Past Masters 131 Version 2
Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: In V1, Story #11, from 1920, was by little-known author Lyle Wilson Holden. At that time, no positive biographgic information was available so he was given as "fl. 1920s." His death has now been confirmed as 1960, so the story is still copyright and has been replaced for this V2. Contents 1: Ebony And Amber / Achmed Abdullah 2: Skull Manor / J. Allan Dunn 3: The Crowing Hens of Totulu / J. Allan Dunn 4: A Ghost of the Sea / Francis Prevost 5: Suffocated / May Wynne 6: Thumbs Down / Ethel Lina White 7: Ella the Ambitious / Guy Thorne 8: The Intruder / Chris Sewell 9: The Lady With the Hatchet /

PAST MASTERS 131

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

V2: 22 Nov 2023

In V1, Story #11, from 1920,  was by little-known author Lyle Wilson Holden. At that time, no positive biographgic information was available to me, so he was given as "fl. 1920s." His death has now been confirmed as 1960, so the story is still copyright and has been replaced for this V2.

Contents

1: Ebony And Amber / Achmed Abdullah

2: Skull Manor / J. Allan Dunn

3: The Crowing Hens of Totulu / J. Allan Dunn

4: A Ghost of the Sea / Francis Prevost

5: Suffocated / May Wynne

6: Thumbs Down / Ethel Lina White

7: Ella the Ambitious / Guy Thorne

8: The Intruder / Chris Sewell

9: The Lady With the Hatchet / Maurice Leblanc

10: They Dine in Darkness / Arthur Leo Zagat (novella)

11: A Yarn of a Pub / Ernest Favenc

12: The Man Who was Not on the Passenger List / Grant Allen

13: The Gun Girl / Rathburne Case

14: A Colonial Banshee / Fergus Hume

15: The Lost Suburb / J. D. Beresford

16: At the Pitch of the Scrap / Sumner Locke

___________

1: Ebony And Amber

Achmed Abdullah

Alexander Nicholayevitch Romanoff, 1881-1945

McCall's, March 1920

Alexander Nicholayevitch Romanoff

One of his Pell Street stories, set in New York's Chinatown

SINCE the Creator, taking various impure matters and kneading them with His divine pity, fashioned Feng Tao, the stick-up man, the gambler, the hired assassin in the employ of the Seven Azure Dragons Chinese Benevolent Association, fashioned him, perhaps, to watch how this sort of worthless yellow boy might behave under certain extraordinary circumstances, we, being only human and fallible, have no right to damn this same Feng Tao's eyes.

Let us consider his case, then.

Vague, his birth, where Pell Street plays hide-and-seek with the Bowery; father killed in a brawl with a redbearded Finnish sailor; mother drifting into the gray shadows soon afterward. His upbringing, that of chilly Chinese charity, public school and corner saloon. His early decision was that a world to which he owed nothing, owed him a living.

And so we find him showing industry only in evil pursuits— a thoroughly unsavory lad, slippery as an eel, crooked as a Malay dagger, cruel as a wild-cat. Bill Devoy, detective, attached to the Chinatown beat, frequently remarked that "of all them Chinks this here Feng Tao was the only one who ever really got his goat— never could catch him with the goods— horny-souled Mongol roughneck!" But Bill's description was unfair. For while all he said might fit Feng Tao's character, the outer man was rather good looking, with his clean length of limb, his slim hips, his broad shoulders, the ruddy glow of his square-jawed, powerful features, the flash of his white, even teeth, the neat cut of his clothes, the rakish tilt of his brown derby— and he had been known to do many kind things.

"Swell looker, that Chink!" was the feminine comment as he strolled down Mott Street toward No. 179a, which housed the "Canton Mutual Endeavor and Temperance Club." This appellation was in the nature of a Chinese jest, the club's main reason for existence being a large room on the ground floor, furnished with a dozen or so felt-covered tables that supported roulette wheels, poker paraphernalia, bridge decks, dice and Mah Jong tiles— proving that, at least in games of chance, the Celestials are cosmopolitan.

Here, of an evening, the rich men of Chinatown foregathered; and here, tonight— as almost every night, Feng Tao was wending his way. For he was a typical crook, making his money by devious methods, of which stealing was the most honest. The day's labors over, he wasted his substance across the felt-covered tables.

THEN, too, there was a little negro girl. A very black little negro. A ten-year-old negro, called Eliza. Surname problematical.

Similar to Feng Tao's, Eliza's personal recollections of her early life were sketchy. They revolved mostly around a grimy tenement in the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge and around the plum-colored arms, always bare to the elbows and covered with soapsuds, of her mother who called her "honey chile" and sang sweetly.

Her next recollection dealt with a large clergyman of the African Baptist Church whose face shone like a highly polished chocolate Easter egg, with a stream of people following a hearse, and herself the center of neighborly interest, admonished and wept over and comforted with crooning songs and moist sticks of peppermint candy.

On the next day had come an expedition into unknown realms of topography and finance under the guidance of a small, fat, important boy from her native block. He led her up to a two-wheeled cart presided over by a gentleman with a checked cap, fuzzy sweater and doubtful finger nails, who was handing stacks of wet newspapers to a scrambling mob of children, occasionally interrupting his work by curses which seemed splendid and admirable to Eliza. Her small knight-errant introduced her to this gentleman. A liberal and intricate credit system was agreed upon; and thus she became a citizeness of the world, independent and economically self-supporting. Henceforth she tramped the city streets, with all the world's news for sale at three cents a throw; wars and strikes and divorce scandals and Presidential messages; also, once in a while, a vivid paragraph about a Pell Street robbery, and the reporter quoting detective Bill Devoy of Second Branch that "sure— he knew who done it— he'd have that dog-gone Chink stick-up gent behind the bars in no time— y'bet!"

A DECEMBER night it was, with a hard, glittering snow coming down in gusts, and a bitter wind booming up from the East River; and men and women hurrying along, their breath frosty [Turn to page 139] Eliza had tramped the streets for several hours, and now with but a few papers left, she decided she needed a rest. So she sat down just inside the three-step vestibule of No. 179a, where she happened to stop, and melted so completely into the purple shadows that she was quite invisible to the club guests who arrived at intervals. Presently she dozed off, and it was her little hand stretched out palm up, that greeted Feng Tao as he walked into the vestibule and stopped to light a cigarette.

The crimson spurt of the match brought the little hand into vivid relief, made yet more startling by the fact that the rest of Eliza's body remained in darkness.

"Gee!" he muttered, and groped in his pocket for a coin.

It was not— though we would like to report it so— that he felt sorry for the sleeping child. Nor could he read the hand's mute, pitiful appeal. It was, simply a gambler's superstition; the first piece of money, chosen at random, and given to the first beggar.

So he dropped it into Eliza's palm— plonng!— without disturbing her even slumber; and he cursed wickedly a moment later when he noticed that it was not a quarter, as he had thought, but a bright, shining five dollar gold piece.

Instinctively he bent to take it back. Then he reconsidered. Couldn't be done. Would mean rotten bad luck. So he cursed again, rang the bell, and a minute later was on the other side of the iron door. Almost immediately his mind was swept clear of everything except his overwhelming craving— the game. Superstitious again, he made with right thumb and left second finger the sign of the Dragon and the Crab as a protection against evil luck, when, from the oblong room, he heard the symphony of rustling and shivering of paper money, the click of the dice, the staccato exclamations of the silken, yellow lad who presided over the roulette wheel, the sing-song voices of the Mah Jong players calling the queer, archaic score words of the mandarin game: "Po! Fa! Tch'ung!"

CAME the thud and stammer of the bamboo-and-ivory tile; the taint of gold and gain and greed; and, as he entered the room, the panorama of rapacious Chinese hands, rapacious Chinese faces. Then "Tien Ful" as Nag Hong Fah, the restaurant proprietor, triumphantly swept the board, the winner, and rose.

Feng Tao walked over to take his place, passing the other on the way.

"Lucky seat!" smiled Nag Hong Fah. "Perhaps you will win."

"Gotta win!" was Feng Tao's laconic reply.

There was bitter truth in his words. He had to win; or else, at least temporarily, look for honest work. For, on the day before, he had had a talk with Jake Rosenzweig, the Bowery shyster lawyer, who, with his political influence, his friends higher up, and his downright cleverness in court, had often kept Feng Tao out of jail.

"Feng," he had said, "if I were you, I'd lay low for a while— if you get me."

"I get yer all right, Mister. But how—?"

"A friend at headquarters passed me the tip."

"Straight tip?"

"Absolutely! Take a vacation!"

Leaving the lawyer's office, Feng Tao had met Bill Devoy; and there had been a triumphant, expectant gleam in the detective's brown Celtic eyes. So Feng Tao had decided to lie low for a while.

But this enforced rest came at an inopportune moment since he had less than two hundred dollars and since he was not the sort who stints himself on the Well— he had decided— there was always No. 179a. He'd clean up for once. He felt sure of it. And so he slipped into Nag Hong Fah's seat.

The other three players bowed to him respectfully. A strong man he was; a dangerous man; a killer; also, at times, useful in the mazed affairs of the Seven Azure Dragons. Chinese Benevolent-Association.

So they greeted him in Chinese, with stilted, old-world courtesy: "Ten thousand years, oh, wise and older brother!"

The "wise and older brother" thrust out his slightly prognathous jaw. "G'awn!" came his clipped, raucous, belligerent East Side jargon. "Cut out de Chinkie talk and let's play!"

So they played. "P'ing! Tchi! Kang Shang Hwa!"

The tiles clicked and thudded. Eager, yellow fingers curled like question marks, reached, took. Bland, expressionless faces studied combinations. Tough Mongol brains reckoned the laws of chance and average.

Click-click-click- click- clicketty -click— the chorus of the tiles— like the clicking of knitting-needles.

IT was not that luck was against Feng Tao. Mah Jong is neither exactly a matter of luck, nor exactly a matter of skill. Both luck and skill enter, of course, into the playing. But chiefly— and therein it resembles poker— is it a matter of psychology, of being able to read one's opponent's mind fully as much as his hand.

These men, rich burgesses of Pell Street, lived by the chilly, algebraic cunning of their brains, pitting their wits against each other and against the Sicilians and Russian Jews amongst whom they lived. As in their business dealings, so at the Mah Jong table, they knew when to withdraw and sell out with the least possible loss and when to speculate on a rising market.

Consider, on the other hand, Feng Tao's mode of life; the down-town streets where he pursued his sinister vocation; the corner saloons with their lurking side entrances where a man might slip in and out like a rabbit through the tunnels of its warren; the sudden, mysterious alleys cutting sideways into labyrinths of buildings; the jungle of steel and brick and concrete where he roamed like a jungle animal, a -beast of prey, leaping, pouncing. A jungle where instinct mattered and not deliberation, recklessness and not wise withdrawal when the odds seemed unfavorable.

And he played Mah Jong as he lived— with the logical inevitable result: he lost. He lost, steadily, game after game, until finally he rose with an oath.

"Wot's the damage?" he asked Yung Long, the wholesale grocer who was banker.

The latter figured up. "One hundred and eighty-seven dollars, oh, wise and older brother," he announced suavely.

"Awright," replied Feng Tao; "ye bums have cleaned me out." He took his money from his pocket and counted it. "More'n cleaned me out!" he continued. "Here!"—tossing the money on the table— "I'm five bucks shy."

"There is no hurry about paying the trifling debt," Yung Long assured him; "no hurry at all."

And with another player taking Feng Tao's place, they settled back to their philosophic mandarin game: "Ping! Cha Fu! Ho P'ai!"

Feng Tao left the oblong room and went into the lobby.

Cleaned out, he thought. Flat bust. Lost every cent to those buzzards. Ordinarily he would not have minded. But now, with Jake Rosenzweig passing him the tip to lay low, it would be weeks before he could get back to work—for he was pleased to call his method of earning a living by this honorable appellation.

He was not worried about his actual living expenses: his room rent was not due for another month, and he could chalk up food and cigarettes at Nag Hong Fah's Great Shanghai Chop Suey Palace.

BUT there was that five dollars which he was shy.

Should he borrow it? His shrewd instinct warned him not to. These people did not know what Jake Rosenzweig had told him. Usually, when he needed money, he took it, by bullying or by force. If, instead, he borrowed, Pell Street would speculate and wonder; leaky tongues would gossip. It would lessen the fear with which he was regarded, and he knew that once this fear was gone, his occupation was gone as well. For he relied on the others' dread as much as on his own brutish strength.

Of course, he could owe the money. Only five dollars— a mere nothing.

But then, though born in the gutters of New York, a child of its pulsing, teaming streets, he was a pure-bred Chinese; and while his brown derby, his raucous slang, his pretentious necktie, all representative of his acquired characteristics, told him to forget it, the inherited qualities of race told him that money lost in a game was a debt of honor; that not to pay meant a loss of face. He walked over to the window, raised the-curtain that darkened it, and looked out, trying to collect his thoughts.

THE snow had ceased coming down, and the river wind was extending a tattered cloud curtain across the purple vaulting of the night. Here and there it was cleft with  moonbeams— glittering, trembling fragments of light which somehow seemed to concentrate on a shiny drop of gold directly below him, on the other side of the window.

The drop of gold gleamed up like a cresset of orange flame. He looked close. Then he remembered. It was the five-dollar gold-piece which, fifteen minutes earlier he had dropped into the outstretched palm of the little ragged girl.

She was still fast asleep.

Click-clickety-click came the chorus of the Mah Jong tiles from the oblong room. Then the voice of Yung Long quoting purring Cantonese proverbs:

"It has also been remarked by a wise mandarin that the fool in a hurry drinks his tea with his chop-sticks. It takes brain and not brute strength, to play this game."

"How much did he lose?"

"A hundred and eighty-seven dollars. All he had in his pocket—and five dollars which he still owes."

"Talking about him," Feng Tao said to himself. His loss. His five dollars. Well— there it was, below the window— his five dollars. He had not meant to give it to the girl. Bad luck in taking it back? Why, he was cleaned out, flat bust. Couldn't have had any worse luck!

He was away from the lobby, out into the vestibule; bent quickly over the sleeping child; and then, just as he was about to touch the money, Eliza awakened. She, too, had been born and bred in New York's stony jungle. She, too, was keen in perceiving, as keen in acting.

At the same fraction of a second she saw the yellow gold-piece, the yellow face, the yellow hand, startlingly outlined in a moonbeam that cut through the dim, 'sullen night. Her eyes telegraphed to her brain, her brain to her muscles, and with the rapidity of a juggler the fingers of her right hand dropped the money into a mysterious and unfathomable hiding-place of her clothes, while the fingers of her left hand clutched, scratched, drew blood; while, still at the same fraction of a second, her lips bubbled unladylike words:

"Looka here, ye darned crook, wotya mean by... ?"

"Gimme dat money before I brain ye!"

"It's my money, ye dirty Chink!"

"No! Mine, ye dirty nigger!"

SO they cursed each other; using not the soft syllables of the South reminiscent of cotton fields and magnolia blossoms, nor the gliding singsong reminiscent of plum trees and painted Cantonese houseboats; but both using the clipped, raucous jargon of New York:

"Ouch!" as again her finger nails drew blood. "Darn yer black hide!"

"Get a move on, Chink, or I'll hoit ye good!"

"Here! Cut dat out!"

"Say!" Eliza's ludicrous threat, her small, plum-colored fists going like flails: "It's yerself for the undertaker if ever I swing on ye!"

"Hm!" Feng Tao's contemptuous grunt.

His hands were about to finish this business with a brutish wrench and twist. Then, all at once, hardly realizing himself what he was doing, his hands dropped to both sides. And he laughed.

"Hai! Hai! Hai!"— rumbling, enormous Asiatic laughter bloated his throat; rose free and loud and unrestained up through the night, up through the purple tracery of chimneystack and torn, flayed waste of bricks, up through the interlacing silhouette of the Elevated.

"Hai! Hai! Hayah! Hai!"— a laugh of amusement and mockery at the ridiculous situation: this little brat threatening him— him, the roughneck, the stick-up gent, the strong-arm guy— with physical violence. But a laugh, too, of respect. Why, he thought, this kid had spirit, spunk! Y'bet! And a flash zigzagged through clogged cells in his brain that, perhaps for the first time in his lawless career, here was one ready to fight him back, to give him blow for blow and curse for curse. For the first time! And she nothing but a little kid...  Gee!

"Hai! Hai! Hai!" came his gurgling laughter; and, the next second, Eliza's lips changed their grim determination to a curl of surprise, the surprise rounded to a curve of merriment. For she was African, blessed with her race's gorgeous sense of humor. So she, too, laughed.

Both laughed. Together. Rumbling, enormous Chinese laughter. High pitched, exaggerated African laughter. A crazy, grotesque symphony. Flinging its reckless gayety against the brooding pessimism of the streets; smearing a dab of light across the ragged black chunks of the night.

Finally exhaustion came. The laughter weakened, thinned, vanished altogether. They looked at each other, foolishly, conscious of that slight reaction of disappointment which follows too great, body-shaking mirth.

"Well...?" he said sheepishly, drying his eyes.

"Well...?" she echoed. Then she sat down; and, quite suddenly, her second African quality came up— her race's inability to bear a grudge.

"Mister," she asked haltingly, "do ye... do you need them five berries as badly as all that? Because if you do—" her hand invaded the hiding-place, came out with the gold-piece— "ye can have it!"

And then Feng Tao blushed; felt that he blushed; hated himself for blushing; relieved his feelings with a string of oaths, winding up with:

"G'wan! I was only foolin', kid!"— and he hoped, deep in his scarred, scabbed soul, that she might believe him; and if at this moment his best friend had told him that he was ashamed of himself, he would have cursed him for a liar.

He was silent. He lit a cigarette and sat down by her side.

"Move over a bit!" he commanded gruffly. "Don't hog all the room! Ain't ye got no manners? Say—who brung ye up anyway?"

"Nobody, I guess, Mister!"

THEY sat side by side. For many minutes in the vestibule of No. 179a, was a purring whispering, confidential duet of voices.

And— the end of the story?

The end is not yet.

Just the other day, the reporter of this tale overheard a conversation between Bill Devoy, detective of Second Branch, and Brian Neill in the back parlor of the latter's Bowery saloon. Devoy, taking an illegal nip of Irish whiskey, was commenting upon life in general and the Mongols in particular.

"Ye can never git below their yellow hides," he said. "Remember Feng Tao?"

"The stick-up artist?"

"The same."

"Gone and catched him at last, Bill?"

"No. He's workin' now."

"Sure. I know. Workin' with a blackjack."

"Wrong. Workin' for Yung Long, the grocer."

"Reformed?"

"Sorta."

"Well— if Feng Tao's reformed there's hope for the Divil himself! Wot's the matter, Bill? Goin' to settle down, is he, and marry and raise a family?"

"Marry? No. Raise a family? Well— yes!" Devoy grinned.

"Wotya givin' me?"

"He's asked Miss Rutter, the social settlement worker, just how to go about it— all accordin' to the law and proper and shipshape— so's to adopt a little girl."

"Some Chink orphan?"

"Wrong agin!" replied Devoy. "A little nigger girl."

"Jumpin' Moses!" exclaimed the saloonkeeper. "That must have been powerful whisky I've been givin' ye!"

"Willin' to wager?"

"Sure, Bill. Lay you odds, too. Five to one. In dollars."

"All right, Neill. Ye've gone and made a bet."

A HALF a year later, Bill Devoy collected from Brian Neill when, with pompous, legal documents duly signed before a slightly astonished judge and, later in the evening, Pell Street celebrating the event with firecrackers and strident, discordant Chinese music, Eliza declared proudly that hereafter she wished to be addressed as "Miss Eliza Feng Tao."

Of course, she explained, her dad was a "Chink"— and she was a "nigger." But, "y'bet, mister, they was both Americans— so there!"

________________

2: Skull Manor

J. Allan Dunn

1872-1941

Argosy  3 June 1933

Joseph Allan Elphinstone Dunn

Immensely prolific pulp writer, born in London, UK, but migrated to the USA aged 21, and travelled widely.

CLEMENT FORD did not believe in note books. Once, at the beginning of his career as a criminal investigator, he had lost a big case because he carried one. He had promptly forsworn that habit. His brain held the same quality that enables a chess expert to play a number of games simultaneously, to see scores of moves ahead and intuitively to recognize problems and divine solutions.

Now, as he sat in the uncomfortable accommodation train, rocking and jerking through the night, he mentally conned the features of this commission to which he had reluctantly pledged himself. Under stress from Arlington, lawyer for Lindley Ferguson, who was Ford's impending client, and also a man to whom Ford was indebted for several good connections, he had agreed to undertake the job. Even then, if it had not been for the other case which he had in hand, and the possibilities of finding some clues concerning it, Ford would have managed to excuse himself.

It happened that Tallapee, to which obscure and halt-forgotten Southern hamlet he was bound, was not very distant from either Savannah or Charleston. Clement Ford believed that in those cities he would get the evidence which he wanted and would thus clean up certain matters which were bothering both Federal and private finance. It would be a feather in Ford's cap and money in his pocket if he could land those criminals; and he figured that after he was through with Lindley Ferguson at Tallapee he could take up this matter. At least he would be ahead on both time and transportation.

The case at Tallapee was not one to his liking. It seemed that he had been hired to act as a ghost catcher. Lindley Ferguson, retired merchant, had bought the old place known as Cypress Manor, some nine miles out of Tallapee. It had been once the residence of a wealthy rice planter who had lost his slaves, and with them the source of his riches, after the close of the Civil War.

The place was said to be haunted, but Ferguson considered it all trickery on the part of the natives to scare him out. He felt that doubtless they resented a 'No'therner'' owning and living in the manor, but he was not the sort to submit tamely.

"He got the place cheaply enough," Arlington said to Ford. "I don't quite understand, however, why a man like Ferguson should purchase a place down there in a lonely locality. He cannot possibly have any friendly intercourse with neighbors there. His son and daughter are with him, but the son is inclined to be a bit wild. Ferguson may think to tame him down. The girl, on the other hand, is much too charming to be buried in such a locality. She will not have friends and certainly not suitors.

"I negotiated the purchase through a bank in Charleston which held the mortgage. He has lost a good deal of money lately, and so it may be economy. It can hardly be health.

"He is not the sort to take you much into his confidence, but he is willing to pay any reasonable fee to get at the bottom of the strange things that are happening at Cypress Manor. He bought it without telling either of the children about it. I know that. And he is a stubborn man— not apt to be superstitious."

"Scotch ancestry,'' said Clement Ford. "The Scotch all have a strain of superstition in their makeup. Well, I've said I would and I will. It shouldn't take long."

"I hope not," said the lawyer. ''Of course, one does not place much reliance in local gossip or in legends. The part of the community which is not black is made up largely of what are called ‘poor whites.’ Tallapee is a poverty-stricken sort of place. These people have all sorts of stories about the house and what happens at the old place.

"There have been killings in it and in its vicinity— many of them, and some recently, though none since Ferguson moved in. Naturally, we heard nothing of such matters while negotiations for the purchase were pending. One never does. But nobody will come close to it, not even the tradesmen from whom he buys supplies. They mutter about 'hants' and murder."

“Murder?" said Clement Ford. ''That makes it sound a bit more interesting."

That about completed the data he had mentally checked over.

The next stop was Tallapee. Ford roused himself and looked out the window at the almost invisible landscape. He could make out clumps of trees, and then it all seemed marshland, with stars now and then reflected in slough or pool.

Suddenly Ford straightened in his seat. There was something flying over the swamp; flying fast and low, a vague mass blocked against the stars. There were wide, outspread, motionless wings on which the thing soared; there was an outstretched neck, flexible and swaying from side to side as if the creature was in search of something; there were two green eyes that flamed in a head that looked like the head of a great turtle. The thing rose and fled north, vanishing into the night almost immediately.

Clement Ford had no nerves, he did not suffer from hallucinations, yet could only think that he had witnessed the flight of some primordial monster— a pterodactyl or flying lizard, perhaps.

Was it possible that such a creature had been preserved in this wild morass? No one knew the life of such cold-blooded creatures. A chance survivor could have but few enemies.— Or did such beasts breed here? There were alligators and crocodiles in the swamps, and those saurians were of ancient, unchanged types older than man.

Ford dismissed the absurd idea with an effort, telling himself there must be some flaw in the glass of the window, or that some atmospheric condition of the night had deceived him. Certainly this could hardly be a show put on for his benefit, for nobody knew that he was coming to Cypress Manor.

Nobody else in the coach seemed to have noticed anything strange. The conductor came in, lantern over his arm, announcing "Tallapee". Ford got out, and saw that the little depot was dark. He looked about for some sort of conveyance, and at last saw a ramshackle flivver from which a voice hailed him.

"Taxi, suh?"

Ford could not see much of his driver, save that he had a sad voice, wore a goatee and mustachios, that his Adam's apple was almost as prominent as his nose. ''I want to go to Cypress Manor,'' Ford told him.

