what you done nothing else matters, does it?"

"Not a bit, miss, not a bit. I saw c'mmercial artist— on the doorway, an'

I've been tryin' to get artists who weren't c'mmercial to do something for me with poor results, so says I, I'll give this chap a—l beg pardin ma'am."

"Oh no, go on, you said you'd give Jones a chance, and that's just what I want to get."

"Exactly! Do you do posters?"

"I've done posters," she said with the emphasis on the "done," dragging a big portfolio from under the sofa and throwing it open on the floor.

"This was one I did for the Girls Guild, but they didn't like it, and this was for Sawdust Breakfast Food— but they didn't like that either."

Beasley frowned; but whether at the posters or the people who failed to appreciate them, even he would have found it difficult to say.

"This would have made a good poster, but they used it for a catalogue cover."

"What's that 'un?"

"That is a design for a cushion to be worked on blue linen— and here is another poster, but it didn't come off either. I got the order and drew it and everything, but the company was a— a swindle or something and—"

"You're still waiting for your chance! By jing, you'll have it now! Look here! Bloo Mountin Bloo for Washin' Day, a four sheeter in bloo bloos, bloo sky, bloo mountains, bloo'd washin' bangin' on a line."

"A woman in a bine skirt hanging it up, a blue creek, the wind blue— I mean blowing—"

"Nothin' but bloos!"

"Get rid of the blues by using Blue Mountain Blue!"

"By jing, that's it! You're a hummer! I beg pardin."

"No need, it was a real compliment"; and the soft contralto of her laugh
echoed by Beasley's baritonic rumblings encouraged the canary to add its treble to the harmonic disturbance.

I. M. Jones sat on the floor between the open portfolio and the window, and a ray of sunlight made gold the rich bronze of her hair and turned to pinkish coral the delicate shell of her ear.

"Tell me your ideas," she said, as with pencil and a pad of paper she awaited his instructions.

"I've told you all there is— Bloo Mountain bloo for Washin' Day— what was that line of yours about not having the bloos ?"

"And avoid the blues!"

"Splendid, magnificent!"

The golden head mutely bowed its thanks. She opened a big portfolio on the floor.

"I'd have a pictur of jest a bloo mountain, a bloo sky, an' on it 'Bloo Mountin' in the same bloo as the mountain, then the green field an' the line o' duds blowin' in the win', an' the woman in the bloo blouse—"

"Skirt."

"Skirt, be it."

"And the blue creek."

"Sure, the blue creek, an' on the mountain B, L, U, E, in the same blue as the sky—"

"And what shade should that be— how deep—how blue?"

"How bloo?" 'Bout as blue as your eyes."

Before she could answer the sound of his heels was growing fainter and fainter as he descended the long flight of stairs that led to the street. Miss Jones smiled, she sighed, she even laughed, for when she came to think of it her client had fled so hurriedly that except for the legend for the poster and a faint odor of cigar smoke he had left no clue to his identity.

Blue Mountain Blue for Washing Day ,

Use it and frighten the blues away.

She sang as she worked, and the canary encourged her for she possessed a flexible voice and a pretty gift of improvisation. She believed she had an eye for color, and half hoped she had a head for business. However, the drawing came to be finished with a care she almost reproached herself for exercising, but no bulky, short-winded man in a grey suit lumbered up the five flights of stairs to either praise or blame.

Two days, three days, a week passed, and the sketch was reluctantly placed in the portfolio with the other failures. It was just what she ought to have expected. Posters were not her forte, the man saw that, but did not have the courage to tell her so because she was a woman. This limitation of sex was most unfair. She resented it very strongly and took the poster from its hiding-place and examined it critically.

It was surely all right as a poster— and just as surely she had heard that elephantine step before! Nobody else ever could make the stairs creak in that absurd manner. She hurriedly dropped the sketch, and in her haste dipped her color brush in the gum-pot. When the steps got to her door and the stepper tapped, it was Mr. Bloo who, hat in hand, obeyed her request to come in.

Quite humbly she knew he stood, although she never turned her head, so busy was she streaking pinky paste on a black and white drawing, and he spoke before she turned languidly in her chair and looked at him over her shoulder.

"You 'member me, Miss Jones," he began, "I called last week 'bout a poster for Bloo— Bloo Mountain Bloo."

"Oh, yes! I remember— let me see!" her brow puckering into recollective wrinkles as Beasley was getting his breath again.

"If it isn't ready. Miss, it don't matter— my mistake— didn't say when I wanted it. End o' the week'll do; or nex' week."

"Wait a minute, Mr—?"

"Beasley, miss, 4-2 Pitt-lane, 4046 city— you can ring me np when you've got it ready."

"Oh, I've got a rough idea blobbed in, only I can't think where I put it."

And she searched meticulously everywhere but iu the corner where she had flung it when she recognised his footsteps.

Beasley was depressed. To think that a sketch of Blue Mountain Blue— with skies as blue as a maiden's eyes, should be lying in odd corners hidden beneath sofas, or pushed behind book-cases was distinctly humiliating. "The same color as your eyes." These were the very words, which for seven days had barred him from the artistic threshold; and now, with culpable and unjustifiable negligence she had forgotten where the invaluable work was laid.

"Ah! Here it is. I knew I put it somewhere." And she, pouted her pretty lips and blew invisible dust off it, flicking it with a ridiculously small pocket handkerchief before she set it up on the easel for his inspection.

To view it properly he had to stand well back, and his greeny grey eyes beamed, and his neck thickened as a smile reached the corners of his mouth and pushed his fat cheeks back until they brimmed over his shirt-collar.

"Does it— I mean is it what you want ?"

"To the little dot over the I— splendid —that figure's great— I mean lovely. I like the figure immensely—that is, it's just in the right place and the right style. The right sort —it's A.1."

The figure was so evidently derived from the artist herself that she blushed again.

"But the wording—that's the principal thing in a poster— how's it?"

"Fine, tip-top; but you haven't put in that about drives away the bloos— that was a great gag."

"Oh, that was only a joke of mine."

"Maybe, miss, but I'll pay for it— what was it?"

"I forget—

For Washing Day

Use it and drive the blues away."

"Do you write poetry too! write me a dozen at two dollars— ten shillings each."

"Oh!"

"It ain't enough! Well, say twelve and sixpence."

IN ABOUT a month the Blue Mountain Blue poster was on every hoarding in Sydney, and the public were caught by its scheme of harmonious color.

Blue, all blue!

Scores of streamers each measuring five inches by thirty blazoned every fence, stating in white letters on a blue ground, that

"Happy housewives soon get through,

By using our Blue Mountain Blue"

There were eight different rhymes, because they all printed together in a quad-crown sheet which measures thirty inches by forty inches, and two thousand sheets were printed and 'eight out' cut into sixteen thousand streamers, which make a fair show in the city and suburbs, especially when supplemented with a thousand four sheeters, and numerous rhymed couplets in the daily press.

I. M. Jones was making money. The four sheeter was reproduced in single and quarto, and the printer gave her several other commissions, for nothing succeeds like success.