The man made no attempt to let in his clutch. ''You-all don't want to go theah. Not if you're in your right mind," he said. "An' I shuah don't want to take you theah. No, suh! I kin use money, but I wouldn't take you 'cross Bloody Crick fo' a hundred dollahs."'

“Well, take me as far as this side of Bloody Creek, then," said Ford. "It's not an inviting name, but so long as it's not my blood running in it, I'm not worried. I suppose I can manage to walk the rest of the way. Five dollars to take me to Bloody Creek. How's that?"

“The crick's well named, I reckon," said his driver. ''Yes, suh. You know, theah's bin three dead men found round heah in the last six months. Found and lost agen! All of 'em strangled. They was blacks, but they was all powerful men. Folks who saw them gave the alarm, but when they went back, the corpses was gone every time. An’ theah's a Something lives in the marsh an’ flies by night. It'll take ten dollahs, suh— not five—to take you within ha'f a mile of Skull Manor."

“It's Cypress Manor I want,'' said Ford.

"Cypress Manor it used to be. After the massacree, the Shadleighs took the two stone balls that used to set on top the gate posts and had them kyarved oveh into skulls. I hear the new owner's had 'em took off, but we-all know why there were put theah."

"I'll make it ten dollars if you'll tell me what you know of the place as we go out," said Ford.

"I'll risk it,'' said the man, and it was clear that he actually felt he ran a risk.

Remembering his mention of the "something" that flew by night and lived in the marsh, Ford did not altogether blame him. Ford realized that he himself had seen that Something, and the sight had been disconcerting to him.

The road to Skull Manor was not bad. It had been treated with tar, and the surface was in good condition.

"It ain't much traveled," the driver explained. ‘You'll see why, when I'm through. I reckon you-all are a No'the'neh. You don't want to git huht at anything I say."

"I'm a Westerner,'' said Ford. "Born in Idaho. Go ahead."

It was a weird tale, set back almost seventy years. A party of young Carolinan bloods had gathered at the Shadleigh house, Cypress Manor— boys, most of the guests were. A farewell dinner, stag, and all in uniform.

Tomorrow they would give the Yanks a riding lesson and score it with lead and steel, for Sherman was on the coast then.

At a few minutes after midnight, with the youngsters flushed with wine and hope of victory, there came a galloping horseman, shouting a warning that was too late. Then twenty gallants of Shadleigh's Troop, named but never to see action, were butchered— so the Southerner bluntly described it— in the ballroom of Cypress Manor where the banquet had been served. Even the horseman who had tried to warn them was caught and hanged. Servants were questioned. The last flames of a dying cause went out.

Ford asked if there were any Shadleighs still living.

"Just the one, I reckon. Judah Shadleigh. Lives right heah in Tallapee. He was suah hopping mad when he found that the place was sold. You see, the bank fo'closed on it long ago, but no one figured it 'ud ever be sold, speshully to a No'the'neh. Too many strange things goin’ on there. Dead blacks. Ghost lights by the tree where they had hung the man who tried to warn the officers— Spy Tree, they call it.— You-all betteh not go theah, suh. They ain't got any servants; can't git none. They won't stay themselves long— not unless they got buried theah. That's a Death House, Skull Manor, suh."'

Ford had an inspiration. It was possible, of course, that this driver was pulling his leg; enjoying himself at the stranger's expense.

"I'm not easily frightened,'' he said. I'm getting good pay. I'm the new butler. I'll head the new staff of servants."

The other grunted.

They drew up at the near end of a bridge beneath which black water flowed silently.

"This-all is Bloody Creek,'' said the driver. "The house ain't mo' than a quarteh-mile. I see theah's a light. Theah ain't no telephone, an' the folks ain't got a car. When you git ready to leave you'll have to walk, unless you run," he ended.

He backed, turning with almost incredible dispatch. With Ford's ten dollar bill thrust into the pocket of his vest, he drove back to Tallapee faster than he had come, as if he feared that that Something in the marsh would swoop down upon him.

Ford touched the automatic in his shoulder holster before he picked up his two grips and started to walk to the house. There were huge oaks that made an avenue, Spanish moss draping them. There was the scent of wild jessamine in the air and the plaintive song of a night bird. The affair of Cypress Manor— Skull Manor— promised to be interesting after all.

ii

THE TALL CLOCK IN THE CASE of polished mahogany which looked like a coffin set on end whirred and struck the witching hour, when churchyards yawn and graves give up their dead!

Margaret Ferguson looked at her stepfather with the quotation in her mind, and saw that it was in his as well. Lindley Ferguson was lean and old— gray where he was not bald— an austere and selfish man, bound with prejudice. He could be cruel, unjust and inflexible.

The girl was more than merely bonny, with her red-gold hair, her straight, short nose, her sweet lips and her supple, rounded figure. Her eyes were the color of cornflowers, but they were dull with a fear now as she fought valiantly to shake off a terror that, as yet, had nothing tangible about it, but that was affecting her with a moral chill as depressing, as real, as if the temperature of the room was physically numbing her.

It was a fear hard to combat. Ferguson felt it and thrust it from him, refusing to recognize it, sustained by the heat of his temper. He paced up and down the great, panelled chamber, once a ballroom. On one fatal night it had been a banquet hall, a banquet hall that was turned into a shambles.

Even yet there were bullet marks in the portraits of men and women who looked with hard, painted eyes at the invader. The bank had held a mortgage on all the furnishings; and so the house had been furnished up by decorators from Charleston, since no native, white or black, could be hired to enter it.

It was spring. Flowers bloomed outside in the garden that had run riot from neglect, but it was cold enough for a fire after dark. There was no heating system in the ancient manor.

The moonlight was full now, with a sky driven clear of vapors by a steady wind that moaned in the throat of the chimney, and reached down to fluff the embers, fan the logs, send white ash swirling against the firescreen.

In his pacing, Ferguson always stood for a moment before the fire, looking out of the tall windows. The room was on the second floor, and it had an outside "gallery." Beyond that the tree tops swayed. The wind lifted the enormous boughs of gigantic live oaks that were draped with long banners of moss. Ivy pattered with ghostly fingers against the panes. The jittering hoot of a screech-owl penetrated to the room.

"Confound your brother!" exclaimed Ferguson. "He has no right to be out at this hour. I shouldn't have let him get that horse. I thought it would amuse him and keep him in shape, but now he uses it to go gallivanting about with this white-trash Tulliver girl."

"She's hardly that," answered Margaret. ''I've talked with her, and she's really very nice. I could be very friendly with her."

Ferguson glared at the girl, but she was not in the least afraid of him, though she usually avoided anything that led up to an outburst. As she talked, she forgot for a moment— at least it did not possess her so utterly— her dread of what might happen within the next few minutes.

"It was the Tulliver chit that told you of this ridiculous story of the phantom rider and set you to dreaming of it."

"I was not dreaming," she said. "Gerald had heard it before, and he had mentioned it to me. Mildred Tulliver repeated it, more fully; that was all. Gerald had not come home last night, and I was reading. I wanted to say good night to him.— When I heard the hoofs, I did not think even of the story. I thought it was Gerald. I went to my window to look out. It was moonlight, like it is now, and the road was empty. But the hoofs came on, went past, and then they stopped and I saw a strange blue ball of fire rising by the tree."

"Bah!" snapped Ferguson. "A hoax, I tell you."

"I looked at my watch," said the girl steadily. "I set this clock by it when I wound it. It was eleven minutes after twelve... "

"It's that now,'' said Ferguson. ''Let's see if they..."

The words faltered on his suddenly dry lips. In the silence, save for the ticking of the clock, they heard the sound of a galloping steed; a horse stretched to its limit, striving, faltering.

"Gerald!" muttered Ferguson.

He opened the window and strode out on the gallery. The girl caught up a wrap and followed him. The chill of the middle night clutched at them, though the air was fragrant with magnolia, with the lilies growing rank in the garden, with wild jessamine. The moon rode high and there were few shadows.

The frenzied clatter of hoofs passed, died away. Then, beyond the house, a bluish-lavender light appeared close to the ground, rising in a ball of spectral flame beside a tall, gaunt sycamore. It was from this tree, so the story ran, that the man who had tried to warn the Southern officers of the approach of northern cavalry had been hanged as a spy because he was not in uniform. And it was to this tree that a Negro had been found a-swing only six weeks ago.

The light vanished and the night was silent again, save for the swish of bending boughs. The girl shivered. She had told herself a hundred times that she did not believe in ghosts, neither would she believe in this one, nor in the tale which Mildred Tulliver swore was true— that whenever the phantom rider was heard, Death came to Cypress Manor— Skull Manor.

Margaret thought now of the hideous emblems which Ferguson had removed from the gateposts. At first the newcomers had not realized what these objects were, for vines and overgrown the granite craniums. Then they had realized, and the girl's interest in the old garden and the picturesque, stately house, had faded.

"Some damn fool with a Roman candle," said Ferguson. "Fireworks, that's all. Stage effects. Hello! What's that?— Parkin's flivver horn. He'll be bringing Clement Ford. I wasn't sure what day he would come. This is the time he'd get here on that narrow-gauge connection at the junction. Parkin won't come over the bridge. Your brother should be here to help the man with his grips."

The horn sounded again. "Who is Clement Ford? You didn't tell me you were expecting anybody," the girl remarked.

Her stepfather's lack of consideration nettled her. After all, she was the housekeeper. She did everything about the place, except the rougher chores that Gerald handled. They were practically camping in the big house; and they had no servants, for none would stop there.

"He's a detective, a ghost-catcher,'’ Ferguson replied. "A man I've sent for to find out who's at the bottom of all this deviltry. We'll punish them— jail them. I wired Arlington to get me the best man available. If there are others who—"

He stopped abruptly and went back inside.

"I  wish you'd go down and meet him when he arrives, my dear," he said in more kindly fashion. "I'll change out of this dressing-gown."

She knew her stepfather's dignity, his dislike of ridicule, of anything hat might belittle him. She did not mind meeting the detective. She had vague ideas of the ways of such operatives, and she hoped he would not be uncouth. A big man with heavy boots and a gun, she supposed— a sort of superior watchman.

When the knock came and she opened the door the two stood staring at each other in wonderment. The situation was not unlike a momentary spell. Clement Ford saw her in the blue gown that matched her eyes— eyes which did not hold fear for the moment. The wide stairway was behind her, leading, double-winged, to a Palladian window with vines draped across it against the moonlight. A mocking bird throbbed out melody, and he told himself he was glad that he had come. So was Margaret, for this man emanated a vigor that was already dispelling her own apprehensions. The top of her head would come to just about the level of his broad shoulders, she told herself. He was neither young nor old, and did not in any way suggest middle-age.  A man in a very excellent prime, he was slim and muscular, and he appeared very resourceful and dependable.

She liked his smile, the grip of his hand as she put out her own small one with an involuntary warmth of greeting. She had not expected to greet a detective like that. He was not exactly handsome. Aquiline features and dark complexion, not unlike an Indian or a frontiersman. There was a scar high on one cheekbone. He looked like a warrior. His dark eyes were understanding.

She felt herself blushing as she realized what a close inventory she had made of him. It had taken but a moment— just time enough to photograph his appearance through the lenses of her eyes, but she knew that image would never fade. She saw something in his look that called to something deep within her, and returned it.

He picked up the grips he had set down and closed the door behind him as Ferguson, wearing a dinner-jacket, appeared at the head of the stairs.

"I'll talk with Mr. Ford upstairs," he said, "if you'll see that his room is ready, Margaret."

She stepped aside for Ford to pass, but instead he stooped and took up the grips. "Do these go up or down?" he asked.

Ferguson would have let her struggled with them, but Ford carried them to the third floor and left them outside the door which she indicated.

"I'll take them in when I've talked with your father," he said with a smile.

Something brought a correction out of her. "My stepfather," For she did not want this man to think of Ferguson as her father. There was none of his blood in her. And Clement Ford was glad to hear it.

iii

"SOMEONE," FERGUSON WAS SAYING, "out of malicious mischief or tor some unknown motive, is destroying the value of this property; frightening servants and otherwise trying to render it uninhabitable by playing a lot of Hallowe'en pranks. I can get no local protection; there is only a doddering fool for constable at Tallapee, and he, like the rest, pretends to believe that the place is haunted. Perhaps they all resent the fact that I— a Northerner— have bought it. But they'll not drive me away! I came down here for a purpose, and I mean to accomplish it."

"Might I know the nature of that purpose? It may help to establish a motive and lead to the perpetrators," asked Ford.

"It is a personal matter; it could have no bearing. It is something entirely unknown to anyone around here."

Ferguson spoke decisively and a little angrily, Ford fancied, as if he had not meant to mention that detail. Ford made no further comment. He did not like this man, but he had accepted the case, and it had challenged him. He remembered and endorsed what Arlington had said to him, that ''this was no place for such a girl as Ferguson's stepdaughter."

Ford referred to the lawyer now, stating that already he had learned something of the affair from him, and that some local color had been supplied by the garrulous jitney driver on the way from the station.

“The situation is damnable!" Ferguson was explosive. "Do you realize that they will make no deliveries from Tallapee stores? That I am forced to order from Charleston or Savannah, and to pay for motor-van delivery? My daughter is obliged to cook, to attend to the domestic offices, while I must wait upon myself..."

Clement Ford surveyed the room as Ferguson went on with his tirade. It was here that the officers had been surprised and slain.

Shaded oil lamps threw curious shadows mingling with those from the firelight, shifting, changing. It would not be hard for a sensitive person, Ford told himself, to imagine that the unquiet ghosts of the young officers, killed out of battle and before their prime, cheated of life— cheated even in death of any glory— might gather here.

He noticed that the brass and Georgian mahogany picked up the lights, but nothing could make the place cosy. It was too vast. Tall screens had been set up here and there to make the room more intimate, but they only seemed to suggest that phantoms stood behind them, listening, brooding, plotting.

"It does not seem reasonable,'' he said, ''that the ghost of a Southerner should warn a Yankee interloper, especially since Yankees were responsible for the fact that he and his friends had become ghosts."'

"It's not reasonable," Ferguson replied. "It's humbug. There are material means back of all this mummery. I am sure of it."

Ford nodded. That was his own belief, but he was here to make beliefs into certainties.

He looked closely at Ferguson, wondering why he had been secretive about his purpose for coming here, wondering if Ferguson was unable to name the motive that was at the bottom of the sounds, the mysterious lights or if he really knew more than he told. Was there some reason stronger than the ones he advanced concerning inconvenience and annoyance.

"You say you saw the light, as your daughter did?— Only she saw it twice— Can you show me the tree where the phenomenon occurred?"

"Certainly. A sycamore. I'll warrant you'll find some trace of fireworks about it, unless they've been smart enough to be very thorough in keeping their tracks hidden."

They went out on the gallery. Ford was considering the idea of a local charivari, performed by reviving old legends; a form of annoyance growing out of local spite, and often exhibited in the North as well as in the South. But that idea did not cover the dead men which the taximan had talked about. Suppose, however, that that fellow, Parkin, being a native, enjoyed spoofing a "foreigner" like himself...

Suddenly Ferguson's left hand vised down on Ford's elbow. Ford shook it off. He had seen the same thing, and he did not like to be hampered at such moments. A vague blotch had glided over the wall from the garden and into the road.

The wall was of brick, perhaps four feet high, with a stone coping. Creepers mantled it. The Thing had emerged from shrubbery, slithered across, was gone. Instinctively, Ford had drawn the gun from his shoulder holster; but he had no chance to even aim it. Ferguson had spoiled that.

There was a light in the road now— bluish, rising swiftly to a height of ten, twenty, thirty feet above their heads. Vanished!

Then they saw what seemed to be a cloaked human figure, head bent. It wore a wide-brimmed, steeple-crowned hat; hurrying fast, the wind fluttering its ample garment. It was not a phantom, though the road had been empty the moment before.

Ford saw the foreshortened shadow flung by the figure in the light of the brilliant moon, a shadow that trailed along behind the figure of a dog. The ascending blue light might have been a conjuror's trick of distraction, of course, and the cloaked man could have remained bent, behind the wall until the moment for it to appear, miraculously in the open.

"Stop him!" rasped Ferguson. "Shoot, man!"

"No," Ford answered sternly. He was not there to shoot merely because things were mysterious.

He ran out of the room, Ferguson close behind him. ‘The girl appeared, looking wide-eyed at Ford's gun. He ordered her to stay indoors. He was taking charge, she understood, which was a relief.

The two men hurried to the roadway. Here was something visible, tangible; something that could be overtaken and questioned. But when they rushed through the gates, the road was empty. The man had been going away from Tallapee.

The oaks ended in front of the house and the highway, then ran along what was practically a levee between swamps and desolate, treacherous, trackless fens, with occasional low islands that sheltered deer, quail, wildcats, and alligators. Only a few of the wisest and bravest of the blacks knew the narrow channels of the wilderness maze, lined with reeds, choked with lotus and water hyacinth.

There was a slight rise in the road, over which the cloaked figure must have disappeared. When Ford reached it, with Ferguson panting at his heels, there was no such person. Nor was there any place for a man to hide, unless he had deliberately leaped into the swamp.

Instead, another man came plodding along toward them. He wore a canvas jacket and tightly buttoned trousers tucked into knee-high boots that left wet imprints on the road. His hat was nondescript. He carried a long fish-spear and some coils of netting. His face was bearded, and both sly and surly. His nose was like a beak: he had heavy eyebrows and glittering eyes.

"Anybody pass you?" hailed Ferguson. "A man in a cloak, with a high hat?"

The other looked at him, spat on the ground. ''No. Folks don't travel this road unless they have to, Yank!"

He spat again. The insult was obvious. Then he plodded on toward Tallapee, over Bloody Creek.

"That's the way they treat me!" cried Ferguson hotly. "No respect— no decency!"

Ford had gone on toward the swamp. Fifty or sixty feet away, there was a spot that gleamed strangely under the moon. He took out a flashlight, and the dark wetness took on vivid and sinister color beneath the ray of the torch. It was a puddle of viscous liquid that steamed in the cool night air; a pool of clotting blood that not long ago had coursed through living veins.

Ford kneeled beside it, Ferguson gasping by him. ''For God's sake! Is that blood, man?" he asked. here was a change in his voice. It had lost all its former confidence. Ferguson was suddenly and intensely afraid. ''How did it get there?" he panted. "Where is the body?"

"It might be in the swamp," said Ford. "It might be in the belly of an alligator. This blood is well clotted. Several hours spilled, perhaps.— And there's enough of it to have come from a horse, rather than a man."

His face was grim as he soaked a corner of his handkerchief in the ghastly stuff and wrapped the rest of the cloth about the saturation.

He sprayed the light of the torch about, but found nothing else of importance save the place, some distance off, where the man with the nets had emerged from the swamp. He must have seen that blood, then!— But now he was out of sight. Ford did not expect to see him, even though he ran to the bridge. Nor did he.

Bloody Creek margined the swamp. Beyond it, the land was thick with brush and overgrown with pine and chinquapin.

Ferguson was waiting for him at the gates, his face white and drawn, when Ford at last turned back. ''What now?" he asked hoarsely. "Ghosts don't bleed, Ford."

Ford shook his head, and again he wondered whether Ferguson did not have a very definite idea of why these things were happening, an idea that went deeper than the mere malice of natives.

"I'm staying!'' Ferguson muttered, his lower jaw thrust out in the moonlight. '"They shan't drive me out!— You'll stay with me, Ford, until—" He stopped jerkily.

Ford could not state definitely that Ferguson was cowardly, but he believed that Ferguson was afraid that something was going to happen to him, that something might interfere with certain plans which he had made.

"There is no use in mentioning the blood to your daughter." Ford said. "I want to analyze it."

“Of course I won't mention it!'' snapped Ferguson. His brittle politeness was giving way to irritation. ''But I wish my boy was back. I don't like the company he keeps.— "Trash! Poor in blood and pocket. They are trying to find out from him why I—"

Again he broke off abruptly, looking slyly at Ford. ''I need a drink." he finished. "Thank God I've got some decent liquor! ‘They don't sell any down here.— Mule whiskey.— And they jail you in this damned State for having alcohol in your possession."

Ford felt that he could stand a drink himself. He was not ghost hunting now; not laying unquiet phantoms by finding out the trickery used to produce them. This looked like murder; and more and more he began to believe in the taxi driver's story of the three strangled bodies, each a corpus delicti that had disappeared.

“I'll follow you in," Ford said, for he wanted to look at the place where they had seen the dark object scuttle over the wall.

It was not at all impossible that this whole business had been staged by one man, he felt— an effect not unlike the mysterious disappearances and reappearances of a stage magician. A clever series of illusions.

The mysterious rising light provided excellent distraction. That could have been accomplished by means of a cord suspended from a tree. Some chemical that burned with a ghastly glow, that would burn and leave practically no trace. Ferguson's idea about the Roman candle was not at all ridiculous.— The cloaked man who disappeared might have been the man in the canvas jacket, of course, perhaps with a false beard. And the spilled blood, already half congealed, might have been carried under the cloak in some container like a rubber bag and kept at animal heat so that it would steam when it came into contact with the colder air. The cloak might easily have been sunk in the marsh, together with the steeple-shaped hat. All done swiftly and surely.

That theory did not do away with the blood, however— with the fact that some human's or animal's life had been taken.

Ford used his flash torch again, and found broken twigs and vines. Close to the wall, too, he discovered imprints in the soft soil; and as he gazed at them he felt his scalp tingling. His hair seemed to rise. They were not human foot marks; they were the spoor of something far more startling and horrible—  huge, webbed dragon-like impressions showing great claws.

Involuntarily, he looked up, half expecting to see the strange monster that he had viewed from the train window; the Something that lived in the marsh and flew by night. But there was no shape against the stars— no green eyes glaring, searching.

Far out in the marsh a bull alligator bellowed. There was no other sound.

Ford went inside and closed the door, which Ferguson had evidently left ajar. The girl was not in sight. Thoughtfully, he set bolts and chains, for he felt sure that there was very real, if mysterious, peril close at hand. The phantom hoofbeats might not bring about any supernatural death with their warning, but there was death in the wind. Of that he was certain. It hovered over Skull Manor, even as the Something had hovered over the swamp.

He went upstairs, glancing in at the ballroom as he passed. It was empty. Ferguson was taking his drink elsewhere. He was the sort who tippled by himself, Ford fancied; one of those men who have secret vices behind the severe exteriors which they show to the world. Not a very humane man, Lindley Ferguson. Gerald, his son, was his own flesh and blood, but the father did not seem to be greatly worried about his safety. Not so much, in fact, as Ford was beginning to be.

Ford changed into pajamas and lit a pipe. The girl had prepared his bed, turning down the sheet; and it must be she who had placed the wisteria in a tall vase. But Ford was not ready to go to bed just yet. First he set up certain apparatus. He meant to make a blood test, and later to take a cast of the webbed imprints.

iv

FORD AWAKENED TO THE SHARP clatter of horse's hoofs. The drumming was very distinct. The sun shone redly into his room as he leaped out of bed and ran to the open window. This was no phantom steed, though it was a riderless one, distressed, lathered, slackening at the gate.

Ford stepped into slippers, flung on a dressing gown, slid his gun into a side pocket. Ferguson met him on the landing, his face twisted, lined. He smelled of whiskey, and there was more of a hint of it in his speech. Fear had prevented him from becoming maudlin, but he had plainly been drinking heavily. Perhaps to bolster a courage he now needed.

"It's Gerald's horse!" he said. "It's my boy's. I know it."

The animal proved to be a bay mare with three white stockings. Ford soothed it, led it to a stable in the rear of the house, Ferguson following.

Now, for the first time, Ford saw the tumbledown buildings which had once been part of the old plantation. He saw that there was a separate two-storied erection connected with the main dwelling at the rear by a short covered bridge. That would be the kitchen, a common enough arrangement in the South, and a sensible one, to keep out heat and smells of cooking.

He put the horse in a stall, saw that it had a little water and fresh hay. It could drink more water, and could be given some grain when it cooled off. There was no sense in foundering the brute.

"Gerald was a good rider," said Ferguson, who staggered slightly. "He would not have been thrown— unless he was—"

"Drunk" was the word held back, Ford thought. There was a look of guilt, of remorse, in Ferguson's face. The boy was said to be wild. Did Ferguson, conscious of being not entirely sober, and seeking to cover it, blame himself for what might have happened?

Ford did not tell him of the red streak that had come off the horse's mane to his hand, the blood which he had wiped off on a wisp of hay. Ferguson's face was seamed with grief. "'They got him!" he said. "They got my boy!"

"Who got him? Why did they get him?" Ford demanded. "Look here, Ferguson, you're holding back on me. There's some devilish secret here, and you've got an inkling of it.— Out with it! Or I throw up this case."

Ferguson clutched at him. Even as he spoke, Ford knew that he had no intention of leaving Margaret Ferguson in this danger, but he wanted to bluff her stepfather into an admission he believed the other could make.

Ferguson shook his head. His eyes were slightly vacuous, but he was striving to clear his head. His stiffness had now departed. "Ford," he said, ''do you believe that men who have been slain violently can protect themselves, that they can take vengeance?"