She was quite happy but for one thing. So far, despite her most earnest enquiry at all grocers, she had been unable to purchase the much-advertised commodity. At first they declared that they had never heard of it and offered "just as good's." Later on they spoke of supplies not yet to hand, said they were sold out, but large stocks were due the day after to-morrow. None of these tales brought balm to I. M. Jones, who dearly wished to have a— was it a square, a bag, a bottle, or a powder?

How would she tell? There was even a hesitancy and diversity of statement among the retailers, so she asked Beasley, and he owned up at once.

"Miss Jones," said he, "you'll sure have the very first cake that comes out of the crucible, that is if it is a cake. It may be one o' them two by three booklets like postage stamps, when you tear out one to every gallon o' water. Yes, I think it'll be the stamp form— it'll be a bit of a novelty here, and new forms catch on."

"And you mean to tell me—"

"Yes miss; you mayn't have noticed it, but I'm from the States. I've been all across them and over to your little old England studyin' supply and demand, and it's, been forced on me that where there's no demand it ain't a bit o' good creatin' supplies. I landed here a couple of months ago with a few hundred dollars, and the first thing I noticed on the wharf was a poster boomin' Bloo Mountain scen'ry. It came to me like a flash o' bloo litenin', it buzzed in my ears all day, an' I hung round that poster until after sundown, and used up a four thousand flash pocket lamp lookin' at it durin' the night. It was an in-spy-ration, and until I got it registered at your patent office I was in a bloo funk for fear some guy would get wise to the writin' on the wall."

"Well! I never—"

"No miss; neither did they. These last three weeks since ever we began givin' this burg bloos, I've been spendin' five dollars a day in pennies sendin' kiddies— li'l gals preferred— into corner grocers for Bloo Mountin Bloo. It's an 'ousehold word now from Manly to Parra-matt-a, and from Ho'nsby to Bondi Beach. People are askin' for it on their own in-nishiative now, and I have a large an' daily increasing mail from storekeepers all over the place askin' for supplies. I have over three thousand dollars worth of orders booked, and am treatin' with two manny-factrin' firms to either buy me out or absorb the copyright.

"Well! Did you ever—?"

"No miss; I ain't ever seen the Bloo Mountains yet. I haven't had time; but when I pull this deal off I was thinkin'— that you an' me— might go up there for our honeymoon."

__________________

19: John J. Coincidence

Irvin S. Cobb

1876-1944

The Saturday Evening Post, 9 Aug 1919

SOMEBODY said once that facts are stubborn things, which is a lie. Facts are almost the most flexible things known to man. The historian appreciates the truth of this just as the fictionist recognizes and is governed by the opposite of it, each according to his lights. In recording the actual, the authentic, the definite, your chronicler may set down in all soberness things which are utterly inconceivable; may set them down because they have happened. But he who deals with the fanciful must be infinitely more conventional in his treatment of the probabilities and the possibilities, else the critics will say he has let his imagination run away with him. They’ll tell him to put ice on his brow and advise sending his creative faculty to the rest cure.

Jules Verne was a teller of most mad tales which he conjured up out of his head. The Brothers Wright and Edison and Holland, the submarine man, worked out their notions with monkey wrenches and screw drivers and things, thereby accomplishing verities far surpassing the limit where common sense threw up a barrier across the pathway of Verne’s genius. H. G. Wells never dreamed a dream of a world war to equal the one which William Hohenzollern loosed by ordering a flunky in uniform to transmit certain dispatches back yonder in the last week of July and the first week of August, 1914.

So always it has gone. So always, beyond peradventure, it must continue to go.

If in his first act the playwright has his principal characters assembled in a hotel lobby in Chicago and in Act II has them all bumping into one another— quite by chance— in a dugout in Flanders, the reviewers sternly will chide him for violating Rule 1 of the book of dramatic plausibilities, and quite right they will be too. But when the identical event comes to pass in real life— as before now it has— we merely say that, after all, it’s a small world now, isn’t it? And so saying, pass along to the next preposterous occurrence that has just occurred. In fiction coincidence has its metes and bounds beyond which it dare not step. In human affairs it has none.

Speaking of coincidences, that brings me round to the matter of a certain sergeant and a certain private in our American Expeditionary Force which is a case that is a case in point of what I have just been saying upon this subject. If Old Man Coincidence had not butted into the picture when he did and where he did and so frequently as he did, there would be— for me— no tale to tell touching on these two, the sergeant and the private. But he did. And I shall.

To begin at the remote beginning, there once upon a time was a fight in front of the public school in Henry Street over on the East Side, in which encounter one Pasquale Gallino licked the Semitic stuffings out of a fellow-pupil of his— by name Hyman Ginsburg. To be explicit about it, he made the Ginsburg boy’s somewhat prominent nose to bleed extensively and swelled up Hyman’s ear until for days thereafter Hyman’s head, viewed fore or aft, had rather a lop-sided appearance, what with one ear being so much thicker than its mate. The object of this mishandlement was as good as whipped before he started by reason of the longer reach and quicker fist play of his squat and swarthy opponent. Nevertheless, facing inevitable and painful defeat, he acquitted himself with proper credit and courage.

Bearing his honorable wounds, Master Ginsburg went home from battle to a tenement in Allen Street, there to be licked again for having been licked before; or, speaking with exactitude, for having been in a fight, his father being one who held by the theory that diplomacy ever should find the way out to peace when blows threatened to follow on disputation. With view, therefore, to proving his profound distaste for physical violence in any form he employed it freely upon the body of his son, using to that end a strap. Scarred in new places, the victim of two beatings in one day went weeping and supperless to bed.

Now this fight in Henry Street took place some sixteen years ago, and in sixteen years a great deal of water runs under the bridges provided for that purpose and for other purposes. Two separate currents of the water that flowed caught up Hyman Ginsburg and Pasquale Gallino and carried them along differing channels toward differing destinies. While Hyman was in the grammar grades, a brag pupil, Pasquale was in the Protectory, a branded incorrigible. While Hyman was attending high school, Pasquale was attending reform school. When Hyman, a man grown, was taking his examinations with the idea of getting on the police force, Pasquale was constructing an alibi with the idea of staying out of Sing Sing. One achieved his present ambition— that was Hyman.

The next period of their respective developments found this pair in a fair way each to achieve a definite niche in his chosen profession. Patrolman Hyman Ginsburg, after walking post for some months, had been taken out of uniform and put into civilian garb as a plain-clothes man on the Headquarters staff. Here he was making good. Having intelligence and energy and the racial persistence which is as much a part of his breed as their hands and their feet are, he was looked upon in the department as a detective with a future ahead of him.

As for him who had once been Pasquale Gallino, he now occupied a position of prominence amid congenial surroundings while following after equally congenial pursuits. There was a gang. Despite the fact that it was such a new gang, this gang before the eyes of law and order stood high upon a pinnacle of evil eminence, overtopping such old-established gangs as the Gas House and the Gophers, the Skinned Rabbits and the Pearl Button Kid’s. Taking title from the current name of its chieftain, it was popularly known as the Stretchy Gorman gang. Its headquarters was a boozing den of exceeding ill repute on the lower West Side. Its chief specialties were loft robberies and dock robberies. Its favorite sidelines were election frauds and so-called strike-breaking jobs. The main amusement of its members was hoodlumism in its broader and more general phases. Its shield and its buckler was political influence of a sort; its keenest sword was its audacious young captain. You might call it a general-purposes gang. Contemporary gangsters spoke of it with respect and admiration. For a thing so young it gave great promise.