Perhaps by material means. Not otherwise. What are you driving at?”

"Ford, would you, think me mad if I told you I had seen a fearful sight over the marsh— a flying monster? Aye— wi' a long neck!"

In his excitement, the stimulation of liquor, Ferguson was speaking with a burr which he must have sloughed off in his youth. It had now recurred. ''I didna speak of it, mind ye," he went on, ''to Gerald or to Maggie. But I saw it, Ford. I'll sweer I saw it— hovering o'er the marsh."

It was not hard to guess why he had not spoken of it. Ferguson had not been sure whether or not the flying beast was part of a delirium.

"Then there's the bluid, the pool we found in the road, my boy!"

"That wasn't your boy's blood," said Ford. "It wasn't even human blood. I'm not quite sure whether it belonged to sheep, horse or cow. I'm going to get to the bottom of this, though. As for the thing you saw flying, I saw it myself. I don't know what it is, but I intend to find that out, also. Now..."

A cry sounded from the house, a shrill call of horror and distress. Ford left Ferguson far behind as, three steps at a time he took the treads to the second floor.

Margaret Ford stood in her doorway, silk negligee over silken pajamas. She shrank against the woodwork, hands clutching as it they would sink into the wood, her lips colorless and parted. She stared at the stairway to the third floor.

She saw Ford, gun in hand, and tried to smile. Then she seemed to relax, and was obviously struggling to control herself. "What was it?" he asked. ''What did you see ?"

"Nothing. Nothing. That was what made it so terrible. I was going up to Gerald's room to see if he was back, when I heard the footsteps— coming down the stairs towards me. Closer— and nobody there to make them. They came on down to the bottom and stopped. I thought I was going to faint, but I screamed— and you came."

Ferguson was mounting the stairs now, frowning, intent upon maintaining his own prestige.

The girl called to him. ''Did Gerald come home ?"' she asked. "Did he? We heard the warning twice. The hoofbeats— and now, on the stairs—"

Ferguson pulled himself together. "Nonsense!" he said. "Nerves, my dear. No one in the house but us. Gerald isn't home yet. When he comes I'll give him a piece of my mind. You get dressed and we'll have breakfast."

Ford gave him credit for that. The man was shaken. His step-daughter tiptoed over to him to kiss him, and drew back. ''You've been drinking!"

Ford knew that his guess about Ferguson's hidden vice was correct.

"Something is wrong," she went on. "It's Gerald! He wouldn't stay away like this and leave me in this horrible, haunted house."

"Now, now! We'll look him up after breakfast, my dear. You're overstrung. Gerald has probably been playing cards."

"I'll look for him myself!" she said. ''Will you help me, Mr. Ford?"

"I surely will," he assured her.

She checked a sob, caught in her underlip. ''Then I'll get dressed— and get breakfast," she said. She managed a smile.

Ford dressed also. Ferguson, he imagined, was going to have another drink. Something in the moral fiber of the man seemed to have dissolved. Normally, he was the sort who would never ask another man if he believed in the vengeance of the dead. But he was waiting in the garden when Ford went down, and they went up the road together.

There was a light mist that still held the sun, reddened its rays but was fast disappearing.

FERGUSON said nothing as they went beyond the rise and on to where they had found the pool of blood that was not a man's blood. Obviously, it had been placed there as a warning.

There was no trace of it now on the hard surface of the road. Not the slightest evidence. Ford had meant to collect more of it for a certain analysis he wanted to make. If he could be certain that it was that of any definite animal, mule or horse or cow, it might later link up. Now, like the bodies which Parkin, the taxi driver, had spoken of, it had vanished.

Nor could he see anything at the sycamore. He might be able to with a ladder, but it would have to be a tall one, for the first boughs were high up. For a moment Ford doubted that he would make any discovery even if he climbed. A prepared string, treated with inflammable chemicals, could have been pitched over the branch...

The sun had caught the web of the fog and cleared it away. The morning was suddenly bright and clear. Plover wheeled and dipped over the reedy pools, the air held the faint scent of lotus blended with the reef of fenland. Ford heard fish crows squawking. Far out, buzzards were circling, settling down.

"Let's go back to the house,'' said Ferguson heavily. He seemed to have aged overnight. His footsteps dragged and he muttered to himself.

" 'Les revenants,' " he said in a harsh whisper. ''Those ghostly ones who return. They are dead— dead— This is my house. I have bought it; all that is in it. It is mine!"

The girl was in the garden gathering flowers for the house. She called gaily to them, all trouble gone from face and voice.

"Gerald is back,'' she said. ''I went to the barn, and his mare is there. It's been attended to. He's come and gone again. Yesterday he said he was going after bass this morning.— Breakfast is ready; the waffles are mixed and ready for the iron. I hope you are as hungry as I am."

"It would be just like the thoughtless loon to do that," said Ferguson, pressing Ford's arm.

Ford agreed with him. There was no use in telling the girl about the way the horse had come home. Even Ferguson did not know about the bloody mane. Ford managed to make a good breakfast and so did the girl, but Ferguson touched nothing but a scrap of toast and some black coffee.

He got up before they had finished and went upstairs to the second floor. Ford insisted upon helping with the dishes, and they took them to the outside kitchen, where Margaret invested him with a long bib-apron of striped canvas, such as butlers use when cleaning silver.

She chatted, carefree now; Ford learned that Gerald was the son of Ferguson by an earlier marriage. He had been seven years old when Ferguson married her own mother, a widow, when Margaret herself had been a child of four. The girl praised Gerald as generous and merry; a good sportsman with a love of life.

"He had nothing mean about him," she declared. "But I think his father rides him with too heavy a curb."

They carried the things back to the house, and Ford began to set them away while she arranged the flowers. For a brief while there was no taint about the place. Ford was a man and she a girl, and they liked each other.

A bell jangled in the room, rung by a wire from the front door. The girl's face blanched as she looked at Ford, one hand to her heart.

"No one has ever done that,'' she said. "No one has come here since we arrived."

"It's good to know there's somebody who isn't afraid of the place,"' Ford said lightly. ''I'll go."

"No, I'll go," she said. "I mustn't be silly. I'm letting the spooks stampede me."

"No," Ford insisted.

His stern regard checked her. She saw purpose on his face that banished her late lightness. His grim features and his eyes recalled to her the reason that had brought him there. "Stay here, right where you are," he ordered her, and she nodded.

Ford went swiftly, and just as he was, in the long apron. First however, he slid his gun into his hip pocket so that the apron covered the holster. He had not used the gun yet, but he had a strong premonition, as he went to answer that harsh summons, that it would not be long before he did. That jangling bell seemed a signal, a call to arms.

Ferguson called down from the landing. He had put on his brocaded dressing gown, and Ford saw that he held a gun in one hand, close to his side. In the other was a half-emptied glass.

Ford saw that someone was trying to peer through the leaded lozenges of glass in the side-windows of the door. The light was not good for such spying, but the furtiveness of the act had an unpleasant note. He raised his voice to Ferguson.

“I'll go, sir,"' he called up, and motioned the master of the house away. Ferguson disappeared, and Ford opened the door. He realized that in that apron he looked very much like one of the upper servants. Then he remembered the happy chance that had prompted him to tell Parkin— gossiping Parkin, the taxi driver— that he was the new butler.

THE MAN before the door looked like an ancient, unpreened crow. His nose thrust out from his face like a great beak— the heavy, killing beak of a bird of prey. It was veined with blue. His eyes had unnaturally large pupils, their jetty, glittering black ringed with yellow irises. His mouth was a streak of avidity, of cruelty; his shiny, rusty black clothes fitted loosely, and resembled nothing so much as ruffled plumage. His very voice was a croak as he stood there, huddled yet not cringing.

He had been riding, it seemed, and his gray horse stood three-legged at the gate, a rack of bones. The man was fantastic, unreal. His eyes held a latent madness.

"My name is Shadleigh," he said. ''Judah Shadleigh. The only Shadleigh— living."

He paused with a chuckle. "'I am here to see Lindley Ferguson. — Who the devil are you?"

His last words were suddenly and fiercely aggressive. They came as if a great snapping turtle had suddenly attacked. "I'm the butler, sir," said Ford. "I will ask Mr. Ferguson if he wishes to see you."

He ushered the only living Shadleigh into the front parlor, which he himself saw for the first time— panelled, hung with pictures, on one wall a carved Georgian fireplace, and some formal furniture. He saw that Judah Shadleigh seemed somehow deformed, slightly lame; a spine not quite straight, and shoulders over high. Yet he was active enough. Ford left him cocking a sardonic eye at a portrait.

“I saw him ride up,'' said Ferguson. ''Yes, I'll see him— Shadleigh is he? Well, he's not master here. None of the Shadleighs or their kin. You said you were the butler? Good! Good! One never knows.— You've got your gun. Stay back of that screen while he's here, will you? Behind it there's a door you can pretend to open and close. You can seem to go through it. It leads to a service landing and stairs. He'll know that, and he'll think you're gone. You can watch between the leaves of the screen."

Ferguson took another drink, this time neat, as Ford went to usher Shadleigh upstairs. Ford could hear the clink of bottle and glass. Ford passed on behind the screen, opened and closed the door. Looking out from a crack in the screen, he noticed that the pistol was in Ferguson's pocket.

Ferguson received his visitor standing, nor did he invite him to sit down. That did not disconcert the other.

"I, suh," said Shadleigh, "am the only surviving membeh of the family that built this house. Not of the direct branch, fo' most of that was slaughtered, so far as the men were concerned— either on the fields of battle or in this very chamber...

“To me this place is hallowed ground. Right heah, the men of my blood fought valiantly against those they deemed marauders, suh. The spirits of the dead dwell heah. You were ill-advised to purchase it. I am not a rich man, suh; but I have lately come into some means, and I offer you the exact sum you paid."

Ferguson laughed. ''Not for twice the sum!" he said.

"Ah!— You also would seem to set some special value on the place. Perhaps you like the climate? Believe me, suh, you may not find it so healthy as you imagine."

"You can go to the devil with your legends and your traditions!" jeered Ferguson derisively. ''It was a fair fight— North against South— and to the victors belong the spoils. I have bought this place, and no trickery shall set me out of it."

Shadleigh eyed him. For a moment there was stark madness, sheer murder, in his strange eyes. Ford saw that Ferguson's hand was thrust into his pocket, clutching the gun. Wrath swelled in the room, fermenting into a devil's brew.

Then Shadleigh shrugged his high shoulders and broke into a hideous, cackling mirth. "So be it!" he said. "But it was not a fair fight when the Shadleighs were butchered heah, suh. I have learned that the captain of the troop of irregulars who shot them down, so that their blood mingled with the wine from spilled glasses on the table, was a certain Captain Ferguson. Perhaps only a coincidence, suh?"

For saw Ferguson stagger as if he had been struck.

"So I shall not go to the devil after all,'' Shadleigh ended, "because I leave him heah, upon these very premises. May you enjoy the spoils you mention—  when you find them. They may cost you deah."

He swung about with a certain dignity and left the room. Ferguson swung after him, his face black with wrath, but Ford rushed out and grasped his wrist. Ferguson turned upon him, and then reeled and subsided in a chair, breathing heavily. Ford did not believe his condition to be serious, and trailed Shadleigh down the stairs.

The girl was passing through the hall at that moment, and Shadleigh halted on the third tread from the bottom. She looked at him like a fascinated bird, seemed visibly to force herself to move away towards the back of the house. Shadleigh let out a fiendish cackle, and limped with amazing agility to the door which Ford held open for him. He seemed to be enjoying himself hugely, but it was a devilish amusement.

He looked at Ford with his great nose thrust forward, his yellow eyes malignant. "You wear an amazing tie— for a butler," he said with a chuckle. "They'll change it to a black one— when they lay you out!"

With that shot he was gone, leaving Ford slightly nonplussed, conscious of his neckwear, which was striped in the colors of his old college. Had he had time to plan his disguise, it would not have failed him so miserably, but he was chagrined as Shadleigh unhitched his horse, stepped to the back of the gray horse. The old beast galloped off in a clumsy jolt.

Margaret Ferguson met him in the hall, her face looking small, and white as a magnolia bloom set in the dusk. "Who was that horrible man?" she asked. "He looked at me as I can imagine Satan would. I felt hate coming out of him with his breath."

Don't worry about him," said Ford. ''He is a relative of the family that once owned the house. He resents your stepfather having it. He wanted to buy it back from him."

"It's more than that,'' she answered. "There's a mystery— a terrible, hidden enmity in this place. Perhaps we've blundered into it— but I'm not sure. My stepfather doesn't invest lightly; especially since his financial reverses. —I wish Gerald would come back from his fishing— But I'm not a coward!" she added as she left him.

v

CLEMENT FORD WENT SLOWLY up the stairs. He meant to have it out with Lindley Ferguson. The man was not only exposing himself to a peril that was slowly closing in—that might already have overtaken his son— but there was Margaret to think of. Ford knew that he himself was involved, too. Shadleigh's reference to the black tie which might be placed upon him by the undertaker showed that Shadleigh regarded him as one more victim.

That did not matter. He could take care of himself, win or lose— and he meant to win. But the statement that had staggered Ferguson, already losing morale and revealing his weakness, was that a Captain Ferguson had been implicated in the slaughter of the Southern officers. It should also tie up, somehow, with Ferguson's reason for buying this place and his staying here in the face of mystery and danger.

As a client, Ferguson should be fair with him, Ford felt. He was sure that Ferguson was withholding vital matters that, once revealed, would help to solve the riddle. There must be a showdown.

He was almost up the stairway when he heard the shot. It was not loud; it was muffled by the stout doors and walls of the solid old house. But Ford knew where it was, and he knew its target.

He burst into the old ballroom. Lindley Ferguson lay in a sprawling heap before the great fireplace, face down, arms and legs flung wide. He seemed to have been shot from behind, though Ford knew how men spin about when shot as Ferguson had been. Blood welled thickly from the back of his skull, where the bullet had entered. It matted his hair, some of which was singed, and there were powder burns on the neck, showing that he had been shot at close range. The muzzle of the weapon must have almost touched him.

As he turned Ferguson over, Ford glanced at the gun on the floor. Then he felt tor the pulse, which did not even flutter. It did not look like suicide, though the gun might be Ferguson's own, for there was no pistol in the pocket of the dressing-gown. There would be fingerprints, of course, but this was a case where prints might not count.

Again Ford felt the evil influence in this old house. For a split second— for the first time in his life— Ford felt a real sense of fear. He recalled Shadleigh's remark that he "left the devil behind him." And a chill invested Ford. His blood seemed suddenly cold and stagnant, and his heart hung between beats.

He fought off the feeling, but it had been there, foul as the touch of a vampire bat at midnight— a momentary arrest of his own power to fight off this stark and terrible something which occupied the tragic chamber. For a few moments it seemed as if phantoms were crowding in, gathering about him with faces like skulls, and uniformed in gray that was bloodstained but frightfully transparent.

The bullet had smashed out between Ferguson's eyes, leaving the splintered frontal-bone like a cracked nut. He had died instantly; but even so there was horror in his staring, glazing eyes. Ford closed them, held them closed. But weights were needed to keep the lids down. They strove to proclaim murder. There were red smears on the parquetry flooring— to which such stains were nothing new.

Ford found that the door back of the screen, behind which he had stood so recently, was now bolted. The windows, too, were fastened.

Ford opened the door to find a landing with built-in closets, and stairs leading down. The killer was well away by now. The gun on the floor had not been fired, he saw. Plainly, it was murder, grim and stark. Those invisible hoofprints had been prophetic. Here was the death they were said to foretell.

For a moment he deliberated. The authorities must come in on this now. They could not ignore it. True, it was miles to Tallapee, and there an unfriendly population. But there was Gerald's horse in the barn. The girl must ride it. He would tell her there had been an accident. She would not know the grief of an actual daughter, of course, though the shock would be great.

He thought she could stand up under it. She might not have heard the shot, with the noise of the carpet-sweeper she had taken in there beyond the heavy door. Then the scream came to him— a woman's scream of mortal terror. And there was no other woman in the house but Margaret.

FORD flung himself down the wide treads, leaping the last half dozen, flinging himself against the door, back of which there was now only silence. It was locked on the inside, so he shot heavy slugs from his gun into the lock, smashing it sufficiently for him to clear the tumbler and spring into the room with one cartridge still unfired, his smoking gun ready...

The carpet-sweeper was in the center of the floor, the big rug was rumpled, but the place was empty. Margaret Ferguson was gone.

There was no other door. The windows were tight. He searched the lower floor, which was only a basement, for the house proper commenced on the first floor. Underneath were arches of tabby cement, filled in with lattice work— storage for firewood and for the usual overflow of a house. This space had a dirt floor.

Frenziedly he opened the front door and called out into the garden where bees droned and butterflies flitted and birds sang. He raced up the back stairs from the serving pantry and barged into the library through the door he had left unbolted. She might have fled there from the back of the house. She might have gone there on some errand, found Ferguson's, body, screamed and swooned.

He cancelled that idea as soon as it was born. The scream had come from below.

The library was vacant. Nothing there but the unfired gun, and the smears on the floor, down upon which the scarred portraits gazed unwinkingly. Ferguson had vanished— his body, rather, like the corpses of the black victims Parkin had spoken about.

And Margaret was gone, too. Ford felt as if paralyzed by a blow over the heart, for he suddenly realized to the full what she meant to him — what she had meant from the first moment he had seen her.

He tried the garden again, looking for clues that might guide him, but he found none that seemed recent enough. He was alone now and he felt comparatively powerless. He had certain threads, and he suspected others that might make up at least the strand of a rope that might lead him to the center of the labyrinth— a rope that would eventually hang somebody. But this was an imperative crisis, and it called for immediate action.

He would find little help at Tallapee save an antagonistic and stupid constable, who would likely want to arrest Ford himself, and certainly would take color from Shadleigh. And Shadleigh was in it.

Ford would find more prejudice at the county seat, to which he must telephone. He could send urgent wires to his own connections up north, of course, but that would take time, and meanwhile Margaret, who could not be far away, might be subjected to indignity, torture —even death.

The grim present pressed upon him. To leave here might seal the fate of the girl whom he realized he loved, and who— though he did not flatter himself at any time— Ford believed was not far from loving him. Yet he had to go; ride to where he could get to a wire. He was not much of a horseman, but he could have mounted and controlled a wild mustang, in the mood that surged up within him against this mystery— the odds— the horror of it all.

The stall, the barn, held nothing. There was still the barest chance that Margaret might have seen, heard or guessed something of what had happened to her stepfather; that her scream had not been one of fright and surrender; but that she had galloped off for assistance.

That proved to be but a slender reed; one that had never even grown. For saddle, blanket, halter, bridle, and martingale were all there, as Ford himself had taken them off. The horse had been either turned loose or led out bare of all rigging. The back doors to the stable were unfastened, and outside there were hoofmarks fresh in the dirt, beside them other prints the same as the webbed spoor which he had found by the wall. These led on for a short distance beside the hoofprints, and then ended suddenly where the hoofs showed signs of a mad plunging that broke to a racing gallop as if the fiend had vaulted to the back of the frenzied brute.

Ford swung about. To walk to the village would mean more than two hours, and he could not bear to leave the place without a thorough search. The girl must be close at hand. The body of Ferguson, too, was surely nearby. The manor held more than one secret.

This was his most baffling case, and in it not merely his reputation, but his own safety were concerned. His heart, moreover, was so wrung by it that it was no easy matter to bring to bear his trained brain and brilliant imagination, to sift wheat from chaff.

He had begun to see things dimly, as a scientist glimpses the shadowy forms of certain deadly germs in the plasma he studies, germs that may not be filtered or defined. The footsteps which the girl had heard upon the stairs— there was a start there. But the spoils that Shadleigh had mentioned as likely to cost Ferguson dear, what were they?

Had Gerald been captured and forced into telling what he knew of Ferguson's reason for buying the place? Ferguson, a descendant of the commander of the men who had, from the viewpoint of Shadleigh and the other citizens of Tallapee, butchered the young southrons. Ford's brain raced like an overcharged dynamo that needs a transformer before it gives controlled light or power. He strove to pierce the veil, to assemble what little he had into something tangible.

He had a belief— more hunch than conviction— that Shadleigh and the man in the canvas jacket were one and the same. The beard had been disguise; he had not noted the eyes in that dim light, but the beaked nose stood out in memory as it had in reality.

Shadleigh might be the man who had worn the cloak, carried the blood, engineered the death of Ferguson, brought about Margaret's disappearance. Ford refused to think her dead. Shadleigh could not have done this thing alone. He had accomplices. But Ford could see him as a homicidal maniac, actuated by a sadism that might be inbred, nurtured by sense of injury, and watered by an ancient grudge...

It was a brief reverie, but slowly something began to crystallize, a vague pattern announced itself in the fabric woven by his swiftly shuttling thoughts. .

Then thought tell from him like a loose garment. Hoofbeats, galloping fast on the haunted highway!

Gun in hand, he raced to the front. He saw a slim girl astride a horse that was blown, but still spirited. She was hatless, and her bobbed hair stood out in elfin locks of black. Her eyes were black pools of ink in a face that was pale, but touched with color by fast riding. Her lips were vivid. She was in riding breeks, and wore black boots. Ford sensed a scarlet bow at her throat.

She was a little beauty, and Ford knew that she must be the girl Margaret had praised, Ferguson decried Gerald's girl friend, Mildred Tulliver.

“Are you the man Parkin brought out here?" she asked as, with small but resolute hands, she brought down the sweating chestnut. "He said you were a butler."

Ford resolved to trust her. The girl was not merely pretty. She was certainly not "white trash," as Ferguson had summarily classed her. She had breeding, she was attractive, and she was desperately troubled. He liked her.

"I'm Clement Ford," he said. "I'm not a butler. I think I might be called a friend of Margaret Ferguson. I haven't met Gerald. You are Miss Tulliver...?"

“Where is Gerald?" she asked. ''I must see him. He was to see me this morning. He promised. I— I'm afraid something has happened to him."

“Why do you think that ?" asked Ford.

She lid from her horse, lithe and passionate. "I feel it— here," she answered, and tapped her breast. "Gerald and I love each other. Perhaps you can't understand."

"I can understand," said Ford.

The girl looked at him and nodded, believing him. "I am an investigator, a detective," he went on . ''Gerald is not here. His step-sister has disappeared. So has his father. Gerald's horse came home without him early this morning...."

"And you are standing here doing nothing?" she demanded passionately, "while they may all be dead."

“I was waiting for someone to help me, someone who was a friend and who could be trusted. Someone who would send messages for help. It is needed, and I dare not leave here. If you told me what you know, it might mean everything.— You know Shadleigh?"

"That devil? He wanted me to find out from Gerald why they had come here.— He is not human. He is not a true Shadleigh; for there is colored blood in him.

"He used to be poor, but lately he has had money. He gave me this to tell him about Gerald. He thought I could be bought.— Look !"'

She fumbled in a pocket and showed Ford a fifty-dollar bill. He glanced at it, returned it to her. ''Hang on to that," he said. "'We may be able to use that..."

"I'd like to choke Shadleigh with it!"' she flamed.

"Perhaps you can," he said. ''You did not tell him anything?"

She looked at Ford indignantly. "I told him I loved Gerald, and he grinned at me and said there were other ways; for me not to be a little fool, but to think it over, and that there might be more money. He said to put it under my pillow and dream on it; and to find out what I could from Gerald the next time I saw him. I didn't see him again."

Ford gave her a nod. She clung to his steady glance as a drowning person might clutch at an overhanging branch. It looked as if Shadleigh, impatient to find out what he wanted to know, and spurred perhaps by blood lust, had tried one of the ''the other ways.'' He seemed to be free with his money.

The darkness was beginning to disappear. Like steam on a mirror, it began to clear slowly. "You came straight from Tallapee?" he asked her.

She nodded mutely, still hanging to his glance. She could see his features turn as if to stone, his eyes become menacing in a deep, just and implacable wrath. He was not merely the law, then; he was eminently a man who meant to right a wrong, a lover who intended to avenge.

“I didn't gallop until I was out of town," she said. ''Of course, some one may have seen me; but no one could have passed me. It is the only road."

"You didn't see anything of Shadleigh?"

"No."

Either Shadleigh had turned aside through the stiff brush, which was not very likely, or he had made a detour along some ridden trail, and come circling back. Ford felt as if the man was even then within a few yards of both of them.

He lowered his voice. You can help, if you want to,'' he said to the girl. "I can't leave here. Where else, not far away, can you send telegrams? I don't want to run a chance of a leak at Tallapee."

He did not tell her that he doubted if she would be allowed to get that far. Even if she did, the messages would soon become common talk. He knew that they would not believe rules to apply to a stranger's affairs.

“I can ride to Medisto,"' she said. "It isn't very far. Of course I'll do it!"

He wrote on pages torn from his notebook. One to his own office, in code; another to Arlington, Ferguson's attorney; a third to his own lawyer; a fourth to a Federal agent, and the fifth to his friend Jim Clayborn, war ace and round-the-world flier. He took some money from his wallet.

"I'll pay to’ them," she said. ''I'll pay fo' them out of Shadleigh's dirty money."

“Wisest not," he said. ''We'll keep that intact. Look here; I'll give you other bills for it, and I'll keep it."

She gave him a look but did not question him. Even as hate seemed to flow out of Shadleigh, Ford emanated confidence. She took the ten-dollar bills he gave her in exchange for the fifty, with one other to pay for the wires. ''Get back to Tallapee by a back road," he told her. "Go home, and stay there until you hear from me or Gerald."

"You're going to find him?" she asked breathlessly.

"I'm going to find him," said Ford. It was senseless to word to her his thought— that he might find him dead. "You do your best. I'll do mine,'' he wound up.

"Give me a lift up,'' she answered. "My horse is breathed."

She seemed welded to her steed as she left, and Ford watched her with admiration. Margaret had been right; the girl was thoroughbred.

He looked up at the house. He had a strong feeling that they had been watched, and he waited until she was out of sight over the rise, galloping along the highway between the marshes, before he moved.

If she failed to get through to Medisto...! Ford threw that thought aside. Such things were on the knees of the gods, and he tossed them a grim little pagan prayer. There was upon him the determination of a vowed knight, donning armor, as he fully loaded his gun. Alone he now had to fight against unknown and mysterious forces which had already ambushed the Fergusons and would be waiting for his first act of aggression.

The steps on the stairs that Margaret had heard. That was the first lead to follow. Whatever slight credence he might give to ghosts, Ford was certain that disembodied spirits could not walk like material beings. The steps meant only one thing; that the stairs were double. There was space in the walls, and someone had walked on the far side of what seemed to be merely the outer wall. The house which went back to the days when Carolina planters were allied with pirates and smugglers, openly arraigned as such by the King's Collector, was built for jugglery.

Ford carefully considered the house from every angle, noting the chimneys and their dimensions, the placement of windows. He investigated the room below the outside kitchen. It was a cellar, pure and simple. The walls were solid, the ground was packed dirt. There was no trickery there.

Then he went through the house, room by room. He sounded for secret panels, and found nothing. If there were any, they were well concealed, deadened against revealing sounds of hollowness when the walls were pounded upon. It would take many men and many hours to make certain, and that not without tearing much down.

He searched the girl's own room, where the dainty garments in the closet, the flowers in bowls and vases, proclaimed her recent presence. These things served to set the lines deeper in his face.

He investigated Ferguson's own quarters more thoroughly, and reached the conclusion that the room had been gone through recently by someone else; someone who was seeking something. It might have been while he was outside in the barn, talking to the girl. The whole house had that air of sheltering eyes unseen, ears invisible.

The day was closing when he came to the front porch to get some fresh air and to gaze up and down the road, at the sky, for some sign of aid.

The hours had passed, with Margaret missing, her father dead, and he had accomplished nothing.

A low, sing-song droning came to him. Over the main morass above the slowly rising mist he saw that same shape that he had seen before, like a gliding dragon, with pendulous neck, turtle head, and eyes glowing faintly green. The sound varied in pitch, moaning.

It was possible, he told himself, that the something was only a plane; very likely a pusher rather than puller type, with the propeller back of the pilot, the fuselage camouflaged, the engines muffled. Then it dipped, and the green lights vanished in the fog.

Ford went back into the house, turning into the room where he had last heard Margaret singing before she screamed. His flashlight stabbed the gloom with its white beam.

It was at that moment that he heard the mysterious footsteps, overhead. He listened, tense; and suddenly he knew that there was swift and stealthy movement in the room, behind him. He felt a faint current of air.

Even as he whirled, a naked, giant arm, slippery with grease, was flung over his shoulder. Vising fingers grasped his throat. The fingers were not oiled; they choked off his wind, dug back of his windpipe, clenching off the bloodstream in his arteries.

Ford dropped his flashlight to grab his assailant's wrist. The ray was not cut off, but from the floor it showed a gaping section of the panelled wall beside the fireplace.

So swift and fierce was the attack that Ford, half strangled, could hardly cope with the big, almost naked black. Before he could use his gun, another hand caught his own wrist, grinding the carpal bones in agony hard to sustain. Except for his hands, the man was smeared all over with some rancid smelling, viscous stuff that gave an adversary no chance to maintain a hold.

Ford was a good fighter, and he was in good condition; but seized from behind he was no match for this man whose flesh was like solid rubber, and whose sinews were like steel. He was outweighed and outmaneuvered. The other, coming forward on bare, almost noiseless feet, had sprung at him, throwing Ford off balance as the giant achieved his two holds.

But Ford, though his brain was becoming congested, flashes of fire searing across it, was not done. He was dying for lack of oxygen, and his most seemed far from enough, was waning with every second he could not breathe. He leaped, twined his legs in a desperate grip about those of his assailant. In one spasmodic and prodigious effort, he tore loose the grasp on his throat, though the man's nails rent his flesh and brought the hot blood.

Together, they fell to the floor, struggling and writhing, sending the burning flashlight aside. By its light, Ford sent home a smash into which he put everything he had left, and rejoiced to see it crack against the other's jaw. Ford's knuckles were smashed in with the impact, for seemingly he had struck granite. The man grunted when Ford's fist hit his chin, and the back of his head hit the floor.

Then he rolled on top of Ford, and a knee ground into the investigator's belly; he sought a fresh grip on Ford's throat.

During the struggle, Ford's gun went off, but the shot went wild. The flame seared the other's arm, and he gave out a bellow of wrath; and while Ford battled for supremacy, a second man came gliding out from the opening in the wall.

It could not last, now, of course. One of the pair took his legs; the other his arms, and his throat was clamped again.

"Don't fight so hahd, buccra,"' said the newcomer with a throaty chuckle. ''We ain’ gwine kill you— yit!"'

vi

THEY HAD HIS GUN, his body was wrenched and bleeding as the two carried him down steep stairs. His arms bound, he was but a feebly squirming bundle when they set him down in a crypt-like place lit dimly by a lantern. There they investigated the rope that pinioned his arms, and then one of them took the lantern and marched ahead while the other prodded him along a passage to an open space where other lanterns hung.

Both his captors were good-humored with him, but it was the good nature of the slaughterhouse. Ford was still upset by the savage onset. The two of them had mauled him hard, in the final bout. He had striven to retain his sense of direction. He believed he must now be under the garden, toward the road. The passage had been a long one. There was a long rough table at the far end of the chamber, and on it, bound and motionless and seemingly insensible, lay Margaret Ferguson. At either end of the table, two big candles guttered in the vagrant draughts. Be hind it there sat a hooded figure, obscure and for the moment remote as a Grand Inquisitor. The figure appeared to be wearing a long robe or cloak, with a capote that was drawn over the head, so shadowing the features.

To either side there appeared crude vaulted arches, some of which were closed by doors and others of which led to dark corridors. Some were blank. One of these openings was directly behind the seated figure, and stairs led up from it. Those stairs, Ford surmised, should lead to some masked opening close to the wall. This figure, silent and sinister, might well be the one that had slithered over the wall while Ferguson and Ford watched the previous night.

There was no sight of Ferguson's body, or pathic younger man who should be Gerald. Ford's eyes searched the gloom as he stood between the two giants who guarded him, one on either side, their arms folded.

The skins of his guards gave off high lights from the oiled surfaces. The lanterns and candles revealed their muscles, the superb anatomy of their torsos, their swelling thighs and calves. They wore only short trunks of dark red cloth. Ford had an idea that they were stimulated by some sort of drug. It might not be heroin— more likely a form of cannabis indica, distilled from local herbs or plants. These were Gullah men. They lived largely as had their sires, only three generations from the jungles of Benin.

Those recent ancestors had been the last shipment of ''black ivory" to be landed in the States. The Emancipation Act had been signed, and they had been turned loose on these Southern sea-islands to fend for themselves. They had their own dialect, their funeral customs, their old beliefs, their sorcerers and witch-women. A man like Shadleigh, if he had some of their savage blood in him, as Mildred Tulliver averred, would know how to handle them. He would be able to mold them to his own purpose.

That this was Shadleigh, seated behind Margaret's limp body, Ford had no doubt. His silence was partly mockery, Ford thought, and partly with a desire to be impressive. He wanted the setting to be etched on the mind and soul of his latest captive, to daunt him. Ford was thankful for the respite. His brain was clearing, and there was still a chance.

The cellar was rudely furnished. On a stand he saw the glint of metal, also a lamp. The glints came from knives or tools, and from Ford's gun, which one of his guards had set down. These men were proud of their brawn, contemptuous of the man whom they had subdued. Again their mien suggested to Ford some special stimulation.

Ford measured the distances. Behind him, in dense shadow, his fingers began to writhe, his hands to move, a fraction of an inch at a time, so as not to betray him by the action of any muscles in the light. The two stood watching the hooded figure with fixed intensity, with the eagerness of leashed hounds waiting to be set free, so they may bay and slay.

Abruptly the figure rose, thrust back the hood, revealing glittering eyes, a nose like a great beak, like the striking, killing mandibles of a carnivorous bird. It was Judah Shadleigh, and his lips writhed as he spoke gloatingly.

"The butler with the gaudy tie!'' he jeered. "Clement Ford, detective extraordinary, summoned by Lindley Ferguson, who is now nothing.— Hired as his protector. Ha!"

Shadleigh had doubtless found something on Ferguson's body, or in his room, that led to this information, Ford decided. The prisoner made no reply. Not to answer might enrage Shadleigh, who was surely a little mad. That might help to divert him from Ford's final move, if he got a chance to make it. It would be a last attempt, and either it would succeed or he would perish.

As he gazed at Margaret's form he did not mean to fail.

“I have been curious as to why this Northerner came here," Shadleigh went on. ''I was still more curious after I considered him as the descendant of the Captain Ferguson, who helped to murder my own illustrious ancestors in this very house."

“If they were still living,'' said Ford, "would you be one of them ? Would you live in the house— or in the quarters?"

That was a shrewd stroke. It lashed Shadleigh into a frenzy which he could hardly control. Foam showed on his lips. He was not far from an epileptic fit. And it weakened his command over his two followers. Not much, perhaps; but it somehow stirred emotions in their wizened minds, so disturbing the situation.

Shadleigh mastered himself at last and went on. ''You fool! You think yourself a wise one. But we have puzzled you, and when you got too meddlesome we brought you here.— As we have brought others— interferers who were not of the brotherhood. They were strangled either by Leo there, or by Lupus— strangled slowly until their eyes hung out upon their cheeks and their prayers were but wheezing gasps. Then they were laid upon the highway for clowns to find and gaze at. Those clowns proclaimed them slain by the ‘haunts’ of Skull Manor. But while they fled to spread the news, we took the bodies and flung them to the great lizards in the marsh. We sacrificed them to the great winged creature that dwells there."'

It was plain that this half-crazed, man had organized some sort of cult that hid deeper devices. The dead blacks of Parkin's story, then, were not a myth. They had been killed here in this cellar, and after exhibition they had been fed to the swamp alligators. Doubtless Leo and Lupus believed in the monster of the marsh.

Ford also was not dead now only because Shadleigh thought to wrest information from him which he had failed to get from either Ferguson, his son, or his stepdaughter. But there would be no clemency for Ford, in any event. Gerald, he feared, was dead. As for Margaret, this fiend might have the designs of a satyr!

Again Ford's fingers busied themselves, stealthily, his wrists straining against the cords.

''Ford," said Shadleigh, "when those Northern butchers killed the flower of Southern chivalry, they overlooked one thing. That gathering in the house here planned a final thrust that would have swept Sherman into the sea. Families had melted down their plate and sold it; they had impoverished themselves to their last cent in order to equip them. They had with them the very sinews of war; pay for soldiers, money for supplies, for bribes, for runners of contraband, for arms.

“When the man who was hanged as a spy warned them with his last breath, they hid that treasure— hid it cleverly and well. Not even I knew of its existence."

"Why should you?" jeered Ford. Now he knew why Ferguson had bought the house, and why he had so stubbornly hung on to it. The Scot and Shadleigh had one impulse in common; one source they sought for power: money.

"I guessed that Ferguson had some hidden motive in coming here," Shadleigh went on, his words stumbling a bit but gaining control. "I desired to keep this house inviolate, a shrine. So I practiced certain weird effects that you have suspected. These hoofs"— he displayed two wooden blocks with horseshoes nailed upon them— "worked at the right hour, and just at the head of those stairs, produced the phantom horseman. Heavy solutions of chlorates and nitrates crystallizedinto suspended cords were the mystic lights. The footprints, the prints of the claws, were alligator feet fastened upon shoes."

Dressed as he was, Ford acknowledged the clever fantasy that he had not guessed.

And the dragon with the green eyes and the long neck which we saw over the marsh?" he asked, his fingers busy back of him the while. "I might have solved that also."

Shadleigh laughed derisively.

Ford did not push the matter. It might not pay to confound Leo or Lupus too suddenly.

The young fool, Gerald," Shadleigh continued, "tried to escape. He got hurt for his pains, and his skull, I fear, is fractured. If he recovers, he may be useful in case you prove otherwise. As for Ferguson, a fumbling fool let him get out a weapon and then shot him, clumsily. But we found the old diary upon him, the diary of Captain Ferguson which told of how the Northern soldiers had learned, long after, that there had been a pay chest that they left behind. It was too late then to seek— rightfully. Peace had been declared— though never accepted by us of the South.

"So this Northern hound comes sneaking on the trail of gold. Now, what did he tell you, Ford? You were his trusted detective, his spy. He must have told you.— Tell me! If not— there is a pan of charcoal, and there are blades and pincers and tongs— a lamp. Gerald was to have known them— that oaf who made love to Mildred Tulliver. You shall know them, if you are not wise.— Or perhaps we shall practise them upon the girl here; this fair, frail maiden. And in your sight. There may be other matters..."

Ford got his hand up another inch. Thecords had cut into him so that the blood trickled over his fingers, but he felt no pain, only a superhuman ability to endure and to make an intense effort under the spur of Shadleigh's diabolical threats and hinted abominations.

He saw Margaret's figure twitch. He thought he heard her moan.

"You are making plenty of money, Shadleigh,"' he said. ''Why should you need this pay-chest?"

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I said," Ford told him. "You wanted this house left alone so your confederates should have a place to print from their plates. I know that you have passed counterfeit bills. I have proof of it. Shall I tell you the series, describe the portrait— the one slip that Paul the Penman made?"

Shadleigh lifted and spread his arms, his hands. He was the incarnation of a foul bird, enraged, about to swoop down upon its prey.

Ford had reached the haft of the thin blade which he carried in a sheath sewn into the back of his trousers, close by the strap and buckle, much as a carpenter carries a rule. This weapon was of steel so finely tempered, so thin, that it curved with his body, fitting snubly. The handle was not much thicker, but the weapon would bite like the tooth of an adder, though far deeper and quite as deadly. The trick was one which he had learned trom a Levantine smuggler. He had been searched before when his investigations had led him into trouble, but never had it been found upon him.

He had to get it clear, to twist it so that it would sever the rope which now gnawed against the living cords of his wrist. He wanted to get Shadleigh away from the table, from the girl; to throw him out of control and get his big blacks confused. Everything had to be pertectly timed.

"I've got one of those bills in my pocket now, Shadleigh. The testimony of the person you gave it to will be forthcoming. As for your tricks, they were the gestures of a mountebank— the claws, the lights, the hoof beats. Any property man in a traveling show could duplicate them. That pig's blood, spilled on the road, too! All tricks, except the men you had strangled.— You'll burn for those, Shadleigh!"'

Now the blade was in his fingers, slicingthrough the rope and through his own flesh, but freeing him. He watched Shadleigh narrowly.

"As for the monster in the marsh, I fancy that is an idea of the pals of Paul the Penman. But they'll not burn just as you do, for you have blood that is not mere pig's blood on your hands, Shadleigh."

The man went mad at that. He rushed from behind the table— and Ford struck. He darted sidewise, drove his steel between the lower ribs of the man on his right. who had stood half stupefied, listening to these bared secrets,  wondering, muddled.

Ford changed his weapon to his left hand and dodged the big Gullah as he sank down. The next instant he had caught up the gun from the table, and the teel of the hard rubber butt was like a lungful of fresh, sweet air to a soul in Hades.

He sliced the arm of the other Gullah to the bone, from biceps to wrist. The man stared at the bright blood spurting in little fountains.

Ford bent his own elbow, steadying to a nice aim.

Shadleigh had retreated, however, and now he stood over Margaret, a knife gleaming in his hand. The girl was conscious now, but hardly able to move, tied as she was.

"Her life for mine,'' Shadleigh bargained. "Let me up those stairs.— I have no gun, or I would shoot it out with you now. But let me up those steps and I will not harm her..."

Ford's grim lips twitched into a half smile. He squeezed the trigger— once— twice— and the knife fell from Shadleigh's palsied hand as he toppled.

Quickly then, Ford cut the bonds of the girl he loved, speaking to her, reassuring her. The Gullah whose arm he had slashed was against the wall, very much tamed now.

"Fo' Gawd's sake,'' he begged. ''Don't let me bleed to death." His fellow lay with two great hands clasped over his wound.

A third man came charging down the passage his skin shining. Ile wore a sleeveless shirt and short white pants. He had a gun holstered.

"Too many men come!" he shouted, then he stopped short and clutched at his weapon.

Ford mercifully hit him in the shoulder, sent him staggering back. He knew that everything was over now, that Mildred Tulliver had sent the telegrams and that this was the answer. But it had been touch and go. Blood had clogged on his throat, still dripped from his wrists. He had won, but he was very weary.

Margaret Ferguson was like a wilting lily, though she strove to hold herself erect. Clayborn in his flying helmet, entering the next moment, looked like the Archangel Michael to Ford.

"Take over, Clay, will you?" he said. ''Clean out this place. Look for Lindley Ferguson's body, and look for his son, Gerald.—I put that in the wires."

"You did," said the flier. ''We've hada fine time. You look as if you'd been busy yourself. More power to you!" he added with a glance of approval at Margaret. ''Boy, you fixed things. They gave me a nice ship with a persuader in front, and a few eggs. That army flier is one swell guy. We found that faked-up pusher, and we laid a couple of hot eggs close to them in the pond in the marsh. The federal agent has them in tow. They came clean. There should be a stack of phony dough right here. We'll find it.— You go on upstairs."

He grinned as Ford moved off, tired but triumphant. The cellar filled with the searchers of the government, some giving treatment to Leo and Lupus and to the sentry, whom they had surprised and whom Ford had winged.

It was not long before Clayborn came upstairs.

"We found the young chap alive,"' he announced. "He ought to pull through. But—"

"She knows," said Ford. ''I told her that her stepfather had been killed."

Margaret Ferguson smiled at Ford. ''You saved me,'' she said.

Clayborn, at the door, looked at the wall. ''That isn't all they found," he said. "They've got the outfit— the plates, press and paper. But they also dug into the base of the big chimney, thinking that it was strange that the brickwork should have been carried down so far. There was a loose stone. The G. M. pulled it out, and he found a hollow in the wall. It was stufied full of old bills!"

The pay-chest of the young Southerners, the forlorn hope of the South for a last thrust! Many men besides Ferguson had died for it— Shadleigh the aristocrat as well as Judah Shadleigh.

"Quite a chunk of jack,'' said Clayborn. ''But— here's the kick in it. You've got to hear this before I duck. It was just loose in the walls— must have been stufied in there in a hurry by someone who expected to get it out soon— because it was all chewed to bits by rats! I could tell from a few fragments that part of it was Union money and part was Confederate bills. But they're both equally valueless now."

Faded glory! Fairy gold turned to dust. Ford did not even consider it any further. Neither did Margaret. He held his fortune— and hers— within the hollow of his arm. Herheadwas on his shoulder, their troubles were largely forgotten; and the past was blotted out as their lips met in their first kiss.

___________________

3: The Crowing Hens of Totulu

J. Allan Dunn

Adventure, April 1916

"NEVER speak to a woman before twelve o'clock, noon. Follow that rule, Jimmy, my lad," said Riley Hardin, "and you'll avoid trouble with the sex. By twelve their blood gets to circulatin' properly and they forget to be peevish."

"Ho, yus," replied Jimmy. "That's a fine hold bit hof a rule, that his. You 'as your dooties on deck, an' w'en you ain't got none you can pretend you 'as, an' she none the wiser. But w'ot price me? My job's below an' she knows hit, an' fair chivvies me hall hover the place till Hi'm barmy. Hi'm sick of hit, Hi tell yer. W'ot did she come haboard for hanyway, that's w'ot Hi'd like to know? W'ot hif she his the skipper's missis. Hi've got shares hin the ship myself."

"She came aboard, Jimmy, my son," replied the first mate," because she preferred the Margaret Ann to jail."

"She'll turn the ship hinter a bloomin' loonatic asylum hif she keeps hit hup this w'y, wiv me has chief patient. W'ot was she goin' to get hin jail for? Wimmen's wrongs what they wants made wimmens' rights, I suppose?"

"Well, Jimmy, you know she's had the sufferaging bug bad for a year. She's what we call back in the States a limelighter. Wants to stand in the spot all the time and thinks she's a natural-born leader."

"Hi know hall that. W'ot appened to get the coppers hafter 'er."

"You were out of town, Jimmy. It was a week before we sailed—"

"W'ot did she do? 'Eave 'arf a brick hat a bobby?"

"First," said Hardin, "her limelightin' got her to start a subscription to place a marble monument above the grave of an English sufferagette that had tried to blow up all the poets' and dooks' and warriors' tombs in Westminster Abbey, but had miscalculated the length of the fuse. That fell flat, owin' to the lady who was fightin' her for the leadership of the Sydney Sufferagettes being a sixteenth cousin of the nephew of Nelson, or Byron or some one.

"So then some of 'em got into the gallery at the mayor's banquet and threw a lot of cheap eggs while the soup was being served. One egg was a chiny one and hit the mayor on the bean, so that his bald head looked as if it was tryin' to raise eggs on it's own account. The skipper got the tip that the police knew who chucked it, so we smuggled Mrs. B. aboard and telegraphed you, and the next day we sailed,

"I told the skipper they couldn't prove it on her, because she couldn't possible have aimed it at the mayor and hit him too, but he didn't see the joke."

"Well, Hi'm goin' to tell 'im something hon my hown 'ook. Blowed hif she don't think Hi'm some sort of stooard. Started harrangin' my trade-room shelves. Told me Hi 'adn't got no tyste in dress goods, Me! W'ot 'ave hintrodooced more 'its hin percales hand muslins than hany supercargo hin the South Seas! Said Hi hought to 'ave stocked hup wiv calico wiv lilock sprigs hon hit. Lilock sprigs, for Tamatau's fahines!"

"Make allowances, Jimmy. She can't help it. She's a bit of a freak, you know. Most of these sufferagettes are, I reckon. Crowin' hens, I call 'em."

"Crowin' 'ens? She's a bloomin' cuckoo, that's w'ot she his. Crowdin' 'erself hin w'ere she don't belong hand hain't wanted, hand tryin' to shove me hout hof my hown trade-room. Came hin this hafternoon w'en Hi was workin', hand flounced hout becoz Hi was peeled to my hundershirt hand pants. Told the skipper Hi was hindecent, she did. Honly peace Hi 'ave, his w'en she's seasick and, thank Gawd, she turns yeller hevery time the cabin lamp swings hin the gimbals."

"Maybe she'll work it out of her system that way," opined Hardin. "It's largely a matter of bile, to my way of thinkin'."

"Hif hit honly was," said Jimmy, "you could cure h'em heasy. Put h'em hall haboard a rollin' little steamer and send h'em hout hin the Channel somew'eres w'ere hit's nice and choppy. That 'ud beat hall the 'unger strikes. Wouldn't 'ave to feed h'em hat hall."

"What about the ones who wasn't seasick?"

"Make h'em wait hon the rest. They'd 'ave to, hout hof 'umanity. 'Old their 'eads and rush the bowls. Ho! Hi'd cure h'em."

"Well, if it gives you any comfort," said the mate, "the glass is down to thirty, and pumpin' at that. There's somethin' comin' our way, and soon. That's why it'e so hot."

"Hit his warm," agreed Jimmy, mopping his brow. "H'ill tell Talua to put hon the racks hat supper. She starts feelin' sick the minnit she sees h'em hon the table. 'Ullo, 'ere's the skipper."

"Jimmy," said Captain Boyle, coming aft and speaking a little wearily, "Mrs. Boyle isn't feeling very well. I wish you'd fix her up a little toddy. She thinks it'll make her feel better."

Jimmy glanced at the mate, who averted his eyes. Then he went to the companionway, looking as if he'd like to fiz a draught for the wife of his esteemed skipper that would prove far from being a nepenthe.

"Mrs. Boyle under the weather, captain?" asked Hardin solicitously.

"Yes, Hardin, she's a bit nervous yet. And the heat. Glass is still falling—down to twenty-nine-ninety. You'd better shorten sail. We'll be needin' storm canvas before midnight. Monsoon weather.