A day came, though, when the protection under which the Stretchy Gormans had flourished ceased to protect. It is not known, nor yet is it written, what the reason for this was. Perhaps there was a breaking off of the friendly relations theretofore existing between one of the down-town district leaders and one of the powers— name deleted— higher up. Perhaps the newspapers had scolded too shrilly, demanding the house-cleaning of a neighborhood which had become a bad smell in the sensitive nostrils of honest taxpayers and valued advertisers. Certainly burglaries in the wholesale silk district had occurred so numerously as to constitute a public scandal.

Then, besides, there was the incident of the night watchman of a North River freight pier, a worthy enough person though a nonvoter and therefore of small account from the viewpoint of ward politics, who stood up in single-handed defense of his employer’s premises and goods against odds of at least four to one. Swinging a cold chisel, someone chipped a bit of bone out of the watchman’s skull as expeditiously and almost as neatly as a visiting Englishman chips the poll of his breakfast egg; so that forever after the victim nursed an achesome and slightly addled brain. Then there were other things.

Be the cause what it may, it certainly is the fact that on a pleasant autumnal afternoon Inspector Krogan summoned to his presence two members of the Central Office staff and told them to go get Stretchy Gorman. Stretchy was to be gone after and got on the blanket charge— the rubber blanket charge, as one might say, since it is so elastic and covers such a multitude of sins— of being a suspicious character.

Now Stretchy Gorman had no character to speak of; so therein the accusation appeared faulty. But equally was it true as Holy Gospel that he was suspicious of nearly everybody on earth and that nearly everybody on earth had reasons to be suspicious of him. So, balancing one word against the other, the garment might be said to fit him. At any rate, it was plain the supreme potentates had decreed for him that he was to wear it.

One of the detectives detailed to this assignment was Hyman Ginsburg. His partner on the job was a somewhat older man named Casane. These two frequently worked together. Pulling in double harness they made a dependable team. Both had wit and shrewdness. By sight, Casane knew the individual they were deputed to take; Ginsburg, to his knowledge, had never seen him.

Across his roll-top desk the inspector, speaking as follows, according to the mode of the fellowcraft, gave them their instructions:

“You’ll likely be findin’ this here party at the Stuffed Owl. That’s his regular hang-out. My information is that he’s usually there regular this time of the day. I’ve just had word that he went in there fifteen minutes ago; it’s likely he’ll be stayin’ a while.

“Now, if he’s in there don’t you two go and send for him to come outside to you; nothin’ like that. See? You go right in after him and nail him right in front of his own pals. Understand? I want him and his bunch and the reporters all to know that this here alleged drag of his that the newspapers’ve been beefin’ so loud about is all bogus. And then you fetch him here to me and I’ll do the rest. Don’t make no gun play nor nothin’ of that nature without you have to, but at the same time and nevertheless don’t take no foolish chances. This party may act up rough and then again he may not. Get me? My guess is he won’t. Still and notwithstandin’, don’t leave no openin’s. Now get goin’.”

Sure enough it was at the sign of the Stuffed Owl, down in a basement bat cave of a place and in the dusk of the evening, that they found their man. To Ginsburg’s curious eyes he revealed himself as a short, swart person with enormously broad shoulders and with a chimpanzee’s arm reach. Look at those arms of his and one knew why he was called Stretchy. How he had acquired his last name of Gorman was only to be guessed at. It was fair to assume, though, he had got it by processes of self-adoption— no unusual thing in a city where overnight a Finkelstein turns into a Fogarty and he who at the going down of the sun was Antonio Baccigaluppi has at the upcoming of the same become Joseph Brown. One thing, though, was sure as rain: This particular Gorman had never been a Gorman born.

Not the blackest of the “Black Irish,” not the most brunette of brunette Welshmen ever had a skin of that peculiar brownish pallor, like clear water in a cypress swamp, or eyes like the slitted pair looking out obliquely from this man’s head.

Taking their cue of action from their superior’s words, Casane and Ginsburg, having come down the short flight of steps leading from the sidewalk, went directly across the barroom to where their man sat at a small table with two others, presumably both of his following, for his companions.

The manner of the intruders was casual enough; casual and yet marked by a businesslike air. They knew that at this moment they were not especially attractive risks for an accident insurance company. The very sawdust on the floor stank of villainy; the brass bar rail might have been a rigid length of poison snake; the spittoons were small sinks of corruption. Moreover, they had been commissioned to take a monarch off his throne before the eyes of his courtiers, and history records that this ever was a proceeding fraught with peril.

Still they went straight toward him. Before they spoke a word— almost before they were well inside the street door— he must have recognized them as Headquarters men. Being what he was, he instantly would have appraised them for what they were had the meeting taken place in the dead vast and middle of Sahara’s sandy wastes. Even the seasoned urbanite who is law-abiding and who has no cause to fear the thief-taker can pick out a detective halfway up the block.

Besides, in the same instant that they descended from the street level, the barkeeper with his tongue had made a small clucking sound, thrice repeated, and with all four fingers of his right hand had gripped the left lapel of his unbuttoned waistcoat. Thereat there had been a general raising of heads all over the place. Since the days of Jonathan Wild and even before that— since the days when the Romany Rye came out of the East into England— the signal of the collar has been the sign of the collar, which means the cop.

The man they sought eyed them contemptuously from under the down-tilted visor of his cap as they approached him. His arms were folded upon the table top and for the moment he kept them so.

“Evening,” said Casane civilly, pausing alongside him. “Call yourself Gorman, don’t you?”

“I’ve been known to answer to that name,” he answered back in the curious flat tone that is affected by some of his sort and is natural with the rest of them. “Wot of it?”

“There’s somebody wants to have a talk with you up at the front office— that’s all,” said Casane.

“It’s a pinch, then, huh?” The gangster put his open hands against the edge of the table as though for a rearward spring.

“I’m tellin’ you all we know ourselves?” countered Casane. His voice was conciliatory— soothing almost. But Ginsburg had edged round past Casane, ready at the next warning move to take the gang leader on the flank with a quick forward rush, and inside their overcoats, the shapes of both the officers had tensed.

“Call it a pinch if you want to,” went on Casane. “I’d call it more of an invitation just to take a little walk with us two and then have a chat with somebody else. Unless you or some of your friends here feel like startin’ something there’ll be no rough stuff— that’s orders. We’re askin’ you to go along— first. How about it?”

“Oh, I’ll go— I’ll go! There’s nobody got anything on me. And nobody’s goin’ to get anything on me neither.”

He stood up and with a quick movement jerked back the skirts of his coat, holding them aloft so that his hip pockets and his waistband, showed.

“Take notice!” he cried, invoking as witnesses all present. “Take notice that I’m carryin’ no gat! So don’t you bulls try framin’ me under the Sullivan Law for havin’ a gat on me. There’s half a dozen here knows I ain’t heeled and kin swear to it— case of a frame-up. Now go ahead and frisk me!”