"I'll handle it," he added as four bells struck; "if you want to go below? It's my watch."

"Never mind, skipper," answered his mate hastily. "I'll stay on deck and 'tend to it. I want to smoke a bit anyway."

The orders given, the two paced the deck together.

"Women," said the captain after a while, "are peculiar, Hardin. Especially these days. They seem to want something out of the ordinary to occupy themselves with."

"What most of 'em need," replied Hardin, "if you don't mind my sayin' so—is kids."

Captain Boyle sighed.

"I guess you're right Hardin," he said. "I guess you're pretty nearly right.

THE next day found the barometer and the thermometer still moving in opposite directions. The sky was filmed with a dull haze through which the sun shone like a tarnished copper wafer. The ocean seemed covered with gray scum. As the bows of the barkentine lunged sullenly through the water, they turned up long swathes of dull, slimy green, like crude oil. The life had gone out of the sea, no foam showed at stem or stem, only a few thick-rinded bubbles that floated out of sight without breaking. The wind slapped suddenly at the scant canvas from every quarter and the barkentine rolled heavily from side to side as if it's timbers had lost their buoyancy.

Mrs. Boyle, fat to the creasing point, her ample form swathed in a Paisley shawl, yet looking somehow shrunken for all her stoutness, with a face the color of fresh putty, appeared on deck, and made her.way care fully to the mainmast where she clung feebly.

"I can't stand it below," she said to her spouse. "The heat's awful and there's that Brownbill whistling in his trade-room till my head fair splits with it."

"I wouldn't stay on deck if I were you, my dear," said the captain. "There's goin' to be dirty weather in short order."

"I'll stay here if it kills me," retorted the lady with what in healthier hours would have been temper. "If you had any consideration for me, you'd get me my deck-chair."

"Billy-Boy," called the captain.

"Why can't that Brownbill fetch it?"

"That is hardly his duty, my dear. And he has others."

"Duties?" sniffed the lady sinking into the chair. "He's messin' with a lot of paints down below. Thinks he's an artist. 'Mfff!

"Oh!" as the barkentine lurched suddenly. "Can't you fix the wheel or something and keep the ship even?"

"No, my dear, I can't," said the captain with some acerbity, leaving her to meet his first mate.

"Well," retorted the lady, "as soon as I get my feet on solid ground you'll not get me to sea again in a hurry."

"And that," thought the mate, though he did not speak it, "is the best news this trip."

"Glass twenty-nine-seventy," he said aloud. "Gettin' mighty dark, ain't it?"

The muggy heat seemed to increase as the sky film thickened, shutting off the sun till the day dulled to premature twilight.

Captain Boyle strode back to the chair.

"Get below, Maggie," he said.

"I'll not," said the lady, waxen in the dusk.

"You will!" replied her husband, master on his own quarterdeck. "Billy-Boy, help Mrs. Boyle below!"

She went, her handkerchief to her mouth, seemingly corroborating Jimmy's theory of a cure for ultra-suffragitis.

"Can't tell red from bloo below," said the little supercargo, coming on deck.

"Here she comes," announced Boyle suddenly, as the line of the onrushing wind ruled the water with a line of black, throwing forward a skirmish-line of whitecaps.

The storm canvas filled as the breeze strengthened and the barkentine amended her sluggish speed.

"Everything snug, Mr. Hardin?"

"All snug, sir!"

The breeze suddenly turned to a gale that blew momentarily more fiercely till a shout died to a whisper on the lips. Streaks of oily spume sped horizontally across the deck.

"Center's to the east'ard, I think," yelled Boyle into the mate's ear, cupped by his hand. "Stand by to wear ship!"

A minute later the Margaret Ann was thrashing toward the horizon where no sunset was to grace the close of that day.

Mrs. Boyle, below in her cabin, recked not of casting votes or addressing applauding sisters. She was not silent, but her eloquence was not that of speech.

IT WAS a sunny afternoon when the lady ventured on deck once more and evinced a languid but growing interest in the lifting of the coco-palms of Totulu above the horizon.

In her lap, as she reclined in her chair, were two pieces of coarse canvas which she was adorning with colored wools disposed in the patterns of bright red animal-heads with shoe-button eyes, supposed to represent foxes, on a background of sickly green.

"What size shoes did you say King Tamatau wears?" she asked her husband.

"I don't think he ever wore any, my dear."

"Then why didn't you say so?"

"I didn't know what you were making."

"Well, he'll wear these," said the original Margaret Ann of the barkentine's christening, regarding her work with pride. "I got the biggest soles there were in Sydney— fourteens. If they're too small, we can take off the heels and turn back the canvas. Don't you think he'll like them?"

"He ought to," said Boyle diplomatically.

"Hold Tomato hin carpet slippers!" whispered Jimmy to Hardin. "Ho, my heye!

THE Margaret Ann swung at her moorings in the lagoon of Totulu off the long copra wharf, dipped ensign and fired a royal salute for the monarch of the little atoll-kingdom of which Totulu was the capital.

"When are we going ashore?" demanded Mrs. Boyle, decked for the occasion in white duck skirt, peekaboo-waist, long, white gloves and a wide-brimmed magenta hat with yellow ostrich plumes.

"Not until the king comes off," said Boyle.

"Then get me a fan," said the lady. "I should have brought a sunshade."

"Some by-by doll," murmured Jimmy as he sped Billy-Boy on the errand. "She'll make a 'it wiv Hold Tomato, Hi don't fink."

"Are those women rowing?" asked Mrs. Boyle excitedly, as Tamatau's whaleboat, propelled by six lusty queens, shot out from the private wharf.

"Yes'm," replied Hardin. "They do it for exercise. Keeps 'em reduced."

Mrs. Boyle looked sharply at the mate. "Ha!" she said. "Well, it ain't ladylike. I thought they wore clothes?"

Jimmy, addressed thus abruptly, sputtered something about "the 'eat," and retired to the cabin to dispense the inevitable "ginnybeer" for Tamatau.

"She's a startin' of somefing already," he confided to second mate Wilkins as they hastily shared an extra bottle of beer. "She'll be a cuckooin' on Totulu before you can s'y Jack Robinson. You watch."

Tamatau, to whom every year brought more of girth and less of breath, grunted heavily up the sideladder, resplendent in pajamas the design of which seemed to be an impressionistic attempt to portray orange starfish in a purple sea. Puffing, he stood at the rail, gazing fixedly at the vision of Mrs. Boyle. Great drops of perspiration ran down his fat jowls and splashed on the deck, while his enormous head smoked from the exertion of his climb.

"Looks like a meltin' chocklate drop in a tuck-shop winder," said Jimmy, sotto voce, to Hardin, as he waited with a huge tankard of beer reinforced with gin. "Look hat 'is lamps buggin' hout at the missis. Like 'ard boiled heggs hin a myonnaze salad."

Still enthralled, the heated monarch stretched an automatic arm for the tankard.

"My wife, King," said Boyle.

Mrs. Boyle curtseyed low.

"After all," she thought, "a king is a king." And made up her mind to be kodaked with him at the earliest moment.

"Humph!" said Tamatu from the depths of the goblet.

Then, relinquishing it to Jimmy for a fresh supply—

"Momona kela fahine papalangi."

"What does he say?" asked Mrs. Boyle smilingly of the captain.

The skipper's embarassment was saved by Hardin.

"He says'm," said the mate, "that you're 'some lady.'" Which was an approximate, if not a literal translation.

The "momona fahine" (fat woman) held out a white-gloved hand, none too small, which was engulfed in the sweaty paw of Tamatau. She made another mental note— "To preserve the glove, as trophy Number Two."

"Aren't the ladies coming aboard?" she asked.

"Them?" answered Tamatau. "Ugh! No."

"Mrs. Boyle looked as if she was about to say something which etiquette forbade, and followed the group to the cabin.

There was one question certain to be propounded by Tamatau within five minutes of his boarding either of the two vessels with the captains of which he traded— the barkentine Margaret Ann, Captain Boyle, and the schooner Shamrock, Captain McShane— both of Sydney. It came after the draining of the monarch's fourth mug.

"What you bring me, kapitani?"

"Ah," said Boyle. "Present this time very fine, King. You remember light-stick Captain McShane give you last year?"

"Umph!" replied Tamatau, who had forborne to slip the switch of the electric torch in question, imagining it a perpetual flame inspired by papalangi magic. "That no dam good"— Mrs. Boyle coughed— "two day, light all gone!"

"Well, this is different, King. This is big, oh plenty big light. Can see all around lagoon. I show you tonight. Can burn all time. I show Kokua how to fix."

"Kokua, he dam fool, too. Two, maybe three month now, he break noise-box you bring me last time. Kokua plenty too much dam fool."

This was a real grievance with Tamatau, for the circus orchestrion presented him by Captain Boyle had been a source of delight to all Totulu, until it broke down, to the disgrace of Kokua, general factotum of Tamatau's little atoll-kingdom of Totulu.

"Jimmy can fix that, King," assured Boyle. "I bring you new tunes for that too."

"Maiti," said the mollified monarch, as Jimmy handed him his fifth flagon.

"Mrs. Boyle, she bring you something too, King."

Tamatau, whose glance had seldom wandered from the buxom countenance of the skipper's lady, which seemed to hold for him some strange fascination— somewhat to her embarassment, though she set it down as homage due— gazed at her with renewed interest. On her part, she had carefully rehearsed her presentation speech.

"I trust, sire, that they will fit," she said. "If they don't, I can fix 'em."

The king viewed the gift with admiration and thrust one paw in either slipper. But he made no effort to try them on, though the donor was itching to see the working effect of her industry.

"Maiti," he said. "Maiti!"

The talk drifted to copra and shell and hawkbill turtle, and presently the monarch rose ponderously from the settee which creaked it's relief.

"I go now," he said. "You come ashore soon, I show fahine all my present."

He puffed himself laboriously up the companionway, attended by Boyle, and puffed himself down the sideladder to his waiting whaleboat.

"A most agreeable person," said Mrs. Boyle as the skipper returned to the cabin. "But I wish he wouldn't stare so."

"You have made an impression, my dear. He seldom sees a woman of your style."

As a general rule, compliments from her husband were regarded as a suspicious commodity by Mrs. Boyle, but she accepted this one as currency.

"I shall love to see the things in his storehouse," she said.

The skipper, remembering pictures that had been cajoled from waterfront saloons to catch the robust fancy of Tamatau, hesitated.

"Don't think you'll care for it much," he said.

"The man's respectable, isn't he?"

The use of this adjective in connection with the South Sea ruler was so strange to Boyle that he gasped.

"Oh, Lord, yes. In that way," he answered.

"Then I shall go there first and visit with the ladies afterward."

It was a busy afternoon for the skipper, spent in making arrangements for loading a cargo, and it was close to twilight before he returned to his whaleboat.

"Where's Mrs. Boyle?" he asked of the waiting Jimmy, whose vigil had been beguiled by the company of a slim, golden skinned, midnight hair-and-eyed young lady of Totulu.

Jimmy had a na-u (gardenia) wreath about his neck and the friendship seemed to have passed the first stages. The skipper eyed them sharply, and the girl with a poorly staged attempt at unconsciousness walked off to the village, swinging her lissome hips.

"No philanderin', Jimmy," said Boyle.

"'Er name's Fuatina," answered Jimmy, dodging the issue.

"I don't care what her name is. I said no philanderin', my son, and I meant it. A friendly interest for the good of trade, but no mix-ups. Where's Mrs. Boyle?"

"She's hover wiv the wimmin in the queenery. Bin there two 'ours hor more. 'Ere she is, now!"

Escorted by a score of queens and lesser ladies, Mrs. Boyle came to the boat request ing to be rowed aboard promptly, as "she was hungry."

"The ladies," she announced later in the privacy of the cabin, "are interesting, but the king is a beast."

"What's wrong?" asked Boyle quickly.

"He took me to that stuffy storehouse of his, filled up with junk like a second-hand shop. There were pictures on the walls that were worse than indecent. I couldn't look anywhere but what I saw one. I think, seeing I am your wife, you might have warned me."

"My dear—"

"But that was nothing! The creature didn't want to show me anything. He wanted to look at my teeth."

"Your teeth?"

"I said my teeth, Captain Boyle."

"You must have been mistaken."

"I can read signs as well as the next person, I believe. I tell you he wanted me to open my mouth and let him see my teeth, as if he had been a dentist. But I told him exactly what I thought of him, and though he didn't appear to understand all of it, I don't think he'll care to renew the acquaintance in a hurry. Is supper ready?"

It was. And the lady's teeth were relegated to more pleasant purposes than the amusement of a monarch.

Captain Boyle wisely set aside the subject, resolving to open it later with Tamatau. But the explanation came naturally in the evening.

JIMMY had repaired the worn valves of the orchestrion and the entire population, fixed and visiting, of Totulu and it's lagoon, assembled on the beach to hear the strains— using the word advisedly— of the new records. Mrs. Boyle was the only absentee, having retired early after the excitements of the day. The concert was a grand success, "Come, oh, my hero" being first favorite, with "My Hoolah Boolah Maid" a close second.

But the searchlight made the supreme hit. With a full supply of carbide in the cylinder, Tamatau delighted in thrusting into unexpected publicity couples who had sought the security of shadows in which to make love. His guffaws of joy came to a sudden end, however, as the beam disclosed his reigning favorite, Fatua, palpably flirting with a stalwart Totuluan in the comparative obscurity of the side of a canoe.

Jimmy created a diversion by starting a new record and the blare and clang of one of Sousa's marches— butchered to make a South Sea holiday— restored the monarch's equanimity. He turned the searchlight on the orchestrion and shouted approval at Jimmy, who grinned in reply.

"Hi," said Tamatau. "Jimmy, you come along here."

The little supercargo came over to where the king and the skipper sat side by side on the sand.

"What you want, King?" he asked.

"I like look um teeth," said Tamatau, pointing to his own substantial masticators.

"My teef?" said Jimmy, wonderingly.

"Sure," said the king, indicating the molars of his massive jowl.

"H'im hon," said Jimmy. "You want um see gold teef."

He opened his mouth in the full ray of the searchlight, while Tamatau ponderously rose, and gazed at the crown-teeth of the supercargo's bridge work.

"Maiti no," he said. Then, to Captain Boyle:

"Your fahine, she plenty fine gold tooth."

A light dawned on the skipper.

"Sure, King! Many gold teeth, very fine, cost plenty much money. You like um?"

"I like," said Tamatau. "Where she get?"

"Sydney, King. Where did you get yours Jimmy?"

"Sydney, one side. This side was fixed in Tahiti, three years ago. Old Boileau, the French dentist."

"Tahiti!" said the king. "Suppose I go Tahiti, you think I can get?"

"Lord, King, you don't need any new teeth," said Boyle.

"I like," persisted Tamatau, evidently enraptured with his new idea of personal decoration. "Suppose you take me along in ship?"

"When?"

"Tomorrow. I pay. I give you pearl— maybe two."

Now Tamatau had many pearls which even at his reserve prices were bargains. Tahiti was a scant three hundred miles away. Boileau the dentist could probably be persuaded to rush his job as crownmaker to Totulu."

So reflected Boyle, but, wise in the responsibilities of South Sea trade, he warned the king—

"I think, maybe he hurt plenty much, King."

"All same I no give a dam," said Tamatau.

Jack Johnson must have had the same indifference to pain when he ordered his golden smile.

"All right, I look at pearls tomorrow," assented Boyle.

But the bargain did not end with the king. There was Mrs. Boyle to be considered, and that lady, though mollified at the explanation of Tamatau's interest in her teeth— she had thought it connected with a desire to learn her age— was not to be won over to the plan of the trip until she had secured one of the pearls of passage.

"It'll be a nice run," said Boyle. "You'll like Tahiti."

"I am not going!" returned his wife firmly.

"Not going?"

"For three reasons," replied the lady. "After all I suffered on the trip, I intend to stay ashore till my stomach is settled. And I'm not going to be cooped up with that king. Do you know what he did with my slippers? He was wearing them like a Scotch thingumajig."

"Sporran, my dear," said Boyle, remembering Tamatau's display of his latest gift, hung from the girdle of his pajamas.

"Besides," went on the lady, "the queens are very interesting. We have already discovered interests in common."

"I don't see how you get along with them. You don't know the language and few of them can even talk beach-English."

Mrs. Boyle regarded her husband with scorn.

"Women have no trouble understanding each other," she answered. "We got along very well yesterday," she concluded complacently, remembering the pleasant afternoon on which she had been the star of the reception.

Certain subjects of burning feminine interest had been inevitably left out. The questions of servants, of dressmaking and favorite salads, were naturally terra incognita to the Totuluans; but there had been the important matters of sickness to discuss, of patent medicines and the proper handling of husbands, that had all gone swimmingly, despite the lack of mutual vocabulary. Also, Mrs. Boyle had discovered a sad state of affairs concerning Women's Rights in the despotic little monarchy which she had already determined to alleviate. But of this she said nothing.

"Well," said the skipper, "if you've set your mind on staying, it can be arranged. I'll leave Jimmy with you."

"That sparrow! I can take care of myself."

"There's no question of that, my dear. They are perfectly friendly natives. It's a matter of your own dignity. Besides, Jimmy has work to do, getting the cargo ready."

"As long as he attends to his own business?"

"We'll fix him up a tent. As for your quarters—"

"I shall sleep in the Queen-House."

Visions of Mrs. Boyle— who was fond of her comfort— trying to sleep in a grass house open to the four winds and wandering insects, on a mat bed with a wooden pillow, surrounded by a score of queens, half of whom were obese and given to snoring; flashed across the skipper's mind.

"You wouldn't like that, my dear. Those grass houses are full of spiders— and centipedes."

"Ugh!"

"I'll have a proper bed fixed for you in the king's storehouse— we'll take out the pictures. There's a high fence on three sides and the lagoon in front. Besides, it's practically tapu. You'll need privacy."

"We-e-ell," said Mrs. Boyle, her flesh still crawling at thoughts of marauding spiders. "Perhaps that's the best thing to do."

"That's settled then. I'll go talk with Jimmy.

THE Margaret Ann left on the afternoon tide, with Tamatau, accompanied by the repentant Fatua— under discipline— ensconced in state upon the after deck. The orchestrion sobbed out "The Wearing of the Green" as a farewell lament, and the village, in canoes and afoot along the curving beaches of the lagoon, accompanied the barkentine to the reef-passage. Mrs. Boyle was in the king's whaleboat, manned, at her insistence, by men instead of it's regular crew of queens.

Jimmy had proved less difficult over the matter of staying behind than Boyle had feared. The work the skipper had mentioned was largely hypothetical until the barkentine returned; and the supercargo had six unused canvases and a new outfit of oils and brushes. Besides, there was Fuatina. Mrs. Boyle's quarters had been established to her satisfaction and Jimmy had a tent, improvised from a spare awning by Billy-Boy, set up on the beach away from the village.

The first two days passed quietly. Mrs. Boyle was in constant companionship with the select female society of the atoll, save when she was taking lessons in Totuluan from Kokua, who had acquired a fair knowledge of English on whaling voyages.

Jimmy was working hard on a canvas at a general picture of the head of the muleshoe shaped lagoon. Fuatina, adoring at his feet, held the spare brushes.

"Hits 'ell, getting this sand right," complained the artist, squeezing prodigally from fat tubes. "Hit looks w'ite, but hit hain't, w'en you see the foam. Hit's pink, hand yeller, hand the shadders his bloo."

A long cobalt shadow fell across the canvas from behind. Atupa, honorary paymaster of Totulu, spoke his approbation.

"Maiti, no," he said.

"You like?" asked the flattered artist.

"Maiti. Coco-palm plenty much good. All same walk about in wind. I like you make um pikitura my house."

"This paint, this canvas, cost plenty much money," said the astute little super cargo— Atupa had pearls. "This picture I sell um Sydney stop along."

"How much?"

"Maybe one hundred dollars."

Atupa mused.

"You take um pearl?"

"Hi'll look hem hover. W'ere's the 'ouse?"

The home of Atupa was on the windward side of the atoll in a clump of glossy bread fruits with the tumbling Pacific beyond. Both the view and a fine pearl stimulated Jimmy's ambition, and with the spell bound Fuatina as official assistant, he started work the next day. In the afternoon Atupa came to overlook the satisfactory progress. Jimmy's palette stopped mostly at secondary hues, but the result was academic to Atupa and he said so.

"That fool fahine papalangi," he said presently, as Jimmy shared with him beer from his private stock," plenty soon she make heap pirikia."

"What kind of trouble?"

"Oh too much pirikia. She speak men no good, women too much plenty good. She speak she think pretty soon men do all work. Women no work. Fahines they just sit along all time. Dam fool."

"Startin' the bloomin' cuckoo racket," said Jimmy.

But it was not his rôle to condemn the skipper's lady.

"Hit's just 'er talk," he commented.

Atupa's anticipation of trouble was shortly confirmed. First came Kokua that evening, complaining bitterly.

"That kapitani fahine," said the concertmaster and handyman of Totulu, "she all same crazy. She speak fahines no cook um, no work in taro patch, no fix um copra, no pick um pearl, no work um turtle-shell."

Jimmy turned to the lustrus-eyed Fuatina, never far away.

"Sure Kimo (Jimmy)," she corroborated. "Tonight plenty fahine no cook. Tomorrow they no work in copra shed. That fahine papalangi tongue plenty too much walk about."

"Well Hi'm not goin' to butt hin," announced Jimmy. "Hit's hup to the skipper hand Hold Tomato."

Next morning the men of the village gathered in groups instead of going fishing or working at their nets, volubly discussing the matter. They had had to cook their own breakfasts, Atupa said, and the women had refused to pound poi.

Jimmy was putting the finishing touches to the sketch of Atupa's house when Mrs. Boyle, tagged by a bodyguard of Amazons, obviously excited, appeared with a request that was a demand.

"I want you to paint a sign," she said.

"Who? Me? Hi'm no 'and hat letterin'," lied Jimmy.

"Then let me have some paint and a brush and I'll do it myself," said the lady, picking up a big tube of ebony black and taking the largest brush from Fuatina's helpless hands.

"'Ere, Hi s'y, Hi need that," demurred Jimmy.

"You can settle with the captain," returned the triumphant Mrs. Boyle, conscious of scoring, amid the giggles of the women. "Do you know where there's a hammer and nails?"

"Hi do not," he replied sulkily.

"Plenty hamma, plenty naili in storehouse," announced one of the older women, whose sleeveless garment of black and orange stripes projected in front like an awning, by reason of high living.

Jimmy went on painting, but his heart was not in it and he mussed viciously at the shadows.

WORK for women, in the apparent opinion of Mrs. Boyle, was only harmful when applied to the needs of the other sex, for in the next two days ample evidences of hard labor on the part of Totuluan femininity were plainly to be seen.

A scrambling fence of barbed wire— bought by Tamatau to keep the pigs out of his plantations— was stapled from tree to tree, zigzag across the widest point of the atoll. Bruised thumbs and scratched hands were much in evidence amongst the women, and glowering astonishment showed on the faces of the men who had been firmly advised to keep on one side of the crude, but effective trocha.

Jimmy, intent upon keeping out of trouble, stayed close to his own strip of beach, watching things develop. He watched with amusement the attempts of the island fahines, under the superintendence of the Woman's Champion— late of Sydney— to stretch a banner of white cloth between the two flagpoles in front of the storehouse. Presently it was fixed and the group of militants stepped back to admire.

Jimmy and Fuatina got into their canoe and paddled into the neutral waters of the lagoon for a closer inspection.

VOTES FOR WOMEN

So read the challenge, somewhat marred in effect by the crowding of the last letter against the edge of the cloth.

"And what have you got to say about it?" asked Mrs. Boyle aggressively, advancing to the edge of the lagoon.

Jimmy grinned.

"Hit's a fine job," he said— adding, "Hi don't fink," under his breath—  "Honly w'ots the huse? They hain't no votin' hon Totulu. Tamatau's the boss."

"Was the boss," corrected the flushed suffragette. And there will be votes. If the men have never voted, the way is clearer. For once the better sex shall come into their rights, without having to wrest them from the men. These long wronged sisters"— she indicated the huddle of complacent women— "shall see the dawn of a new day. Here in the South Seas the banner of militancy shall be flung abroad for all the world to see!"

"Here, where the spirit of rebellion is rampant, these vigorous Amazons shall establish the true kingdom of feminity. Here—"

"Ho, 'ave hit your hown w'y," said Jimmy as he backpaddled from the shallows. "Just you bloomin' well wait huntil the king and the skipper come 'ome. That's hall."

"What do you fink hof hit?" he asked Fuatina when Mrs. Boyle's harangue had become an echo. "You no want work hany more?"

"Fahine —— fool," said Fuatina conclusively. "Suppose we go along now, I cook you fine supper."

THE Margaret Ann came in next day to a divided reception. The men, who had pre-empted the canoes, met the barkentine at the reef-passage and clambered aboard before the anchor was down. The women were ranged in a phalanx beneath the banner of their slogan.