“That’ll be all right— we could easy take your word for it,” said Casane, still maintaining his placating pose. Nevertheless he signed to Ginsburg and the latter moved a step nearer their man and his practiced fingers ran swiftly over the unresisting form, feeling beneath the arms, down the flanks, about the belt line and even at the back of the neck for a suspicious hard bulge inside the garments, finally giving the side coat pockets a perfunctory slap.

“Unless you make it necessary, we won’t be callin’ for the wagon,” Casane stated. “Just the three of us’ll take a little stroll, like I’m telling you— just stroll out and take the air up to Headquarters.”

He slipped into position on one side of the gangster, Ginsburg on the other. Over his shoulder the man thus placed between them looked round to where his two underlings still sat at the table, both silent as the rest of the company were, but both plainly prepared for any contingencies; both ready to follow their chief’s lead in whatsoever course, peaceable or violent, he might next elect to follow.

“Here you, Louie,” he bade one of them, “jump to the telephone and notify a certain party to have me mouthpiece at Headquarters by the time I kin get there with these two dicks. Tell him the cops’ve got nothin’ on me, but I wants me mouthpiece there just the same— case of a tie.”

Until now the preliminaries had been carried on with a due regard for the unwritten but rigid code of underworld etiquette. From neither side had there issued a single unethical word. The detectives had been punctilious to avoid ruffling the sensibilities of any and all. All the same, the prisoner chose of a sudden to turn nasty. It was at once manifest that he aimed to give offense without giving provocation or real excuse for reprisals on the part of the invaders. He spat sidewise across Casane’s front and as he took the first step forward he brought the foot down upon one of Ginsburg’s feet, grinding his heel sharply into the toes beneath. Ginsburg winced at the pain but did not speak; he had not spoken at all up until now, leaving it to Casane as the elder man to conduct the preliminaries.

“Why don’t you say something, you Jew!” taunted the prisoner. “Don’t you even know enough to excuse yourself when you stick your fat feet in people’s way?”

“That’ll be all right,” said Ginsburg crisply. It was his business to avoid the issue of a clash. “And it’ll be all right your calling me a Jew. I am a Jew and I’m proud of it. And I’m wearing the same name I started out with too.”

“Is that so?”

Except in the inspired pages of fiction city thugs are singularly barren of power to deliver really snappy, really witty retorts.

“Is that so, Jew?” He stared at Ginsburg and a derisive grin opened a gap in his broad dark face. “Oh, be chee! We ain’t strangers— you and me ain’t! We’ve met before— when we was kids. Down in Henry Street, it was. I put me mark on you oncet, and if I ever feel like it I’ll do it again sometime.”

Like a match under shavings the words kindled half-forgotten memories in the young detective’s brain and now— for his part— recognition came flashing back out of the past.

“I thought so,” he said, choosing to ignore the gangster and addressing Casane. “I thought from the first Gorman wasn’t his right name. I’ve forgotten what his right name is, but it’s nothing that sounds like Gorman. He’s a wop. I went to the same school with him over on the East Side a good many years ago.”

“Don’t forget to tell him how the wop licked the Jew,” broke in the prisoner. “Remember how the scrap started?”

He spat again and this time he did not miss. Ginsburg put up his gloved hand and wiped clean a face that with passion had turned a mottle of red-and-white blotches. His voice shook from the strain of his effort to control himself.

“I’ll get you for that,” he said quietly. “And I’ll get you good. The day’ll come when I’ll walk you in broad daylight up to the big chief, and I’ll have the goods on you too.”

“Forget it,” jeered the ruffian triumphantly. Before the eyes of his satellites he had— by his standards— acquitted himself right creditably. “You got nothin’ on me now, Jew, and you never will have. Well, come on, you bulls, let’s be goin’ along. I wouldn’t want the neither one of you for steady company. One of you is too polite and the other’n too meek for my tastes.”

THE MAN who was called Stretchy Gorman spoke a prophetic word when he said the police had nothing on him. Since they had nothing on him, he was let go after forty-eight hours of detention; but that is not saying they did not intend, if they could— and in such cases they usually can— to get something on him.

No man in the department had better reason to crave that consummation than Hyman Ginsburg had. With him the hope of achieving revenge became practically an obsession. It rode in his thoughts. Any hour, in a campaign to harry the gangster to desperation by means of methods that are common enough inside the department, he might have invoked competent and willing assistance, for the word had filtered down from on high, where the seats of the mighty are, that those mysterious forces aloft would look complacently upon the eternal undoing of the Stretchy Gormans and their titular leader, no matter how accomplished.

But this notion did not match in with the color of Ginsburg’s desires. Single-handed, he meant to do the trick. Most probably then the credit would be all his; assuredly the satisfaction would. When he considered this prospect his mind ran back along old grooves to the humiliating beating he had suffered in front of the Henry Street school so long before and of a most painful strapping that followed; these being coupled always with a later memory scar of a grievous insult endured in the line of duty and all the more hateful because it had been endured.

Once Ginsburg had read a book out of a public library— a book which mentally he called Less Miserables. Through the pages of that book there had walked a detective whom Ginsburg in his mind knew by the name of Jawbert. Now he recalled how this Jawbert spent his life tracking down an offender who was the main hero of the book. He told himself that in the matter of Stretchy Gorman he would be as another Jawbert.

By way of a beginning he took advantage of leisure hours to trace out the criminal history of his destined victim. In the gallery he found numbered and classified photographs; in the Bertillon bureau, finger prints; and in the records, what else he lacked of information— as an urchin, so many years spent in the protectory; as a youth, so many years in the reformatory; as a man, a year on Blackwell’s Island for a misdemeanor and a three-year term at Sing Sing for a felony; also he dug up the entry of an indictment yet standing on which trial had never been held for lack of proof to convict; finally a long list of arrests for this and that and the other thing, unproved. From under a succession of aliases he uncovered Gorman’s real name.

But a sequence of events delayed his fuller assumption of the rôle of Jawbert. He was sent to Rio de Janeiro to bring back an absconder of note. Six months he worked on the famous Gonzales child-stealing mystery. He made two trips out to the Pacific Coast in connection with the Chappy Morgan wire-tapping cases. Few of the routine jobs about the detective bureau fell to him. He was too good for routine and his superiors recognized the fact and were governed thereby.

By the rules of tradition, Ginsburg— as a successful detective— should have been either an Irishman or of Irish descent. But in the second biggest police force in the world, wherein twenty per cent of the personnel wear names that betoken Jewish, Slavic or Latin forebears, tradition these times suffers many a body wallop.

On a night in early April, Ginsburg, coming across from New Jersey, landed off a ferryboat at Christopher Street. He had gone across the river to gather up a loose end of the evidence accumulating against Chappy Morgan, king of the wireless wire-tappers. It was nearly midnight when he emerged from the ferryhouse. In sight was no surface car; so he set out afoot to walk across town to where he lived on the East Side.

Going through a side street in a district which mainly is given over to the establishments of textile jobbers, he observed, half a block away, a fire escape that bore strange fruit. The front line of a stretch of tallish buildings stood out in relief against the background of a wet moon and showed him, high up on the iron ladder which flighted down the face of one house of the row, two dark clumps, one placed just above the other.

Ginsburg slipped into a protecting ledge of shadow close up against the buildings and edged along nearer. The clumps resolved into the figures of men. One— the uppermost shape of a man— was receiving from some unseen sources flat burdens that came down over the roof coping and passing them along to the accomplice below. The latter in turn stacked them upon the grilled floor of the fire balcony that projected out into space at the level of the fourth floor, the building being five floors in height. By chance Ginsburg had happened upon a loft-robbing enterprise.

He shifted his revolver from his hip pocket to the side pocket of his overcoat and crept closer, planning for the pair so intently engaged overhead a surprise when they should descend with their loot. There was no time now to seek out the patrolman on the post; the job must be all his.

Two doors from the building that had been entered he crept noiselessly down into a basement and squatted behind an ash barrel. It was inky black in there; so inkily black he never suspected that the recess held another tenant. Your well-organized loft-robbing mob carries along a lookout who in case of discovery gives warning; in case of attack, repels the attack, and in case of pursuit acts as rear guard. In Stretchy Gorman’s operations Stretchy acted as his own lookout, and a highly competent one he was, too, with a preference for lurking in areaways while his lieutenants carried forward the more arduous but less responsible shares of the undertaking.

In the darkness behind Ginsburg where he crouched a long gorilla’s arm of an arm reached outward and downward, describing an arc. You might call it the long arm of coincidence and be making no mistake either. At the end of the arm was a fist and in the fist a length of gas pipe wrapped in rags. This gas pipe descended upon the back of Ginsburg’s skull, crushing through the derby hat he wore. And the next thing Ginsburg knew he was in St. Vincent’s Hospital with a splitting headache and the United States Government had gone to war against the German Empire.

Ginsburg did not volunteer. The parent who once had wielded the disciplinary strap-end so painstakingly had long since rejoined his bearded ancestors, but there was a dependent mother to be cared for and a whole covey of younger brothers and sisters to be shepherded through school and into sustaining employment. So he waited for the draft, and when the draft took him and his number came out in the drawing, as it very soon did, he waived his exemptions and went to training camp wearing an old suit of clothes and an easy pair of shoes. Presently he found himself transferred to a volunteer outfit— one of the very few draft men who were to serve with that outfit.

In camp the discipline he had acquired and the drilling he had done in his ’prentice days on the force stood him in good stead. Hard work trimmed off of him the layers of tissue he had begun to take on; plain solid food finished the job of unlarding his frame. Shortly he was Corporal Ginsburg— a trim upstanding corporal. Then he became Sergeant Ginsburg and soon after this was Second Sergeant Ginsburg of B Company of a regiment still somewhat sketchy and ragged in its make-up, but with promise of good stuff to emerge from the mass of its material. When his regiment and his division went overseas, First Sergeant Ginsburg went along too.

The division had started out by being a national guard division; almost exclusively its rank and file had been city men— rich men’s sons from uptown, poor men’s sons with jaw-breaking names from the tenements. At the beginning the acting major general in command had been fond of boasting that he had representatives of thirty-two nations and practitioners of fifty-four creeds and cults in his outfit. Before very long he might truthfully expand both these figures.

To stopper the holes made by the wear and tear of intensive training, the attritions of sickness and of transfers, the losses by death and by wounding as suffered in the first small spells of campaigning, replacements came up from the depots, enriching the local color of the division with new types and strange accents. Southern mountaineers, Western ranch hands and farm boys from the Middle States came along to find mates among Syrians, Jews, Italians, Armenians and Greeks. Cotton Belt, Corn Belt, Wheat Belt and Timber Belt contributed. Born feudists became snipers, counter jumpers became fencibles, yokels became drillmasters, sweat-shop hands became sharpshooters, aliens became Americans, an ex-janitor— Austrian-born— became a captain, a rabble became an organized unit; the division became a tempered mettlesome lance— springy, sharp and dependable.

This miracle so often repeated itself in our new army that it ceased to be miraculous and became commonplace. During its enactment we as a nation accepted it with calmness, almost with indifference. I expect our grandchildren will marvel at it and among them will be some who will write large, fat books about it.

On that great day when a new definition for the German equivalent of the English word “impregnable” was furnished by men who went up to battle swearfully or prayerfully, as the case might be, a-swearing and a-praying as they went in more tongues than were babbled at Babel Tower; in other words, on the day when the never-to-be-broken Hindenburg line was broken through and through, a battalion of one of the infantry regiments of this same polyglot division formed a little individual ground swell in the first wave of attack.

That chill and gloomy hour when condemned men and milkmen rise up from where they lie, when sick folk die in their beds and the drowsy birds begin to chirp themselves awake found the men of this particular battalion in shallow front-line trenches on the farther edge of a birch thicket. There they crouched, awaiting the word. The flat cold taste of before sunup was clammy in their throats; the smell of the fading nighttime was in their nostrils.

And in the heart of every man of them that man over and over again asked himself a question. He asked himself whether his will power— which meant his soul— was going to be strong enough to drag his reluctant body along with it into what impended. You see, with a very few exceptions none of this outfit had been beyond the wires before. They had been under fire, some of them— fire of gas shells and of shrapnel and of high explosives in dugouts or in rear positions or as they passed along roads lying under gun range of the enemy. But this matter would be different; this experience would widely differ from any they had undergone. This meant going out into the open to walk up against machine-gun fire and small-arm fire. So each one asked himself the question.

Take a thousand fighting men. For purposes of argument let us say that when the test of fighting comes five men out of that thousand cannot readjust their nerves to the prospect of a violent end by powder and ball from unseen sources. Under other circumstances any one of the five might face a peril greater than that which now confronts him. Conceivably he might flop into a swollen river to save a drowning puppy; might dive into a burning building after some stranger’s pet tabby cat. But this prospect which lies before him of ambling across a field with death singing about his ears, is a thing which tears with clawing fingers at the tuggs and toggles of his imagination until his flesh revolts to the point where it refuses the dare. It is such a man that courts-martial and the world at large miscall by the hateful name of coward.

Out of the remaining nine hundred and ninety-five are five more— as we allow— who have so little of perception, who are so stolid, so dull of wit and apprehension that they go into battle unmoved, unshaken, unthinking. This leaves nine hundred and ninety who are afraid— sorely and terribly afraid. They are afraid of being killed, afraid of being crippled, afraid of venturing out where killings and cripplings are carried on as branches of a highly specialized business.

But at the last they find that they fear just one thing more than they fear death and dismemberment; and that this one supremest thing is the fear that those about them may discover how terribly afraid they are. It is this greater fear, overriding all those lesser terrors, that makes over ordinary men into leaders of forlorn hopes, into holders of last ditches, into bearers of heroic blazons, into sleepers under memorial shafts erected by the citizens of a proud, a grateful and a sorrowing country. A sense of self-respect is a terrific responsibility.

Under this double stress, torn in advance of the actual undertaking by primitive emotions pulling in opposite directions, men bear themselves after curious but common fashions. To a psychologist twenty men chosen at random from the members of the battalion, waiting there in the edge of the birch thicket for their striking hour to come, would have offered twenty contrasting subjects for study.

Here was a man all deathly white, who spoke never a word, but who retched with sharp painful sounds and kept his free hand gripped into his cramping belly. That dread of being hit in the bowels which so many men have at moments like this was making him physically sick.