"What's all this fool business?" demanded Boyle of his supercargo, who was first to gain the deck.

"You can read hit, carn't yer?" said Jimmy. "Votes fer Wimmin. The missis 'as broke hout hagain, that's hall."

"And what kind of muck have you got inside your head, not to stop it?" asked his exasperated skipper.

"Hi didn't get no lessons hon 'ow to 'andle hit hin Sydney," retorted Jimmy.

His skipper subsided and turned to meet Tamatau, already apprised of the state of affairs, and raging. His face was muddy purple, his eyes congested, the veins of his neck ready to burst. The golden teeth, acquired at much sacrifice of pain and pearls, showed in a threatening grin.

"I fix it —— plenty quick," he announced. "You come along, kapitani!"

The ladder was rigged and the furious monarch descended with Captain Boyle into a hastily lowered whaleboat, urged swiftly toward the shore under the stroking of Billy-Boy.

The rank and file of the South Sea suffragettes faltered as the boat approached the storehouse, wavered again and shrank into the shelter of the trees as Tamatau bellowed a torrent of fluent Totuluan invective. Only their leader stood her ground, pale and trembly, but determined.

Tamatu strode ashore, grinding his golden crowns together as he passed her with a glare of apoplectic wrath.

The leader of the vanished legion turned to her husband but found in his stern countenance neither comfort nor opportunity for argument. She sniffed indignantly in the grinning faces of the whale boat's crew, now backed by the canoes of the Totuluan men, and followed her recreant recruits in their retreat.

In the late afternoon Fuatina brought a note to Jimmy, addressed to Captain Boyle, which the supercargo delivered to his skipper, still closeted with Tamatau inside the storehouse.

The skipper read it hurriedly and crammed it into his pocket.

"Get that truck out of here, Jimmy," he ordered, pointing out the bed that had been arranged for his wife. "Have Billy-Boy take it to the Queen-House. Mrs. Boyle is not going aboard tonight. That makes everything all right, King," he added.

"Sure," said Tamatau.

His complexion had resumed it's natural chocolate and the expensive golden smile was now expansively amiable. A group of empty bottles explained the nature of the emollient.

"I'm going to try the king's idea, Jimmy," said Boyle. "It's a good one. Can't kill, and it may cure."

"Jimmy, you take um drink?" invited Tamatau.

"Here's the scheme," went on the skipper, while Jimmy swigged at his glass. "The announcement is that men are unnecessary. We are goin' to put it up to them to prove it. Ebb runs till midnight or a little later. Every man-jack on Totulu will be aboard, quietly, and we'll take a little trip and let the ladies try it out."

"Fine," said Jimmy. "W'ere do we go?"

"You don't go at all. You stay here."

"W'y?"

"Because I'm not goin' to leave Mrs. Boyle alone on the island. This isn't a pleasant remedy and you've got to help me apply it. Besides, when things shape as I think they will, I'll want you to send word. We're going to Uafotu atoll. It's scant seven miles due southwest. But you're not to know where we've gone."

"Hi'm hon," replied Jimmy. "But Hi don't see w'y Hi should be picked hout."

"I'll make it right with you."

"Hany hanswer to the note?"

Captain Boyle considered.

"No. I guess not. Let it work itself out. Send Hardin to me and help round up the men."

A little after midnight, the moon sunk, the starset lagoon ruffled by the last of the ebb, the Margaret Ann, lightless, slipped her cable, and, under headsails and mizzen, two whaleboats ahead to help steerage in the scant breeze; sneaked away from the unsuspecting village where the women, braced anew by the arguments of Mrs. Boyle against desertion at the first issue, slept after the turmoil of the day.

Clear of the reef, the boats were called in, sail made and yards braced, and the barkentine was wafted silently on the light wind toward Uafotu, leaving the atoll manless, save for Jimmy— whose martyrdom held it's ministering angel in Fuatina, the only unconverted fahine on Totulu.

IT WAS the third day of the reign of women on Totulu. The banner still flaunted it's solgan between the flagpoles, the ensign of Margaret Ann, regnant; and that lady still maintained a dominance that was, however, beginning to show signs of internal dissension.

Fuatina supplied Jimmy with a service of verbal bulletins.

"Pirikia plenty soon I think," she reported. "Coconuts all gone and only young fahine can climb um tree. Young fahine mad along huapala (sweetheart) all gone. Fahine not very good catch um fish. No musika, no hula. Plenty pirikia."

It was even so. Mrs. Boyle was up against it. She was fighting primeval instinct that her own veneer of civilization prevented her from understanding. In the South Seas— and elsewhere— such instinct is divided into two parts, Sex and Stomach. Stomach had already set up it's complaint and Sex was realizing it's lack.

The twenty odd queens, having but one man between them, remained fairly loyal to the new principles. But there were babies in Totulu who wanted their daddies, wives who craved their husbands and providers. There were disconsolate sweethearts. There were younger maidens who were still angling in the delightful waters of flirtation where many fish swam and there were grand prizes for the lucky and skilful.

Kokua no longer played ravishing tunes on the noise-box and Kimo wouldn't, or couldn't— being as a man, anathema in the eyes of their leader. There was therefore no more singing, or dancing, or swimming in the lagoon with lusty male partners while the noise-box gurgled and clanged and hooted more or less melodiously. There were no more laughing exploits on the reef— with the same male comrades— with torches to spear for pool-fish when the nights were too warm and far too fair for sleeping.

The first row started over the lack of coconuts. Water was comparatively scarce on the atoll and seldom used for drinking— not to be compared with the milky, bubbling juice of young nuts, gathered at dawn and kept cool beneath banana leaves. The younger women, peeved at the lack of lovemaking facilities, balked at furnishing the supply for the whole crowd and climbed only for themselves. The maturer women with children, began to draw apart in groups. This fahine papalangi, they learned, had no children. "What was she to advise the mothers of men-babes?" The elders, who preferred gin and beer to coconuts, and sometimes got them when a ship was in the lagoon and their men were kind, grumbled among themselves.

Mrs. Boyle noted the symptoms of defection, but she could not prescribe for them. She was conscious of growing a little tired herself of her most faithful satellites, the queens. Curiosity, she realized had been the chief link between them, and that was getting rusty. She wondered where the barkentine was, and fought a constant temptation to question Jimmy, whom she had herself placed beyond the pale.

Sex and Stomach began to assert themselves in her, also. The captain was far oftener in her thoughts than he had been for many a month, and she remembered all sorts of good qualities he possessed that long custom had dusted with non-appreciation. She craved the delicacies set on the shelves of the Margaret Ann's pantry for her especial benefit. Poi and dried fish appealed less at every meal.

The storm burst on the fifth day. Jimmy was struggling with his third canvas in which the ever-troublesome sand persisted on looking more like snow, or powdered sugar. Fuatina was broiling some mullet they had speared together, and two bottles of beer were safely moored in the lagoon close by.

The skipper's lady, ploughing through the sand far faster than the lines of her build intended she should, received the whiffs of the savory fish in her nostrils as the kneeling camel does the last straw. Two tears started from her eyes and rolled slowly down her flushed cheeks.

"Oh Jimmy," she gasped. "They're drunk."

"Who's drunk?" asked Jimmy, glancing involuntarily toward the beer.

"The queens. All of the women, for all I know. They've been brewing some of that awful stuff all morning— lava, I think."

"Kawa," amended Jimmy.

"Whatever it is," said the lady, more tears following the first. "And— and they said I was only a hapa-fahine (half-woman) because— because I had no babies!"

Jimmy was standing by this time and Mrs. Boyle literally fell into his arms, a proceeding that— as she outweighed the little Cockney by some seventy pounds— was trying to the latter's balance and dignity.

"'Ere now," he said, bracing himself with wide planted legs. "'Ere now, you sit down hand 'ave a bit hof mullet wiv me. Hand a bottle hof beer," he added generous ly. "Fuatina, you cut halong hand find hout what's hup. Then come back to the storehouse. Hi'll paddle the lydy hover."

The astonished Fuatina, hungry despite her lovesickness, cast a reluctant glance at the mullet and sped on the errand of her heart's lord.

It was dusk, and an hour later before she came back, her eyes circling with news.

"I tell you, Kimo," she announced breathlessly. "My word, plenty pirikia walkabout quick along her. Pretty soon they too drunk, get plenty mad. They speak fahine papalangi no good. They speak she tahunga (witch). I think, soon they come along find her."

"Hi s'y, you know, this his a bit hof a muck," said Jimmy. "You go back, Fuatina, and all same watch out. Suppose trouble he start walk along you come back here plenty quick.

"You're safe 'ere'm'", he assured the frightened woman. "There's a 'igh fence hon three sides hand we can put some barbed wire halong the front to keep h'em hout, hif they start to get fresh. Hi wish Hi 'ad a gun!"

"You don't think they really mean any harm, do you?" asked the now alarmed lady.

Jimmy was humane— as his sharing of his fish and beer testified—but he was also human, and the recollection of his treatment by his skipper's wife during the voyage still held it's smart. He had no idea that there was any real danger and he decided that he might help, as his skipper had suggested, apply the remedy.

"Carn't s'y," he said. "No tellin' w'ot they'll do w'en they get properly tight."

"They aren't"— the voice of the militant faltered— "they aren't cannibals, are they?"

"Not lytely, not has Hi've 'eard hof. Hof course they was hall kai-kanaks once."

"Jimmy, do you know where Captain Boyle is?"

"W'y—"

The conversation was broken abruptly by howls from the direction of the Queen-House. Mrs. Boyle shuddered and shrank back as Fuatina darted around the fence.

"They walk along plenty quick," she panted. "Pretty soon all kawa gone, they come."

"What you think they do?" asked Jimmy.

"I think they try kill um fahine papalangi," said the girl, in evident earnest.

Another burst of yells added sincerity to her statement and spurred the little super cargo to instant action.

"'Ere," he said. "Fuatina, you catch wire back there on lanai. Mrs. Boyle you scare hup the 'ammer hand staples. You know where to find h'em?"

"Yes, thank God!" tremulously replied the disavowed leader. "I'll get them."

Swiftly a barrier was thrown across from fence to fence and stapled to the flag-poles beneath the discredited banner. They ran strand after strand across, the women feverishly helping with bleeding hands while the supercargo plied the hammer.

"They'll 'ave one 'ell hof a time gettin' through that," he announced at last. "Did they s'y w'ot they laid hout to do, Fuatina?"

"They speak they fix um fahine along post by reef. Suppose ship he come along next time, she all right. Ship no come, she mate— die.

Jimmy glanced at Mrs. Boyle, but she had retreated to the veranda.

"'Ell," he said. "You think they mean hit. Sure will do?"

"Sure, Kimo! They plenty drunk, plenty mad."

"Lokke 'ere Fuatina," said Jimmy prying out some staples. "You climb um through here, you run along canoe and go fast to Uafotu, plenty quick you paddle. You speak Kapitani Boyle, you speak Tamatau, they come quick!"

The girl slipped between the strands and was gone in the shadows. Jimmy could hear her swift feet lightly padding on the sand as he started to refasten the staples.

"My Gawd!" he said, half to himself. "Hif Hi honly 'ad a gun!"

"There's one in the storehouse," said Mrs. Boyle. "Where's the girl gone?"

"Gone to get 'elp," said Jimmy tersely. "Where's the gun?"

"It's a shotgun," said Mrs. Boyle, shivering as the drunken yells sounded from beyond the fence. "But I don't think it's loaded. It's on the wall."

"To 'ell wiv the load," said Jimmy. "Git hit. Hi'll bluff h'em. H'im goin' to start the searchlight."

He found fresh carbide and charged the lamp.

"Not a drop hof water in the bloody shop," he announced presently. "'And me that bottle hof gin. Hit may work."

As the spluttering burner broke into a spasmodic flame, it seemed to wrench forcibly from the darkness the leaders of a rabble of women with wildly rolling blood shot eyes and dishevelled hair, streaming round the corner of the fence.

"You keep back hout hof sight," commanded Jimmy to Mrs. Boyle. "'And me the gun!"

"Now then," he cried, as the frenzied savages shrank back from the barbs of the wire, "W'ot do yer want?"

"Eyah!" shrilled the dusky harridans, "Eyah! kela fahine papalangi!"

The front rank, thrust against the torturing strands, extricated themselves with bleeding hands and tom garments, only to be jammed against the wires once more by the rest.

"Eyah!"

Jimmy held the barrels of the empty shotgun where the searchlight shone on the barrels.

"You cut your luckies hout hof this," he shouted, "Helse Hi shoot. Fuatina she go fetch Tamatau —come along plenty quick. Chuck hit now, I tell yer. Hall of yer!"

MRS. BOYLE, cowering on the veranda, looked fearfully at the howling mob, their mouths slavering, hands clutching between the wires, vivid in the strong but uncertain ray of the sputtering lamp that threatened instant darkness as it choked on the mixture of carbide and squareface.

"You git back w'ere you belong now, Hi tell yer," repeated Jimmy. "Hi, you Tiarau!" He singled out a gaunt old hag with a frizzly mop of gray hair above her leathery face, wrinkled by time and her own passions till it looked like the leather of an imitation alligator-skin bag.

Her mouth, horny-lipped, held two yellow tusks in the thrust-forward lower jaw. Her face was like that of a giant lizard. She was an ancient of ancients, the oldest living being on Totulu, an aunt of Tamatau's, accredited with powers of witchcraft and puri a'naana— praying to death.

"You, Tiarau," said Jimmy, speaking in Totuluan with a Hoxton, London, England, accent, "Tamatau will be here with the captain right away. You make these foolish women go home."

"E-yah," snarled the crone in her own language. "This white woman is a witch and she has set her spells upon our men as she did upon us. Only with us, being women, her magic could not last. You say the men will come back. I have known white people to lie. How do we know they will come back? I tell you if they do not come on the intide, the white witch shall die! For, at the out-tide, we women of Totulu, whom she bewitched, will set her out by the reef to work her spells and bring back the men, or she shall surely die."

In the vindictive attack of the hag's speech, Jimmy could glimpse a picture of sharks coming in with the rising tide at dawn, swirling through the gray sea and tearing at something tied to a stake. The affair was grim. The little civilization these Totuluan women had acquired, had been stripped from them as they might have tossed aside a garment. They were jungle folk now, clamoring for their mates.

"Some of you will die first," he answered, menacing with the useless barrels.

"Let it be so! Yet shall the white witch die, unelss the men come with the intide. We will go now until the outtide flows. Then we will come with fire and burn down the fence."

Tiarau turned to the mob and spoke rapidly to them. There were yells of assenting "Ais" in reply and they withdrew, savage face after savage face appearing in the dying ray of the searchlight and vanishing into the blackness.

Jimmy drew a long breath. It was up to Fuatina now.

"Hif Hi could honly find some cartridges," he muttered, as he entered the storehouse.

Mrs. Boyle spoke from the darkness.

"What did they say?" she whimpered.

"Nothing much," answered Jimmy. "They've gone now." He scratched a match and lit a cabin-lamp that hung from a rafter.

"Are they coming back? Are they going to kill us, Jimmy?"

"Not hif Hi can find some cartridges," he said, pawing over the junk in the big room. "Hi suppose Hold Tomato's fired h'em hall hoff long hago."

"Don't you worry," he told the frightened woman. "They hain't goin' to do nuffin' till the hebb. That don't start huntil habout heleven, hand I think they'll wait till the tide's nearly hout."

"What time is it now?"

"Close hon to nine." He consulted his wrist-watch. "Hit'll be hall right. Don't you worry. Fuatina can make hit hin a little hover a hour. Thye'll come back a kitin' hin the whaleboats. Hought to be 'ere by ten."

"May I have your watch, Jimmy?"

Jimmy looked round the room. He needed the watch himself to check the anxious minutes.

"Hi!" he said, his eyes catching what they looked for. "'Ere's a clock. Hi'll wind hit hup."

He turned the clicking key and set the hands. As he stepped down a little door flipped open above the dial and a wooden bird jerked forward while a throaty cry sounded nine times.

"What's that?" nervously exclaimed Mrs. Boyle.

"Hit's a cuckoo-clock," explained Jimmy. "A cuckoo," he went on, "his a Hinglish bird w'ot's halways buttin' hin w'ere hit hain't wanted. Mostly the 'ens, I reckon."

If Mrs. Boyle caught any personal allusion she was too far gone to resent it. She shrank, as far as her figure would allow her, into one of Tamatau's roomy upholstered chairs, and moaned feebly.

"Not a bloody cartridge," announced Jimmy. "Hand that —— light's gone hout."

He went outside to tinker hopelessly with the caked carbide.

The ridiculous wooden bird clucked at it's appointed intervals until the hands pointed to half-past ten.

Jimmy, on nervous watch outside, heard a growing murmur from the village and saw a glow from behind the rear fence that spoke of advancing torches.

"Gawd!" he exclaimed under his breath. "This his too bloody close to be hamusin'. Ho, for just one load hof number twelve! Gawd!"

The murmurs died away and he could hear the woman moaning in the storehouse.

A flaring palm branch was tossed over the fence, followed by another. A little flame licked through the angle of the stockade and the dry posts began to crackle, while triumphant howls sounded from the frenzied Totuluans.

The cries suddenly merged with, then were drowned by deeper tones, among which the exultant Jimmy recognized the voices of his captain and of young Wilkins, the second mate.

"'Ooray! Won hin the larst lap! Come hon hout, Mrs. Boyle, hit's hall right." And he pried at the staples of the improvised fence.

"Take me away, Jerry lad, take me away," pleaded Mrs. Boyle, sobbing in her husband's arms.

"Sure, my dear," he comforted. "Sure! The ship can't get in against the ebb. Tide'll run for six hours. But we'll go in the mornin' to Tahiti and rest up a bit at the hôtel Êgalite. We came in the boats. There's another comin'. Tamatau's in it. There, there, acushla, it's all right, it's all right!"

Kokua, who had been working over the searchlight, succeeded, and the ray swept the lagoon. Jimmy and Fuatina had disappeared. All about stood the once more friendly women with those of their men who had come in the first boat. The disappointed ones grouped together like human candelabra, holding aloft the torches they had intended to use in burning the stockade. The fire had been smothered with sand.

A shout went up as the searchlight picked up the second whaleboat, working along close to shore in the slack of the tide. In the stem, Tamatau urged on the rowers. The queens, fearing wrath to come, sneaked away to their quarters.

Then, from where Jimmy and Fuatina had disappeared, came the sobbing toots of the orchestrion, with bang and clash of it's drum and triangle attachments. Jimmy had selected unerringly the proper record.

"Come! COME! CO-O-Ome, oh, my He-e-ro, Come! COME! CO-OME!" sounded through the night.

"JIMMY," said his skipper, as they strolled along the waterfront at Tahiti, two days later, "Mrs. Boyle and myself will stay here at the hotel, while Mr. Manners takes back the Margaret Ann for cargo. You'll go with him, of course.

"I want to get a present of some sort for the missis," he continued. "She's still pretty badly upset and I want to make it up to her someway. What do you suggest?"

The present was really an exchange for a promise given by the thoroughly subdued lady to leave the question of Women's Rights in other hands.

"Lesable's got some noo joolry," said Jimmy. "Nuffin like a bit hof bright stuff to please the lydies. H'ill look haround. Hi want to pick hout somefing myself."

"Fuatina?" quizzed his skipper. "That's a good idea, Jimmy. She deserves it. She saved the situation. And I take back what I said about philanderin'. I'll get her something myself."

"Hand Hi'll make Mrs. Boyle a present," said Jimmy. "Lesable's got some fine cuckoo-clocks. Hi'll buy 'er one hof them."

"A cuckoo-clock? What on earth for? She's got plenty of clocks at home."

"Ho, just for a sooveneer," said Jimmy. "Hit'll remind 'er of kings. There was a cuckoo-clock in Hold Tomato's storehouse. Hit'll remind me, too, w'en Hi come hup to the 'ouse for dinner."

________________

4: A Ghost of the Sea

Francis Prevost

1862-1949

Temple Bar, July 1893

Harry Francis Prevost Battersby

ONE TOUCHES the spiritual in letters with uncertain fingers. Destiny is involved enough for most of ns without invoking the super-known; and these breathless visitors leave a trail across human incident which spoils it for almost any purpose of comparison. Yet a ghost interests. Interests the common man, because he is a creature who doubts, and who would like to illumine the dim possibilities of death and judgment by a single proved apparition. He is bored by Moses and the prophets, but he craves something with wings. We may leave him to his illusions. Spook-aided conduct is barren in the end as all extrinsic morality, and this story is written neither to convince nor to startle. It is told by a student in human ailment for any equally interested, without comment on the possible reality of its terrible vision. Though no believer in spirits, I confess myself unable to explain what I relate on any theory, known to me, of alienation or telepathy which could over-ride such an accumulation of coincidence, and the reader must remember this confession as he proceeds.

The scene lay in northern Cornwall. It was not contingent to the story, but it made an effective setting. The events recorded here might have happened at any sea-board town as well as in that desolate valley of the West, which split the parapets of the red cliffs with a shifting wedge of sand. The dull roar of its waves hung always in the air, through which the shrill screaming of sea-birds stretched like sharp threads of colour. A thin brown stream wandered in the sand, as a traveller with tired feet. But every month, when the moon filled and the tide thrust its white face past the head, that film of grey river rose and bulged a belly of silver from shore to shore; leaving a fringe of sea-froth along the marshes, and tossing its sea treasures up against the hillocks of blown sand, tagged with sharp grasses, which hid the hollow of the combe.

A square white cottage on the south side, under the cliffs, seemed rather to enforce the desolate remoteness of the place, as though in that terrible quarantine only such men could live as were a peril to their kind. North and south, unbroken for miles, stood the sheer front of perilous cliffs, rent and twisted and scarred with fire, a veritable rampart of death; and even across this narrow haven was driven, for most hours of the tide, a seething fence of broken foam.

Landward were the lonely moors of Lyonnesse, swept by the wind's drag-net all the winter, savage and dark and bare; beneath them once the wrecker had made his den, and flashed false lights across the sea; and still, though he had gone, and only the merlin dropped now upon his prey from his floating anchorage in the air, death stayed between that oily current and the splintered fangs of stone— stayed and feasted.

I had been walking since morning, by the sheep-track along the cliff, half a midsummer day, and was dry even in spirit. Otherwise, probably, I should have passed by very much on the other side of that dreary staring sea-lodge, whose white walls wavered in the glare of heated sand. Instead, I ploughed ankle deep through the hot light dust, and noticed, as I neared the cliff, the figure of a man stretched lazily beneath it, whom I recognised, on closer inspection, as an old acquaintance, a man of the most social mind, who seemed completely inappropriate to such a place. He rose at my hail, and accepting the claim with a sweep of his hat, came towards me.

At closer quarters I seemed to lose the man I had known; the gait, lounge, and stoop were the same, but the face and hands were become like the veins of a withered leaf, and turned to the transparent brownness of a woodland stream. It was almost horrible. I asked what he was doing there. He eyed me guardedly, as if measuring my perception.

"Doing," he said, "nothing. What are you?"

"Walking; Cornwall, Devon, and a bit of Dorset; a coasting trip."

"And you've put in here for water?"

"For liquid of some sort; what have you?"

"Milk, whisky—"

"Good?"

"Smugglers! been robbing the Queen's revenue and defrauding thirsty throats for the last forty years. I unearthed it from an old safe my host had boarded up, warm as first love and mild as new milk; and, he being an honest soul and wearing a blue ribbon, I have had to lap it up myself."

As we walked towards the cottage he told me something of the place; of the man and woman with whom he lodged, who were sea-thieves become Methodist and agricultural; of that deadly coast, and the waste uplands about it; with weird tales and fears which gave a bleaker colour to the moorland light and almost to its people; but he told me nothing about himself. Yet of all wrecks, derelict on that shore, his was the strangest.

Six months earlier Dick Melton's face was among the wellknown of London. He was an authority in equity cases, the best teller of a dangerous story in Mayfair, and could sing a vulgar song urbanely. His future and his fortune were assured, and he was about to marry. Then, suddenly, he disappeared. It was given out that something— that ominous "something"— had happened, and that silence would be the kindest tribute to his memory.

We had met more than occasionally, and I had liked him. There was something distinctively straight and sane in bis thought and his talk. He admitted the divine right of no subject to silence, but of almost all things, not base or fool, to Borne sort of respect We had talked everything over with open hands, from the foundations of faith to the latest scandal, and were still good friends, without finding, I believe, a single point of complete agreement.

I had met Dick Melton last on the evening after he had won a long and intricate case and was in a vortex of congratulation. He was usually fond of praise, and of receiving it graciously, but that night he turned his back to it with an unmistakable "vanity of vanities" in a dulled eye. I noticed it then, I remembered it now, and wanted the reason. Doubtless the cause of that and of his exile were the same.

Yet I could make no guess. Moral delinquencies are not lived down by men of energy and talent in out-of-the-way places, and defaulting of a grosser sort leaves no uncertain track. Opium occurred to me, but a second glance at Melton's eyes dispelled that suggestion, and I knew of no other vice, too disreputable for our standards, which could lead a man into the wilderness or leave him there so completely his own master.