Here again was a man who made jokes about cold feet and yellow streaks and the chances of death and the like and laughed at his own jokes. But there was a quiver of barely checked hysteria in his laughing and his eyes shone like the eyes of a man in a fever and the sweat kept popping out in little beads on his face.

Here again was a man who swore constantly in a monotonous undertone. Always I am reading where a man of my race under strain or provocation coins new and apt and picturesque oaths; but myself, I have never seen such a man. I should have seen him, too, if he really existed anywhere except in books, seeing that as a boy I knew many steamboat mates on Southern waters and afterward met socially many and divers mule drivers and horse wranglers in the great West.

But it has been my observation that in the matter of oaths the Anglo-Saxon tongue is strangely lacking in variety and spice. There are a few stand-by oaths— three or four nouns, two or three adjectives, one double-jointed adjective— and these invariably are employed over and over again. The which was undeniably true in this particular instance. This man who swore so steadily merely repeated, times without number and presumably with reference to the Germans, the unprettiest and at the same time the most familiar name of compounded opprobrium that our deficient language yields.

For the fiftieth time in half as many minutes, a captain— his name was Captain Griswold and he was the captain of B Company— consulted the luminous face of his wrist watch where he stooped behind shelter. He spoke then, and his voice was plainly to be heard under the whistle and whoop of the shells passing over his head from the supporting batteries behind with intent to fall in the supposed defenses of the enemy in front. Great sounds would have been lost in that crashing tumult; by one of the paradoxes of battle lesser sounds were easily audible.

“All right,” said Captain Griswold, “it’s time! If some damn fool hasn’t gummed things up the creeping barrage should be starting out yonder and everything is set. Come on, men— let’s go!”

They went, each still behaving according to his own mode. The man with the gripes who retched was still retching as he heaved himself up over the parapet; the man who had laughed was still laughing; the man who had sworn was mechanically continuing to repeat that naughty pet name of his for the Fritzies. Nobody, though, called on anybody else to defend the glory of the flag; nobody invited anybody to remember the Lusitania; nobody spoke a single one of the fine speeches which the bushelmen of fiction at home were even then thinking up to put into the mouths of men moving into battle.

Indeed, not in any visible regard was the scene marked by drama. Merely some muddied men burdened with ironmongery and bumpy with gas masks and ammunition packs climbed laboriously out of a slit in the wet earth and in squads— single filing, one man behind the next as directly as might be— stepped along through a pale, sad, slightly misty light at rather a deliberate pace, to traverse a barb-wired meadowland which rose before them at a gentle incline. There was no firing of guns, no waving of swords. There were no swords to wave. There was no enemy in sight and no evidence as yet that they had been sighted by any enemy. As a matter of fact, none of them— neither those who fell nor those who lived— saw on that day a single living individual recognizable as a German.

A sense of enormous isolation encompassed them. They seemed to be all alone in a corner of the world that was peopled by diabolical sounds, but not by humans. They had a feeling that because of an error in the plans they had been sent forward without supports; that they— a puny handful— were to be sacrificed under the haunches of the Hindenburg line while all those thousands of others who should have been their companions upon this adventure bided safely behind, held back by the countermand which through some hideous blunder had failed to reach them in time. But they went on. Orders were to go on— and order, plus discipline, plus the individual’s sense of responsibility, plus that fear of his that his mates may know how fearful of other things he is— make it possible for armies to be armies instead of mobs and for battles to be won.

They went on until they came to an invisible line drawn lengthwise across the broad way of the weed field, and here men began to drop down. Mainly those stricken slid gently forward to lie on their stomachs. Only here and there was there a man who spun about to fall face upward. Those who were wounded, but not overthrown, would generally sit down quite gently and quite deliberately, with puzzled looks in their eyes. Since still there was neither sign nor sight of the well-hidden enemy the thought took root in the minds of the men as yet unscathed that, advancing too fast, they had been caught in the drop curtain of their own barrage.

Sergeant Hyman Ginsburg, going along at the head of his squad, got this notion quite well fixed in his mind. Then, though, he saw smoke jets issuing from bushes and trees on ahead of him where the ridges of the slope sharpened up acutely into a sort of natural barrier like a wall; and likewise for the first time he now heard the tat-tat-tat of machine guns, sounding like the hammers of pneumatic riveters rapidly operated. To him it seemed a proper course that his squad should take such cover as the lay of the land afforded and fire back toward the machine guns. But since the instructions, so far as he knew them, called for a steady advance up to within a few rods of the enemy’s supposed position and then a quick rush forward, he gave no such command to his squad.

Suddenly he became aware that off to the right the forward movement of the battalion was checking up. Then, all in an instant, men on both sides were falling back. He and his squad were enveloped in a reverse movement. It seemed too bad that the battalion should be driven in after suffering these casualties and without having dealt a blow in return for the punishment it had undergone. But what did it matter if, after all, they were being sacrificed vainly as the result of a hideous mistake at divisional headquarters? Better to save what was left.

So far as he could tell, nobody gave the word to retire. He found himself going back at the tail of his squad where before he had been its head. Subconsciously he was surprised to observe that the copse from which they had emerged but a minute or two earlier, as he had imagined, was a considerable distance away from them, now that they had set their faces toward it. It did not seem possible that they could have left it so far behind them. Yet returning to it the men did not perceptibly hurry their steps. They retreated without evidences of disorder— almost reluctantly— as though by this very slowness of movement to signify their disgust for the supposed fiasco that had enveloped them, causing them to waste lives in an ill-timed and futile endeavor.

Ginsburg re-entered the covert of birches with a sense of gratitude for its protection and let himself down into the trench. He faced about, peering over its rim, and saw that his captain— Captain Griswold— was just behind him, returning all alone and looking back over his shoulder constantly.

Captain Griswold was perhaps twenty yards from the thicket when he clasped both hands to the pit of his stomach and slipped down flat in the trampled herbage. In that same moment Ginsburg saw how many invisible darting objects, which must of course be machine-gun bullets, were mowing the weed stems about the spot where the captain had gone down. Bits of turf flew up in showers as the leaden blasts, spraying down from the top of the ridge, bored into the earth.

Well, somebody would have to bring the captain in out of that. He laid his rifle against the wall of the trench and climbed out again into plain view. So far as he knew he was going as a solitary volunteer upon this errand. He put one arm across his face, like a man fending off rain drops, and ran bent forward.

The captain, when he reached him, was lying upon his side with his face turned away from Ginsburg and his shrapnel helmet half on and half off his head. Ginsburg stooped, putting his hands under the pits of the captain’s arms, and gave a heave. The burden of the body came against him as so much dead heft; a weight limp and unresponsive, the trunk sagging, the limbs loose and unguided.

Ginsburg felt a hard buffet in his right side. It wasn’t a blow exactly; it was more like a clout from a heavily-shod blunt-ended brogan. His last registered impression as he collapsed on top of the captain was that someone, hurrying up to aid him, had stumbled and driven a booted toe into his ribs. Thereafter for a space events— in so far as Ginsburg’s mind recorded them— were hazy, with gaps between of complete forgetfulness. He felt no pain to speak of, but busybodies kept bothering him. It drowsily annoyed him to be dragged about, to be lifted up and to be put down again, to be pawed over by unseen, dimly comprehended hands, to be ridden in a careening, bumping vehicle for what seemed to him hours and hours. Finally, when he was striving to reorganize his faculties for the utterance of a protest, someone put something over his nose and he went sound asleep.