We did justice to the smuggler's whisky, and sat down under the cliff for a pipe, but Melton would not smoke, and, remembering what an epicure in tobaoco he had once been, I asked why. He shrugged his shoulders.

"Well," he said vaguely, "I've dropped it."

"Didn't suit you?"

"No," he answered, "it didn't suit me here." Here evidently made the difference. What was it? sea air, or piety, or failing health? He did not say; he seemed disinclined for speech, especially about himself; but while I spoke of London he warmed somewhat, as a Londoner will, and when I rose to go—

"Look here," he said, "you can't get to Stanna before midnight, if that is where you would stop; rest the night here, if you will risk our fare; my heart is dry for a little talk."

So I stayed, and, till the folk with whom he lodged came home from their work and spread supper, I told him all he cared to hear of the world he had forsaken. His interest was pathetic; sometimes keen and strained, then dropping back to a flat dead smile, as though he had suddenly pressed his face against some barrier he had forgot. He had been a politician with a grasp of foreign intrigue unusual in an Englishman, but now it was only of his friends that he asked news: he could neglect the fate of empires.

After supper I suggested a stroll by the sea, but Melton seeming nervously disinclined to leave the cottage, we sat under its great chimney through which the twilight stars could be seen before they shone in the open sky. He supposed I should be tired, and left me early; but I was surprised later, hearing the front door slam, to see him walking swiftly down towards the water. I lay for some hours awake, but he did not return.

ii

THE NEXT MORNING, after breakfast, when I had lighted my pipe before starting, Melton asked abruptly:

"Can you tell me anything of Miss Exmoor?"

I may have looked my surprise, for he added: "I was to have married her; perhaps you know that? It was broken off and I came here. I was to blame; I did it; did it badly too. But she never wrote me a word: girls don't, perhaps; it's less to them."

"No, no," I said, "it's more to them. That's why! They can't."

"A very curious why ," he sighed. "Can you tell me anything?"

There was a great deal I could not; he may have seen it in my face. I dropped him a few bare facts, thinking even they should have been disguised. "She is still unmarried," I concluded.

"Yes, I supposed that."

He hesitated a moment. "Will you tell me what is said of her ?"

"Good or bad?

" Anything. She flirts?"

"So they say."

"Yes, so they said; what woman does not who can ? Is that all?"

"That is all, I believe, but it may be a good deal."

"It was, you mean?"

"So I understood."

He looked hard into my eyes as if to strain the sentence from any malice they might have added.

"Are you in a hurry?"he went on presently; "if not, and it would not bore you, I should like to tell you why I am here. Yesterday I thought myself indifferent. I have thought so for six months, and really it amounts to very little what view the world takes of me in the end. Perhaps your presence has weakened me, for to-day I wish, when it is all over, to be understood. It is a bad business at the best, but even the worst— especially the worst— want justice; aye, and interest, kindness, almost love. I think, too, it might help her to be honest if she knew why I was false: oh ! I don't mean now, later, when I'm done with. Will you hear me?"

I replied by unslinging my knapsack. I was very willing to hear him.

"If you don't mind the sun," he said, "shall we go across to the dunes? I never warm now, there seems to be ice in my blood, but the sun helps me to speak."

We went across the river and through the yellow drift-sand to the wandering hillocks along the shore, tufted with snake-grass and the blue sea-holly. He spread himself on their steaming whiteness, feeling for the heat like a lizard.

"Curious," he said, as he lay with his open fingers pressed against the sand, "till you came I was content to be missed on any terms; now— I'm not.

"When I left you all I had the choice of saying why I went, and being thought a fool, or of holding my tongue and seeming a knave. I chose that; it's the simpler choice for a lawyer, but it was bitter enough at first. Then I came here and forgot it all, or supposed I had; it's easier to renounce the world than one fancies, but it's harder to renounce oneself. We want to be taken at our own figuring even when dust, in 'marble's language, Latin pure, discreet,' you know; that's the victory for most of us over the grave!"

He paused a moment, the bitterness passed from his face, and he smiled at me sadly.

"It's not all posthumous vanity," he said; "at present, from my tale, I should he judged merely a common liar; but later on, when I'm past the gain of anyone's pity, what I tell you may be credited, credited to me, and perhaps those who have trusted me may be less ashamed. Will you report it?"

I promised I would do that and more. "

There is no more," he said. Then he drew himself up on to his elbow, and began abruptly: "I was in Egypt three years ago; you may remember. There was a difficulty about some Canal Bonds, and I represented clients a good deal interested. Well, that doesn't concern us. I stayed in Cairo, at Shepheard's ; I met a girl there who was good enough to take a deeper interest in me than I deserved. Her father was something in the Government reconstruction department; something big; and she and her mother were waiting till a house should be ready for them. The story is too long to tell. In the end we vowed the usual eternities, and I repented of them in a week— no! in about three. She was one of those girls who think that everything this side of a certain temptation is virtue, and they include a good deal; a perplexing amount to a man who confounds it with propriety, and who imagines that a woman who begins with a wink will stop nowhere; but she often stops very suddenly."

He looked nervously, as he spoke, towards the sea.

"I'm speaking for myself: I made that mistake. I behaved badly, but she only liked me the better, because she thought me too staid before, and supposed that she had made the difference; and a woman likes to make a difference, even for the worse—if she loves you."

I doubted the point, but did not debate it: there is, perhaps, no moral postulate true for all the sex, or false for some member of it. But I dislike all ex uno generalities.

Melton shifted his position to a fresh patch of hot sand, and spread out his arms.

"I had to leave for home rather abruptly," he went on, "and we arranged nothing but to write. I thought she would forget me in a month or two, and hoped it fervently; but she did not. She wrote every week for half a year; then came a break, and whilst I was wondering what had caused it she appeared in London. She had persuaded her mother that she required change; but it was on a change of name that she was thinking, and she had come for it to me.

"It was early in the season; I met her at a crush before I knew she was in town, and she told me she had been living for that moment. I never saw her again. I think she must have heard shortly after that I was engaged to Miss Exmoor, but she never reproached me even through the post. She spent the summer quietly, I believe, with some country friends, and left in the autumn for Egypt.

"That was May. In September I was at Eastbourne. It was towards the end of the month, the one fine month of last year, if you remember. Miss Exmoor was staying there with some friends, and I joined her for a week after some climbing in the Pyrenees. I was as fit as a man could be, and my time and mind full of two big cases to come on before Christmas. Would you consider me," he said, turning sharply round, "a likely subject for hallucinations or any other sort of nervous mania?"

"No," I replied; "no man less so."

"So I supposed," he said; "you thought me over sane at times. Well, we used to walk every evening after dinner on the parade, and one night I had strolled with Miss Exmoor the length of that brick-paved walk towards the Head. Coming back, I noticed a curious yellow streak of light in the water near the shore. It moved as we moved like a ray of the moon; only it was no ray, but a misty brightness, and there was no moon to make it. I stopped and pointed it out to my companion, or rather, I tried to, for she could see nothing, and rallied me jestingly on afterdinner apparitions. "l a m a trifle short-sighted, you know, and do not see quite clearly in the dusk, so I put up my eye-glass to discover what the thing could be.... It was the body of a woman floating within the water near the shore, floating------"

"Do you mean to say," I broke in, "that your glass defined what had seemed a blur of light to the shape of a woman?"

"That is what it did," he said; "the shape appeared to float in the water as a cloud floats in the air, for it was bent somewhat with the movement of the sea; and slid through it swiftly like a fish, but without apparent effort."

" Do you know what this little business of your eye-glass means as an argument?" I asked.

"I know now, of course; then— I knew nothing. I felt a choking coldness round me, like the coils of a snake, that throttled me numb; it seemed as if my blood were running out at my feet. Men jest about fear; they never would if they had felt it. I forget what I said or did at the moment: laughed the thing off somehow, managed anyhow to dupe my companion, and got her indoors. The rest of the evening was like a fevered dream. The rosy lamps, the murmur of women's voices, the flicker of their jewels, the quick notes of music, the long wail of ft song, a certain blatant red screen, all seemed blended in a misty tank of green water, through which the body of that woman went. I endured it to the end, but before the last good-night I was on the beach, harrying down to the sea. It was there to meet me, rocking indolently to and fro, beautiful, terrible, the graceful figure of a girl, faintly luminous, and the pale colour of its loosened hair. I don't think I doubted for a moment what it was: there was an instant flash of recognition in its eyes, the lips smiled; I had kissed them all too often under the hard Cairene moon not to know them then. I cannot remember now what I said, or how I acted; so much has happened since, and I was in no state to observe. I questioned it, commanded, implored, but no answer came back, though its eyes seemed to show I could be heard. "The next day I was in town. Morning brought new confidence, and I told myself that this was business for the doctors. I saw Hadley Burroughs— do you know him?"

"Yes."

"He is as good as can he had, isn't he?"

"For the eyes, yes."

"I asked him to look at mine, but I told him nothing of what I had seen. He said they were in perfect order, and fit for anything. I went on from him to Spencer."

"Sir Evan?"

"Yes; he takes that kind of failure, you know. I told him my trouble as far as I cared to, and sat down under his glasses. He found incipient optic neuritis; you know what that is?"

"No, in Evan Spencer's patients I do not. I believe it is something in his ophthalmoscope. Anyhow it is catching, for no one who consults him escapes it."

"I see, something bogus? So it struck me at the time ; but he thought it could be cured if I would consent to take sufficient trouble. I explained that the trouble was with me already, and promised absolute obedience. But it came to nothing. He said I must have change, go to the sea, and so forth. To the sea, forsooth! but I went— for one night. I told myself the whole thing was irrational; but I found it easier to say so in town than on the beach, and came back.

"Then I tried to 'devil ' the thing myself; bought a dozen books on diseases of the brain, nervous apparitions, partial mania, blunders of the eye, and so forth; all very interesting, but telling me nothing I did not know and everything I did not want, so I shut up the books, and waited for something to happen. But nothing did. I seemed absolutely sound and sane. I even persuaded myself the appearance had been some passing derangement, and went down one afternoon to Brighton to test a new stretch of sea."

"Why?"

"To get clear of association. I thought I had succeeded, for though I stayed all that evening on the front I saw nothing. I went hack to my hotel on wings. But the evening after, the thing was there, floating in the water at my feet."

"The next night?" I inquired.

"Yes, the second. I went after that to several other places, and it was always on the second night that it appeared."

"That seems as though the salt air had something to do with it."

"Does it? I told myself a dozen things of the sort, and believed none of them. In fact, I believed nothing. The appearance of the mental image of one's late sweetheart is not, in black and white, so very terrible; only, unhappily, it was not in black and white, not indeed in anything commonly conceivable, nor was it a mental image. I had never seen, nor, indeed, so thonght of her; in spite of the inducements of her evening dresses. It was my consolation to believe they were still aiding her flirtations, for I told myself that no woman who flirts could well achieve a spiritual duplicate. And as the practical solution of my trouble was apparently to avoid the sea, I determined to adopt it. But even that failed me.

"I had returned from a 'week end' in the country, and found a letter waiting me from Eygpt. It was from a friend there, and mentioned the death of Miss.... I can't give you her real name, but the one I used will do— of Miss Charmian, on tho last arrived P. and O. It was believed she had fallen overboard. She was accustomed, it seemed, to sit upon the taffrail, in spite of cautions, and was last seen there one evening. No splash had been heard and no cry, though the night was an oil calm, and many passengers were on deck.

"That letter altered all things for me, and ended them; it was my order of dismissal from this company of strolling players, in which I hoped to take the big parts. I made out from it that Miss .... Charmian must have been drowned when the boat was a couple of days from Port Said, the night before I had seen at Eastbourne that ghostly body in the sea."

"That was surmise?"

"It was at first, but I confirmed it. She was missed about twenty-five hours before I saw her."

"Her!"

"Yes, that closed the pleadings: I had known it was she all along, but between 'her' dancing, laughing, flirting as I supposed, and 'her'— dead was all the difference."

"How?"

"Ah! one was nothing, some trick of thought-photography we're not in touch with; at least, so I told myself; but the other was all. She desired me, despaired of me, died for me! that was herself!"

"Did it frighten you?"

"No, I think not. It stunned me. I felt it was the end. It stamped itself red and broad across my brain, as a signet crushes out the wax, so that every thought afterwards must show some part of the pattern. I fought it for a month, with that shadow of death between me and my fellows, and an empty chair beside me at every feast, but only for a month. Then I made my bow to the big audience I loved so well, to the woman I worshipped, and came down here."

He shivered as he spoke. I wiped the heat and, possibly, the fear from my face, and looked out over the sea.

"What do you make of it?" he asked presently.

"Not much," I said; "the eye-glass beats me, and the coincidence of that appearance with her death, you being a complete stranger to the fact, would be astounding as coincidence. Of course a doctor says everything of the sort must be eyes or brain. There may be something wrong with the sight which causes you to see the thing which is not; that is fairly common ; people see spectral cats, or donkeys, and so forth, but we consider them sane so long as they know what they are looking at, and don't desire to stroke or ride them. Or a man's eyes may be all right, and the mischief further in, making him fancy things that are not; that is mania of a sort also common enough, but its victim may be perfectly sane otherwise, and is called so if he is conscious of his delusions, but when he begins to mew to the cat or cut sticks for the donkey, we shut him up."

"I see, and are those the only two causes of trouble?"

"Oh, no, the causes are many, but they work out at the top in much the same way."

"Yes, but if my eyes are amiss, how does my glass help them ? If the trouble is inside, nothing outside can define it."

"No, I admit that."

"And if my brain is the traitor, why should it go wrong that very day, the first on which some other theory becomes possible ? Doesn't that stagger you?"

"It certainly stretches the tether of chances."

"Besides, if this thing were an illusion, wouldn't memory come in somewhere? Shouldn't I be likely to re-see the woman as I was used to see her? Don't delusions make their bricks for the most part of remembered straw, and, further, would not one's previous notions of beauty and canons of taste count for something?"

"Probably."

"But they don't! I see the woman as God made her; I see her changed from the colour of life, not to the white of death, but to the hue of some imprisoned light I could not match in the rainbow. Is that likely as an illusion ? And is it not less so that so unhuman, so bizarre a creature should at once impose itself on one as resistlessly beautiful?"

"I think there is not so much in that," I said; "one often sees in dreams what seems to be outside experience, and all sorts of strange admirations are possible in trance."

"But this is no trance," he said. "Perhaps not, but it might be."

"Trance! do I seem entranced?"

"No, not now, but the motion of the sea at night might have an hypnotic effect?"

He laughed.

"What are you going to do here?" I asked.

"To do ? I'm done with doing. What view do you think the high court of common talk would hold of a man who loved to distraction a floating ghost of the sea? There's only one alternative to the head that wears a crush hat in such cases— you must be mad, or it must be ignorant; I needn't tell you which it takes. Do! no, I remain. I don't know what you doctors call this," holding up a lean bloodless hand, "but I shan't run to much more of it."

No man knows another's trouble; even the heart often knows of its own bitterness only the scald and strain. I said what I could, not of comfort, none was possible, but of pity, which I felt from my soul.

"But you don't believe me," he mourned.

"Give me time," I pleaded; "we're on such broken ground in these matters at present, that one doubts every foot-print. I've never found cause to believe in spirits, and my conversion at such short notice would be worth very little. Have you seen nothing more?"

"More," he said slowly; "I wonder sometimes if there can be more. I have seen the sea grow white with the faces of the dead, as the shallows grow white in storm. For the sea is full of the dead, of the faces of the dead that are drowned; some mere trails and wisps of things with eyes, some fearfully imperfect, some beautiful. They tear to and fro like caged beasts within the waves, not heeding each other, but staring into the air, and their faces are not as ours, but sharp as the stript passions of men."

"How have you seen these things?" I inquired.

"Bit by bit; first a shadow, then a light, then a face; some come and go, some stay; many, perhaps, I do not see, for there is often a stirring in the sea which I cannot understand."

"Do you see them by day?"

"I have seen them faintly, not often."

"You think they are there always?"

"Certainly."

"Did it strike you that these further visions somewhat discounted the reality of the first?"

"No, why? If there is one ghost in the sea, there must be many; its dead are many."

"Yes, but why should you see them by degrees ? That looks like sympathetic extension along whatever diseased nerve or fibre produced the first appearance."

"The eye sees what it has learnt to see," he said absently, "almost what it is told to see. The lens only brings the picture in to the plate, and the plate is sensitised by our brains; we see what we have the wit to see. Look!" He waved his hat, and a cloud of startled birds rose suddenly at the edge of the sea, and swirled to and fro in dispersing sheets of shaded whiteness. "What have you seen?"

"Birds," I said.

"Aye, but what! Did you see the dunlins wheel from white to grey, or the pigmy curlews by their bills and tail-coverts, or the redshank by his stripes, the sea-pie's bill, or the peewit's crest ? You saw none of these! Why? They were there, I saw them all."

"I understand," I said; "but men have pointed out to me blue fishes in broad daylight crawling over their boots."

"Oh, come!" he interrupted, "my argument was that things of real existence might be invisible till we learnt to see them."

"Yes," I said, "I understand."

iii

WE LUNCHED together in the cottage on bacon, porridge, broad beans, and potatoes— cold, the fire having expired, and Melton being too indifferent to re-light it And I could remember when  he would have refused an ortolan that lacked quince in the cooking.

While we ate, he proposed I should prolong my stay a couple of days.

"Though there is nothing to see here but me," he added plaintively.

"That will be enough," I replied.

"I believe," he hazarded with a smile, "you are the same old broker in curios as ever, and I am the last."

We sat in the rough porch while I smoked a pipe, and afterwards climbed out along the jagged ledges of rocks to the edge of the sea. It stretched from us four thousand miles to the cities of the New World, and rose for the first quarter mile in a foaming flight of white steps, which rose steep in storm and fell thunderously, so that the noise of them far inland was like the sullen roar of guns.

The tide was running now, and went past us straining and plunging towards the shore. The sun dropped red into a ditch of clouds, and burnt the watery sky above him to a fierce strong glow, which turned the sea in its turn to a flood of purple dye. The colour ran eastward, and we faced about to watch it, in Melton's phrase, "play the fool with everything."

"Listen!" he said abruptly.

I could hear nothing but the rush of the waves.

"The ground swell is rising," he explained; "it is only a whisper now, but it will howl before midnight. Hello! What's that?" It seemed nothing to my eyes, as I followed the direction of his, but a white angle in a ledge of rock just reached by the sea.

"It's a man's arms," he said.

"Rubbish !" I retorted, "it's a bent quartz vein."

But as I spoke the water pushed it forward.

"Well, it's a quartz vein that will have to be buried," he replied, "so we may as well go for it at once."

I saw, as we came nearer, that he was right. The water in the gulley was rocking a man's body along its narrow trough; the arms were raised, and the hands clasped tightly together above its head in some last wild appeal to a deliverer. They were stiff now as wood, but there was in them an agony more terrible than stared from the eyes; their failure seemed fixed there with a kind of malice.

Melton picked his way along the upper shelf of the cleavage, and tried to lift the body by the neck of its jersey, but the stuff gave way.

"Lend a hand, will yon?"he cried, "we must carry it fore and aft between ns." It was no easy matter walking along that knife edge, with the water pnlsing over one's boots, and those poor sodden limbs swaying between ns, and Melton slipped once into a crevice above his thighs; but we managed to get on easier ground and carried the drowned man np to the border of the dunes. Melton stooped down, turning the body over in search of some cine to its identity. Used as I am to death, there seemed something callous in his treatment. He peered into the eyes.

"Swede," he hazarded.

"Close them!" I said.

He looked up sharply.

"You don't like it?"he inquired.

"No, I don't! and I prefer to treat the dead with more respect."

He smiled, and his smile was sadder than the dead man's despair, bnt he drew the lids down quietly, and laid its limbs together. I placed two shells on the eyes, and as I rose, Melton passed his arm into mine and we left the body there, slanting, facing the west, and tinged with the last dull purple light.

"It's only a body," remarked my companion after a pause, musingly, and, I thought, with apology.

"A man's body," I said.

"Man's body or dog's body; there's no odds in bodies."

"I don't agree with you," I replied.

"No, I suppose not, because neither you nor your friends believe in immortality with all your wits; you say man has a soul and a body, but the fact is that man is a soul in a body. Could you see, as I do, the souls of men naked in the sea, you would not trouble about their eye-balls."

I said I considered funeral sentiment merely an extension of tenderness to the most helpless, a loyalty in compassion, but he disagreed; it was fear, he said, fear and doubt, and to change the subject I asked if there had been any wreck to account for the remains.

"There was a boat sunk under the island two days ago, run down; they sent notice of it along the coast, and Tom has been on the lookout I believe; he makes something from these finds."

I had been hungry, but ate little supper; the recovery of corpses does not better one's appetite, and I was bothered by a disquieting resemblance between the horror in the dead man's eyes and a look I had seen once or twice in Melton's.

"Tom," said the latter, to our host during the meal, "there's a body on the south harrows."

"Aye, and how tem it there, sir?"asked the man. "We hauled it out of the water for you; came down channel, I fancy."

"Rent, sir?"

"No, drowned quiet by the look of it; possibly one of that boat's crew— the Sea-gull's, was it?"

"Aye, aye, vury laike, vury laike. Them that go daun to sea in ships," he murmured, treading vaguely through the verse, as though conceiving that the fitness of things in such accidents demanded scriptural balance.

"Ah, Tom," said Dick Melton sadly, "there are wonders in the deep waters stranger than ever that singer dreamed of."

After supper we sat talking of times past and of things gone for good and bad, till Melton rose suddenly with an air of nervous apprehension, and, begging me to excuse him, went out. The old couple beside the fire watched him and shook their heads. I laid a fore-finger interrogatively to my own.

"Lor! bless you naw, sir," said the wife decisively, "naaght wrang there. A straange gent'man is Mister Malten, but's got's wits and to plenty."

They gossiped together of their lodger, ignoring me, but in acknowledgment, it seemed, of my interest. They had clearly no doubts as to his sanity, and treated his salving of the corpse as proof of an improvement in his economic ideas. Their talk wandered to other such derelicts with unpleasant precision of detail, though they seemed to enjoy it, and showed incidentally a fund of rough pity and pious trust in the benignity of other men's misfortunes.

iv

MELTON'S forecast had been fulfilled, and one could hear the slow continual thunder of the surf deepen as the tide laid open the river mouth to the sea, and over it the hoarser trumpeting of the bar. The boom of water that breaks on water through a mile of beaten foam is very different from the clash of water that breaks on shore; there is a deadly softness in it that smothers sound, and deadlier strength.

I listened alone for about an hour, while its note crept down among the deepening seas, and then a womanish fear of my own company overcame me, and I went out.

Water was running close to the cottage where in the morning had been a triple bank of sand: I dipped my fingers into it and put them to my mouth; the taste was brackish. The tide had dammed the river back and forced it out across the fields. I walked on to the little wooden bridge which spanned a dried elbow of the stream, but it was covered by the flood. Clearly Melton had not turned north, so I faced towards the lower margin of the dunes where the dead man lay. I passed it with a shudder, and a little further on found Melton standing by the edge of the dim waste of foam which seemed to slant upwards into the sky; his hands were thrust into his pockets, and he was staring out across the sea. I thought he would start at my touch, but instead I had to shake him.

He looked round at me dully.

"What's up?"he shouted through the pounding of the sea.

"Nothing— nothing!" I called back, "only a bit lonely!"

He caught hold of my arm, and walked me back from the shore. "Lonely?"he said, when the roar ceased to choke our words, "with all that company!" and he nodded towards the sea; "I wish I could introduce you."

I wished nothing less; that company, even at second-hand, seemed undesirable.

"He is there to-night," he went on; "your friend with the eyes; I wonder what it was they saw. Pious people fancy that the drowning edit a review of their past lives during its last half-second; but that is one of their many kind arrangements which don't always come off. I have been pulled out of the water, drowned as far as any consciousness went, and all I can remember thinking of was a row of poached eggs, which was curious, because one generally sees them in a circle, a shape which might have entitled them to consideration as an intimation of immortality." He spoke in a drawling nervous way, different from his common speech, which always bit. "I suppose you expected to find me raving somewhere along the sands to an inapparent audience of little fishes," he continued; "I'm afraid you've missed that exhibition, though I do rave sometimes; that is permitted, you know, to a lover. I've even stood waist-deep in this water to kiss the ripple which seemed to be her mouth, and to see the gold light on her arms run round me. Oh! I've played the fool to perfection and with complete perception. I've felt the wet chill through my clothes, and considered the nuisance of changing them as I waded out to my goddess."

He sighed, and then said in an altered way, "come, you're cold; let us go in!"

He turned as we left the bay, flung baok his face, and sang out to the rolling seas:

"Good-night!"

"Don't think me mad," he said, "on that account; it's matter of habit and courtesy. It strikes me if all this were pure fancy, I should sometimes hear a reply."

"You never do?"