Ensued then a measureless period when he slept and dreamed strange jumbled dreams. He awakened, clear enough in his thoughts, but beset with a queer giddiness and a weakness, in a hospital sixteen miles from where the mix-up had started, though he didn’t know about that of course until subsequent inquiry enabled him to piece together a number of fragmentary recollections. For the present he was content to realize that he lay on a comfortable cot under a tight roof and that he had his full complement of arms and legs and could move them, though when he moved the right leg the ankle hurt him. Also he had a queer squeezed-in sensation amidships as though broad straps had been buckled tightly about his trunk.

Upon top of these discoveries came another. Sitting up in the next-hand cot to his on the right was a member of his own company, one Paul Dempsey, now rather elaborately bandaged as to his head and shoulders, but seemingly otherwise in customary good order and spirits.

“Hello, Dempsey,” he said.

“Hello, sarge,” answered back Dempsey. “How you feelin’ by now— all right?”

“Guess so. My ankle is sprained or something and my side feels sort of funny.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Dempsey. “I got a dippy kind of feelin’ inside my own headpiece— piece of shell casin’ come and beaned me. It don’t amount to much, though; just enough to get me a wound stripe. You’re the lucky guy, sarge. Maybe it’s so you won’t have to go back and prob’ly I will.”

The speaker sighed and grinned and then confessed to a great perception which many before him had known and which many were to know afterward, but which some— less frank than he— have sought to conceal.

“I’ll go back of course if they need me— and if I have to— but I’d just as lief not. You kin take it from me, I’ve had plenty of this gettin’ all-shot-up business. Oncet is enough for First-Class Private Dempsey.

“Say,” he went on, “looks like you and me are goin’ partners a lot here lately. I get mine right after you get yours. We ride back here together in the same tin Lizzie— you and me do— and now here we are side by each again. Well, there’s a lot of the fellows we won’t neither of us see no more. But their lives wasn’t wasted, at that. I betcher there’s a lot of German bein’ spoke in hell these last two or three days.

“Oh, you ain’t heard the big news, have you? Bein’ off your dip and out of commission like you was. Well, we busted old Mister Hindenburg’s line in about nine places and now it looks like maybe we’ll eat Thanksgivin’ dinner in Berlin or Hoboken— one.”

Dempsey went on and every word that he uttered was news— how the seemingly premature advance of the battalion had not been a mistake at all; how the only slip was that the battalion walked into a whole cote of unsuspected machine-gun nests, but how the second battalion going up and round the shore of the hill to the left had taken the boche on the flank and cleaned him out of his pretty little ambuscade; how there were tidings of great cheer filtering back from all along the line and so forth and so on. Ginsburg broke in on him:

“How’s Captain Griswold?”

“Oh, the cap was as good as dead when this here guy, Goodman, fetched him in on his back after he’d went out after you fell and fetched you back in first. I seen the whole thing myself— it was right after that that I got beaned. One good scout, the cap was. And there ain’t nothin’ wrong with this Goodman, neither; you kin take it from me.”

“Goodman?” Ginsburg pondered. The name was a strange one. “Say, was it this Goodman that kicked me in the ribs while I was tryin’ to pick up the captain?”

“Kicked you nothin’! You got a machine-gun bullet glancin’ on your short ribs and acrost your chest right under the skin— that was what put you down and out. And then just as Goodman fetched you in acrost over the top here come another lot of machine-gun bullets, and one of ’em drilled you through the ankle and another one of them bored Goodman clean through the shoulder; but that didn’t keep him from goin’ right back out there, shot up like he was, after the captain. Quick as a cat that guy was and strong as a bull. Naw, Goodman he never kicked you— that was a little chunk of lead kicked you.”

“But I didn’t feel any pain like a bullet,” protested Ginsburg. “It was more like a hard wallop with a club or a boot.”

“Say, that’s a funny thing too,” said Dempsey. “You’re always readin’ about the sharp dartin’ pain a bullet makes, and yet nearly everybody that gets hit comes out of his trance ready to swear a mule muster kicked him or somethin’. I guess that sharp-dartin’ pain stuff runs for Sweeney; the guys that write about it oughter get shot up themselves oncet. Then they’d know.”

“This Goodman, now?” queried Ginsburg, trying to chamber many impressions at once. “I don’t seem to place him. He wasn’t in B Company?”

“Naw! He’s out of D Company. He’s a new guy. He’s out of a bunch of replacements that come up for D Company only the day before yistiddy. Well, for a green hand he certainly handled himself like one old-timer.”

Dempsey, aged nineteen, spoke as the grizzled veteran of many campaigns might have spoken.

“Yes, sir! He certainly snatched you out of a damn bad hole in jig time.”

“I’d like to have a look at him,” said Ginsburg. “And my old mother back home would, too, I know.”

“Your mother’ll have to wait, but you kin have your wish,” said Dempsey gleefully. He had been saving his biggest piece of news for the last. “If you’ve got anything to ask him just ask him. He’s layin’ there— right over there on the other side of you. We all three of us rode down here together in the same amb’lance load.”

Ginsburg turned his head. Above the blanket that covered the figure of his cot neighbor on the right he looked into the face of the man who had saved him— looked into it and recognized it. That dark skin, clear though, with a transparent pallor to it like brown stump water in a swamp, and those black eyes between the slitted lids could belong to but one person on earth. If the other had overheard what just had passed between Ginsburg and Dempsey he gave no sign. He considered Ginsburg steadily, with a cool, hostile stare in his eyes.

“Much obliged, buddy,” said Ginsburg. Something already had told him that here revealed was a secret not to be shared with a third party.

“Don’t mention it,” answered his late rescuer shortly. He drew a fold of the blanket up across his face with the gesture of one craving solitude or sleep.

“Huh!” quoth Dempsey. “Not what I’d call a talkative guy.”

This shortcoming could not be laid at his own door. He talked steadily on. After a while, though, a reaction of weariness began to blunt Dempsey’s sprightly vivacity. His talk trailed off into grunts and he slept the sleep of a hurt tired-out boy.

Satisfied that Dempsey no longer was to be considered in the rôle of a possible eavesdropper, Ginsburg nevertheless spoke cautiously as again he turned his face toward the motionless figure stretched alongside him on his left.

“Listening?” he began.

“Yes,” gruffly.

“When did you begin calling yourself Goodman?”

“That’s my business.”

“No, it’s not. Something has happened that gives me the right to know. Forget that I used to be on the cops. I’m asking you now as one soldier to another: When did you begin calling yourself Goodman?”

“About a year ago— when I first got into the service.”

“How did you get in?”

“Enlisted.”

“Where? New York?”

“No. Cleveland.”

“What made you enlist?”

“Say, wot’s this— thoid-degree stuff?”

“I told you just now that I figured I had a right to know. When a man saves your life it puts him under an obligation to you— I mean puts you under an obligation to him,” he corrected.

“Well, if you put it that way— maybe it was because I wanted to duck out of reach of you bulls. Maybe because I wanted to go straight a while. Maybe because I wanted to show that a bad guy could do somethin’ for his country. Dope it out for yourself. That used to be your game— dopin’ things out— wasn’t it?”

“I’m trying to, now. Tell me, does anybody know— anybody in the Army, I mean— know who you are?”

“Nobody but you; and you might call it an accident, the way you come to find out.”

“Something like that. How’s your record since you joined up?”

“Clean as anybody’s.”

“And what’s your idea about keeping on going straight after the war is over and you get out of service?

“Don’t answer unless you feel like it; only I’ve got my own private reasons for wanting to know.”

“Well, I know a trade— learnt it in stir, but I know it. I’m a steamfitter by trade, only I ain’t never worked much at it. Maybe when I get back I’d try workin’ at it steady if you flatties would only keep off me back. Anything else you wanted to find out?” His tone was sneering almost. “If there’s not, I think I’ll try to take a nap.”

“Not now— but I’d like to talk to you again about some things when we’re both rested up.”

“Have it your own way. I can’t get away from you for a while— not with this hole drilled in me shoulder.”

However, Ginsburg did not have it his own way. The wound in his leg gave threat of trouble and at once he was shifted south to one of the big base hospitals. An operation followed and after that a rather long, slow convalescence.

In the same week of November that the armistice was signed, Ginsburg, limping slightly, went aboard a troopship bound for home. It befell, therefore, that he spent the winter on sick leave in New York. He had plenty of spare time on his hands and some of it he employed in business of a more or less private nature. For example, he called on the district attorney and a few days later went to Albany and called upon the governor. A returned soldier whose name has been often in the paper and who wears on his uniform tunic two bits of ribbon and on his sleeves service and wound stripes is not kept waiting in anterooms these times. He saw the governor just as he had seen the district attorney— promptly. In fact, the governor felt it to be an honor to meet a soldier who had been decorated for gallantry in action and so expressed himself. Later he called in the reporters and restated the fact; but when one of the reporters inquired into the reasons for Sergeant Ginsburg’s visit at this time the governor shook his head.

“The business between us was confidential,” he said smilingly. “But I might add that Sergeant Ginsburg got what he came for. And it wasn’t a job either. I’m afraid, though, that you young gentlemen will have to wait a while for the rest of the details. They’ll come out in time no doubt. But just for the present a sort of surprise is being planned for someone and while I’m to be a party to it I don’t feel at liberty to tell about it— yet.”

NOW it is a part of the business of newspaper men to put two and two together and get four. Months later, recalling what the governor had said to the Albany correspondents, divers city editors with the aid of their bright young staff men did put two and two together and they got a story. It was a peach of a bird of a gem of a story that they got on the day a transport nosed up the harbor bearing what was left of one of the infantry regiments of the praiseworthy Metropolitan Division.

Even in those days of regardless receptions for home-arriving troops it did not often happen that a secretary to the governor and an assistant from the office of the district attorney went down the bay on the same tug to meet the same returning soldier— and he a private soldier, at that. Each of these gentlemen had put on his long-tailed coat and his two-quart hat for the gladsome occasion; each of them carried a document for personal presentation to this private soldier.

And the sum total of these documents was: Firstly, to the full legal effect that a certain indictment of long standing was now by due processes of law forever and eternally quashed; and secondly, that the governor had seen fit to remove all disabilities against a certain individual, thereby restoring the person named to all the rights, boons, benefits and privileges of citizenship; and thirdly, that in accordance with a prior and privy design, now fully carried out, the recipient of these documents had official guaranty, stamped, sealed and delivered, that when he set foot on the soil of these United States he would do so without cloud upon his title as a sovereign voter, without blemish on his name and without fear of prosecution in his heart. And the upshot of it all was that the story was more than a peach; it was a pippin. The rehabilitation of Private Pasquale Gallino, sometime known as Stretchy Gorman, gangster, and more latterly still as P. Goodman, U.S.A., A.E.F., was celebrated to the extent of I don’t know how many gallons of printer’s ink.

Having landed in driblets and having been reassembled in camp as a whole, the division presently paraded, which made another story deemed worthy of columns upon columns in print. Our duty here, though, is not to undertake a description of that parade, for such was competently done on that fine day when the crowd that turned out was the largest crowd which that city of crowds, New York, had seen since the day when the crowding Dutchmen crowded the Indians off the shortly-to-be-crowded island of Manhattan.

Those who followed the daily chronicles of daily events saw then, through the eyes of gifted scribes, how Fifth Avenue was turned into a four-mile stretch of prancing, dancing glory; and how the outpouring millions, in masses fluid as water and in strength irresistible as a flood, broke the police dams and made of roadway and sidewalks one great, roaring, human sluiceway; and how the khaki-clad ranks marched upon a carpet of the flowers and the fruit and the candy and the cigarettes and the cigars and the confetti and the paper ribbons that were thrown at them and about them. These things are a tale told and retold. For us the task is merely to narrate one small incident which occurred in a side street hard by Washington Square while the parade was forming.

Where he stood marking time in the front row of the honor men of his own regiment— there being forty-six of these honor men, all bearing upon their proudly outbulged bosoms bits of metal testifying to valorous deeds— First Sergeant Hyman Ginsburg, keeping eyes front upon the broad back of the colonel who would ride just in advance of the honor squad and speaking out of the side of his mouth, addressed a short, squat, dark man in private’s uniform almost directly behind him at the end of the second file.

“Pal,” he said, casting his voice over his shoulder, “did you happen to read in the paper this morning that the police commissioner— the new one, the one that was appointed while we were in France— would be in the reviewing stand today?”

“No, I didn’t read it; but wot of it?” answered the person addressed.

“Nothing, only it reminded me of a promise I made you that night down at the Stuffed Owl when we met for the first time since we were kids together. Remember that promise, don’t you?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“I told you that someday I’d get you with the goods on you and that I’d lead you in broad daylight up the street to the big chief. Well, today, kid, I make good on that promise. The big chief’s waiting for us up yonder in the reviewing stand along with the governor and the mayor and the rest. And you’ve got the goods on you— you’re wearing them on your chest. And I’m about to lead you to him.”

Whereupon old Mr. John J. Coincidence, standing in the crowd, took out his fountain pen and on his shirt cuff scored a fresh tally to his own credit.

End

Table of Contents

- 1: The Amber Formula / Norman Blois Shalders

- 2: A Water-Nymph / Maud Shields

- 3: The Disappearance of Crispina Umberleigh / "Saki"

- 4: The Murder at Jex Farm / Oswald Crawfurd

- 5: The Ghost at Laburnum Villa / Anonymous

- 7: Discharging Martha / Carroll Watson Rankin

- 8: The Allard Burglars / George Hibbard
- 9: The Eyes / Edith Wharton
- 10: The Magic Circle / Ethel M. Dell
- 11: The Curse of True Love / Harold Mercer
- 12: A Schoolmaster Abroad / E. W. Hornung

- 13: Jack's as Good as His Master / Sumner Locke

- 14: And the Dead Spake / E. F. Benson

- 15: The Ghost / Max Brand

- 16: "Seven, Seven, Seven— City" / Julius Chambers

- 17: The Mystery Of King's Bench Walk / Britiffe Constable Skottowe

- 18: Blue Mountain Blue / D. H. Souter

- 19: John J. Coincidence / Irvin S. Cobb