"Never! No word or whisper have I ever heard, though there's provocation enough, God knows. Surely, if there's any self-persuasion possible in the matter, it might come in there ? Why, I've watched her mouth purse round the pet words she used to use, and seen them written in her eyes, and yet heard nothing, though the seas were crying 'Sweet' from shoal to shoal."

He turned on the threshold of the door.

"Ah, me! and to think that all of it may but be a slackened spirt of blood across my brain."

I stayed there the day following, and have sinced wished heartily I had not. I was, in fact, somewhat ashamed of myself, and wanted to see my philosophy come back on the spot. It did not come, however.

As the day went on, I began to feel my companion's presence in a curious way. It was not alone that he was there, but as though something were happening about him, a movement which one felt with an unknown sense, but felt as consciously as a draught of air.

I told myself it was ridiculous; that it was not in reason and could not be in nature; but arguments against one's senses are as useless as firelight to a man with an ague; and a glance at the strange transparence of Melton's face did not mend matters; there is nothing in reason nor in nature to make the flesh of a healthy man like brown water, but something had done it.

We sat and talked all day. It seemed futile enough at times to discuss the world's progress with one who had stepped off its path and would never lift a hand to stay or move it more; but it was of interest to him. He reverted only once to the trouble whioh had brought his sentence of banishment, and it was of a graver sentence that he spoke.

"You ask for how long I am here. You ought to be able to tell me that. I am here for as long as I last."

I interposed something in protest, not very coherent, I imagine, for he said: "You remind me of the Irishman who was certain when his friend had been sentenced for life, that he would not live half the time. I am here for life, and I shall not live the half; will you forgive me if I ask you a favour on the strength of it ? Yes?"

"Go on."

"When my 'Weighed and found wanting ' is written, will you come if I send you word ? I am not afraid, but just a bit shy of death— this death. It's a stupid request, but I should like to have you here if you could come—to see me off."

I said, with the conventional insincerity men use towards death, that be had many years before him; but that I would come from any quarter of the world when the word reached me of his need.

"I thought you would," he said.

After supper we went out together; he even locked his arm in mine. The night was clear, but wandering clots of cloud, black against the deep night-blue, were floating in from the sea. The stars flickered round them like the points of spears.

Held so close to my companion, I felt, or thought I felt, a dull vibration in him; it was a vibration and not a pulse, but I failed in any way to define it.

"It is so strange," he said as we went along, "if these things are really here and not the bad jokes of my brain, that you cannot see them. Mountain loads of fiery chariots may have required second sight, but it seems incredible that the ring of light out there should be invisible to anyone."

"Where?"

"About half a mile off the point; due west."

"I daresay; but most people can see a moonbeam."

He looked at me with a curious smile. "Seldom one so much refracted," he said; "the moon won't be up for two hours."

I gazed at the strange glow steadily for a full minute; it lay on the water in an irregular plait, as the colour of moonlight, but brighter at its outward edges.

"Look here," I said, wrenching my arm from his, "I didn't stay here to see your ghosts, and if you've any confounded way of making them visible, I hope you'll drop it."

"I have no way," he replied in a low voice, "and I would not for worlds you should learn to see them if I had. Ah, my God, no! one is enough. Come, let us go indoors."

As he spoke the light slowly faded, burnt up again an instant, and disappeared. We parted at the door; he went back to the sea.

I tried to sleep. But I did not succeed, and I lay by my open window till the plovers' call came from the shore and the east grew yellow; then I got up and lit a pipe. Melton came in about two hours later with the early dawn. He seemed utterly exhausted, and staggered. He held out his hand.

"You're not offended, are you?" he said.

I took his hand and pressed it, more Borry for him than could be said. He returned my pressure faintly, and sat down beside me, holding my hand. Before the sun was hot we had breakfasted in his little room overlooking the grey sea, and I set out once more upon my way.

NOTHING reached me from that desolate haven for ten full months.  Then, one morning in early spring, a telegram was forwarded me from town with the one word "Come!"

I should have understood it without the soft name of the Cornish post-town on the sheet; and started west at once. My absence from home lost me the express, and left me to be dragged over the slow miles at my journey's end into the early hours of the morning. I was able, however, to charter a gig at once, and started by daybreak for the long hilly drive towards the sea. When we pulled up at the head of that sandy valley, the day was hot and calm, with a faint veil seawards of mist. I pushed on hurriedly to the cottage, and found the two old people sitting in the kitchen, the woman's arms lying limp on the white scrubbed table, the man's by his side. They looked the picture of palsied fear, lifted their heads together with a jerk as I entered, and said without further greeting:

"He's out!"

The quaint absurdity of it struck me, anxious as I was. The woman's head dropped forward as I turned to go, and she groaned out—

"Eh, I've seen sech things!"

I went rapidly along the lower line of the dunes, and then, finding nothing, turned north across the stream. My ideas were so fixed on a walking figure, that I almost passed unnoticed the body of a man lying flat on the wet sand between the barrows and the ebbing sea. I ran forward, and kneeled beside it ; but that which had been Dick Melton was passed for ever beyond reach or need of help.

He had fallen with his face towards the sea, his arms flung out before him. He must have dropped in the thinnest film of the retreating tide, for his sleeves were soaked on the under side. His face was buried between his arms, and I think he had drowned in about half an inch of water, but owing to his exhausted condition nothing but an opinion was possible, and the inquest doctors would only certify to syncope. I have fancied that, knowing he was near his end, he had flung  himself forward into the sea, hoping by a like death to be united to the woman he had once loved so ill; but that he died thus is only surmise, for the very effort may have cost him his life. Yet one wishes to think that those poor lovers, whatever the meaning of his strange vision, in their deaths at least were not divided, for, truly, remorse of love never paid its debt more fully.

He had begged for burial among the sand dunes of the shore, but the law forbade him that and laid him, still within sound of the sea, beside the little church in the combe. It stands, as it has stood for nine centuries, squarely and bravely against the fierce blasts of the storm, among a scanty and prayerless people— the furthest outwork in God's war. And from lichened archways above his grave, Saxon ghouls peer still through the driven mist, after the nights and days of a thousand years; while beneath them, the foam sheet thickens, and the echoes of its thunders drown into silence the imprisoned ghosts of the sea.

_________________

5: Suffocated

May Wynne

Mabel Winifred Knowles, 1875-1949

World's News (NSW), 8 March 1924

"ANN EM'LY," said the Church Army worker, cheerfully, "here's a lady come to see you. She wants to see how clever you are at making boxes."

Ann Em'ly scarcely raised her head. She worked by measured time. So many of these tiny matchboxes every five minutes, else— if a five minutes slipped away and was lost— she wouldn't get the number made. So she worked on, jerking her head up for that one and only glance. She was not nearly as interested in the rich lady as the rich lady was in her. She was too busy even to resent Sister Widrock making a show of her. She may have known that Sister Widrock was her friend, who wanted to in-terest the visitor in her lot.

But, after all, such knowledge was merely sub-conscious. Life to Ann Em'ly was merged into the constant necessity to keep time. So many boxes to so many minutes... so many minutes for so many boxes.

Rosemary Desleen watched, fascinated, the nimble, dextrous fingers, snipping, bending, pasting, measuring. Each box perfect. No blundering, no hesitation.

"The pre-war price was twopence half a gross," said Sister Widrock, in her show-woman voice; "now it is rather more, but she has to find the paste. Ann Em'ly earns sixteen shillings a week, and keeps her little brother and sister. Oh, no. There is no dole... unless she were unemployed. Would you like to go to the next floor? A most interesting little Irishwoman with triplets."

"No," said Rosemary Desleen. "I do not want to see any more." Then she moved forward, and touched Ann Em'ly's arm.

"You are young," she said; "don't you get tired of— boxes ?"

Again Ann Em'ly's violet eyes were raised. "S'pose so," she said, briefly, "but 'tain't no use." And she picked up another strip of matchwood.

There were tears in the rich lady's eyes as she turned away. It had been customary with her to condemn Socialism. The next day Sister Widrock burst in upon Ann Em'ly just as the latter was bustling Maggie and Will off to school. There were empty mugs on the table— but no remnants of food.

"My dear," said Sister Widrock, joyously, "I've good news. That kind, sweet lady who was here yesterday has arranged it all. I had a wire late last evening from the country. She lives in Kent, and she has found a cottage for you. You are to take the children down to-day with what belongings you have. She is going to look after you, send the children to school, and get you happy work at a private laundry, or in the garden. Oh, I'm so glad for you, so glad, you brave, dear child."

But Ann Em'ly laughed.

She didn't believe a word of that fairy story. Yet it was true. And that very day Ann Em'ly took the children and her belongings down to Adsleigh, in Kent. It does not sound tremendously romantic, perhaps, but to those three it was a journey into fairyland.

Maggie and Will had never been into the country before. In the long-ago days of Ann Em'ly's childhood, she had once gone to Southend for a week. So she recognised horned monsters as cows, and buttercup fields as playing-grounds for children.

Within a week, though, Maggie and Will were ten times wiser than she about the glories of the country.

Ann Em'ly was too dazed.

She had not even been able to thank the rich woman properly, but it is good to be able to say that Rosemary Desleen understood how it was. Perhaps Kathleen Wimdale helped her there. Miss Wimdale was the kindly young person who had met the quaint family party at the station, and settled them into the wee, picturesque cottage with its neat furniture, cleanliness, and trim garden.

Will and Maggie had made home of it at once, and gone nearly wild over the tabby cat, the flowers, and the country tea. Miss Wimdale had been so kind and friendly. Ann Em'ly clung to her, too bewildered by her sudden change of fortune to believe in it all. Haunting her tired brain was the dread of lost minutes, lost hours, which could never be regained. She ought to have filled every one of those minutes with boxes...

And they were empty...

Kathleen Wimdale did more to fill those empty, lost minutes, than any ten sympathising souls could have done.

"It is a new day, dear," said she, "a happier day. You must thank God for it. Don't forget that you have said good-bye to those dreary, dark times. God has given you a kind friend who wants you to be happy. You are to have a holiday for a week. Then we are going to find what work you will like best."

Ann Em'ly sighed.

"It's a dream," she said. "Nobody ain't cared before. I ain't even a partickler good girl. I've done me best for the kids, but I ain't never got religion. There weren't no time for it."

And the tears came into Kathleen Wimdale's eyes as she listened. They were very kind eyes, but not beautiful. Little Miss Wimdale was not beautiful at all. She was so drab, so dowdy, so quite insignificant. Her complexion was sallow, her hair dull brown, her features without distinction, her figure thin and shapeless, her clothes homely. She lived with her mother, who said there never had been a better daughter, though Kathleen knew the larger share of mother-love went to pretty, helpless Jessie, who had married, and gone down to Devonshire.

Kathleen lived at home, worked in the parish, and did sewing for rich patrons. Mrs. Desleen found her the most convenient person, though she could not understand John Wilcot having engaged himself to her, for John Wilcot was such a superior young man, who wrote clever books on social reform, and had given the chief part of a fortune, made by his father in grocery, for the benefit of fellow-men.

Thoroughly sincere was the label by which the neighbors knew John Wilcot, and some people said, if he had liked, he might have married quite a grand lady, who was also a social reformer. But John had preferred homely little Kathleen, and they had been engaged for nearly six months. Such wonderful months. I think it was gratitude for her own happiness which made the girl so eager to shed happiness on others' paths. Some rare souls are fashioned that way!

And Kathleen Wimdale found it quite easy to befriend Ann Em'ly. The girl was so responsive, so fierce presently in her anxiety to hold with both hands what impulsive charity had bestowed. For the rich lady was certainly impulsive, and, having paid the money over to Miss Wimdale for the bene-fit of her proteges, went off to enthuse over a new whim. She was a kind, generous woman, this Rosemary Desleen, but she was so pleased to feel drab persons were provided by Providence to fill in drab details.

And, as far as she herself went, this concluded the story of a matchbox maker and her brother and sister.

But people's life stories take longer to read, don't they?

And Ann Em'ly was only just beginning to live... to feel that a day was God's gift for life, in which one could find time to sing praises, to sit quiet, to see the sun-shine on the leaves... and the flowers whispering the tale of mysterious Love.

It was all very difficult to grasp. Very difficult not to measure time by numbers of boxes, to allow the busy hands to rest quite on her lap. At times the unreality of this new existence oppressed the girl, who could not expand and fit herself as the children found it easy to do in these larger spaces. She could not be free of time measured into dozens of boxes. Yet she tried... and the wonder of the effort was on her face when John Wilcot saw her seated under an oak tree in Lanthorpe Woods. There were blue-bells in her lap, the sunshine fell on her auburn curls. If she had not been beautiful, it is possible the rich lady would not have felt pity for her lot. But she was beautiful. Her hair alone was a glory, and there were wonderful lights in her violet eyes. In spite of starving and coarse living, her skin was fine and delicate as that of a carefully nurtured aristrocrat, her figure thin, but with possibilities of grace.

John Wilcot possessed the passion of pity for human suffering. He had heard the story of this girl from Kathleen, and there was real sympathy in the smile which told of congratulation on her escape from slavery.

"Have you found the blubell dell, princess?" he asked, for to him she seemed no less in her young beauty. And Ann Em'ly smiled. For she welcomed the coming of the Fairy Prince.

Not that she called him by that name, since she had never heard of fairy princes.

The tall, fair-haired man with the giant frame and challenging eyes of steel-blue color might have claimed kinship to the Vikings of old. He was bred for fighting, and had taken his share of it in the war. Since then he had fought in another cause— the well-being of his fellows. He was no declared Socialist— but a lover of the people amongst whom he claimed kin, since a grand-father had swept out the grocer's shop in which his son made a fortune.

"Miss Wimdale calls these 'm bluebells," said Ann Em'ly, and laid her sheaf of flowers against her cheek as though she caressed her first-born.

"Come with me to Bluebell Land," invited the man who wrote books. "I've an idea you have not found it."

Nor had she, since he was a privileged intruder there.

And to Ann Em'ly it seemed he brought her to fairyland.

It was not only the bluebells which widened her horizon. It was the man. If she had indeed been the princess he had named her in jest, he could not have paid greater respect.

He offered homage on impulse to the brave "lone hand" who had narrowed the limits of her life down to so many gross of boxes. But as he saw her there, knee deep in a sea of blue, he paid tribute to her girlish beauty.

She was exquisite in her simplicity, her courage, her bewilderment. Like a child first essaying to swim, she stretched out timid arms, afraid of the vastness around her.

"It's too beautiful," she said, "I get afraid. It's too beautiful. You see, where I worked it was jest a room, sorter narrow an' dark. I made boxes. Miss Wimdale'll have told you."

Yes, he had been told, and grew angry at the thought of the grey treadmill. It became instantly his duty to make up for that suffering. He wanted this girl to be happy. He wished to watch the smile dawn in her eyes.

It was tea-time when they left fairyland. Ann Em'ly got worried. The "kids" would be home from school... and later, Miss Wimdale was coming to talk to her about work at the laundry.

John Wilcot walked home wishing he had authority to forbid her working. He wanted all the stunted, starved nature to luxuriate in development. He wanted to watch her find her heritage of womanhood— as a naturalist watches the petals of a flower unclose.

Being a man, he saw all from his point of view. He was so sure of himself, saw himself the patron, the benefactor, the friend. And still remembered he was going to marry his Kathleen.

To strengthen that memory he went to supper with Kitty and her mother. Kitty had put on a new blouse in his honor. He hated it, but dared not say so. To wear saxe blue with such a complexion was suicidal. He found it remarkably easy to criticise his little Kitty that evening, but he knew he ought not to have done it. His shortcomings haunted him. He hated to be mean, especially in his treatment of one he loved and respected as he did Kitty. And after all— Ann Em'ly, belonged to another sphere. The poor child was as illiterate as she was starved of soul. But he was interested in her.

There were others who became interested in Ann Em'ly who could have picked and chosen amongst bucolic admirers. Rural Kent did not grow girls like her. And her independence only stimulated the young men's ardor. Ann Em'ly seemed to prefer the society of "Miss Kitty" to all. She liked her work, too. She tried to explain to Kathleen the reason why.

"It's life, up at the laundry," she laughed. "My, when the bubbles come up under me hands and fly away like fairy boats, I want to sing. You should see the colors when the sun shines. I'm happy at the wash-tub, an' Mrs. Lears is kind."

Everyone was kind, according to Ann Em'ly. And she was losing the starved look. The smile was having time to grow within her eyes. The tyranny of boxes and measured minutes grew into a gigantic horror, lying in the background.

It was so easy to laugh when the soap bubbles flew like foam on the waves, and she looked out from the window of the little model laundry to see flowers growing, and green trees spreading wide branches in the sunlight.

And every day John Wilcot grew more interested in what he called the birth of a soul. At first he discussed her quite frankly with Kathleen. They were like foster parents with a beloved nursling. The younger children were less noticeable. They were rapidly losing drab sharpness and becoming country bairns without effort. Ann Em'ly would never wholly become a country lass.

And John Wilcot, watching her as she knelt at prayer in the little grey church, with her hands resting clasped on the high oak back of the pew before her wondered whether the right to live would lead all those stunted slum dwellers to the knowledge of eternal love.

You see, he was ignorant of the wonder of much slum religion.

Ann Em'ly had had no time before to pray. She not only prayed but praised now.

Kathleen Wimdale's heart swelled in its rejoicing as she listened.

She loved this Ann Em'ly, with her simplicity, her shrewdness, her child-like faith, and her old woman cynicism.

But Ann Em'ly's faith was offered to God. Her cynicism was the result of her knowledge of men. And every week she came to watch more eagerly for the coming of John Wilcot, who was her friend.

The bluebells were faded in the woods, and the wild roses decked the hedges, when Ann Em'ly made the great discovery.

Rosemary Desleen, back from France, had seen her the day before, and had spoken amazedly to Kathleen Wimdale of her beauty.

"She must have won hearts amongst the village lads," said the rich lady, "I saw young Wilcot, our philanthropist, getting her honeysuckle yesterday. Quite a romantic picture."

The rich lady had quite forgotten her listener was engaged to marry John Wilcot.

And the careless words opened Kathleen's eyes to the truth.

Ann Em'ly, with her gorgeous youth and pathetic history, had stolen away the happiness of her friend.

It was a terrible blow, and, because our drab little friend was only human, she could not altogether hide her grief. And her mother, guessing the truth, resented the fact of her good little Kitty suffering. It had been such a satisfactory arrangement, that Kitty should marry John, and that they should all live together. It was too cruel that a mere slum girl should destroy the idyll.

Mrs. Wimdale had a foolish and fixed pre-judice against beautiful slum girls with auburn curls. She was sure they must be immoral. So she had no compunction in telling Ann Em'ly what she thought of her conduct.

Ann Em'ly listened, and felt every word strike like a knife at her heart.

She adored Miss Kitty. She worshipped Miss Kitty. Miss Kitty was to her as some bright-winged angel, who had led her out from that dark horror of existence into the sunshine. The rich lady counted for little in Ann Em'ly's deeper gratitude. She was only the one who had paid !

And now Ann Em'ly crept away to read her own heart and know its secret.

She had all the shrewdness of the bread-winner; all the knowledge of a London slum dweller. She placed facts in their order, and faced the situation.

She loved John Wilcot ; and John Wilcot would— if she willed— leave his allegiance to Miss Kitty and woo her. But... he had loved Miss Kitty with the sober, passionless, love which many men find all-sufficient for happiness— a love based on admiration... respect.

Now he was in danger of giving her the love of a man to a maid... rich in its spring glow of romance and passion. A love to sweep aside all cooler calculated feelings of duty... honor... faith.

Yes, not entirely, but in wide lines. Ann Em'ly understood, and thrilled for an hour in the knowledge. If she yielded... she could win this man for her own. She could be his wife— no less... she could revel in the intoxicated delight of such emotions as she had never dreamed.

She saw the picture, stood squarely before it— and turned away.

She went alone down the long lane, and pushed open the door of the little grey church. She was alone there, to pray... but surely not alone.

"I hev to do it, dear God." she prayed. "I coulden go back on her like a mean skunk. She so good, too. An' he b'longs to her. You won't let me be a thief, Lord... an' it's for Christ sake. Amen."

It was good to kneel with idle hands rest-ing on the pew. Good to gather strength to turn gallantly back to the dark shadows which must engulf her.

To Ann Em'ly only one road seemed pos-sible— and she took it.

When Kathleen Wimdale got home that evening from receiving orders from her patroness for charitable tasks, it was to find a letter awaiting her.

"That red-haired slum girl left it," said the mother, "I can't bear her, and she won't be any good to anyone in the place. I know her sort."

Kathleen did not reply. She was suffocating. She went out into the twilight. In her hand she held the letter.

"Dere Friend," wrote Ann Em'ly, "I'm goin' back to London. The country don't soot me. It's too quite. I misses the streets. You won't never here no more of me. But I've left the kids. It would be croole to take them. They're young. They ken grow up happy. The boss woman'll see to that. So'll you, dere, I know. You know, too, I luv you. But it was too late. I'd got suffikated down under boxes. It's in me blood. But I've learnt won thing. God's got a plyce some wear wear no boxes are made. We'll meet then. Give my luv to the kids.— Ann Em'ly."

Kitty Wimdale drooped her head; tears rained down her cheeks.

She knew now why Ann Em'ly had looked at her in curious fashion that morning. Oh, she knew... and she cried in sheer grief for the one who made sacrifice. It seemed to Kitty that the drab ones of the earth ought to sacrifice. But Ann Em'ly altered the law of nature...

She had gone... for Love's sake... and the shadows of a narrow fate swallowed her up.

John Wilcot came through the orchard. He, too, had had a letter— a heartless letter from the slum girl who grew weary of country dullness and craved for streets. . and pictures... and all she had been bred to. He put his arm around Kitty's waist and kissed her, misinterpreting her tears.

"She's not worth grieving about, dear," said he.

Kitty dared not look at him.

"I loved her," was all she said.

And there was a silence between them. The man was thinking how near he had been once to the same confession. Ashamed, he kissed Kitty's quivering lips again.

It seemed answer enough... and the woman... not daring to risk the loss of her own happiness... failed to rise to the supreme heights of confession.

After all... John Wilcot belonged to her... and she was... a drab little person... not a heroine... They would be happy in a drab way.

I wonder... I have often wondered... if Ann Em'ly— measuring the hours of life by boxes— is happy, too. Perhaps, since, in the human soul, Hope points ever forward. And somewhere God hath prepared for those who love Him— a home where no boxes are made.

________________

6: Thumbs Down

Ethel Lina White

The London Magazine, Dec 1910

Queenslander, 21 Jan 1911

Ethel Lina White

CHESTNUTS were going strong— both before and round the fire. As the nuts on the bars frizzled and popped, hoary jokes were brought out again and aired. A jovial-faced man propounded the old teaser of "The Lady— or the Tiger?" When he paused for breath, his hearers rushed into the breach, each ready with a positive answer to the Riddle of the Two Doors. Their host laughed derisively.

"You youngsters are all mighty cocksure. Prehistoric— all of you. I'm listening to your rubbish with respect, for the reason that at least one half of you might be right. But the one man, whose opinion I'd like to hear, sits glum. Come on, Drake, which did he meet? Lady or tiger? Don't be afraid! It won't let you down. Angels' feet have been pounding in everywhere."

He winked jovially at the pretty girls he loved to collect round him.

Drake drew further back into the shadow. He was a long, lean man, with puckered eyes. To make up for his narrow girth, he possessed a world-wide reputation.

"Without prejudice," he said. "I don't care a hang which it was. The fellow sounds rather like a grafter. Anyway, he's comfortably dead now, whichever way he went out. But it makes me think of a similar cases in which I happened to—  My eye! What a fool I am!"

He rushed in with a vengeance. The circle round the fire would take no denial.

"Well, stoke up with the chesnuts, then," snapped Drake, "for it's Lombard-street to a China orange you won't swallow my yarn. It happened just after I'd returned home from Henshaw's expedition into Central Africa. I came back to find myself very seedy— eye trouble— and what was worse, a marked man. Lumps of Henshaw's well-earned fame had come pelting on to me. As a matter of fact, he did everything off his own bat. I simply went with him and did the cooking— records and all! Oh, shut up! Very well, then. Do your own talking!"

"Go on, Simon ! Don't be a coward!" said a gentle-faced woman in the corner. She was Drake's wife and, incidentally, a great talker.

The famous man obeyed instantly.

VERY SOON, I got fed up with strangers, and was only too thankful to accept an invitation to stay with some people I knew fairly well. Oddly enough, at the very start of my entering the house, an incident occurred which was significant and which was the keynote of the visit. No sooner was my foot inside the door, than a heavy bag of flour tilted down on to my head. A practical joke! I entered the house with white hair, and I left it with my hair white for good, as you see it now, from the same cause.

I won't pretend that I enjoyed the first few days of my stay. I had been away so long that I couldn't catch on to the new spirit that had crept into society. The Groves were a specially nice family, and the house-party, on the whole, consisted of a thoroughly good set. But the entire lot was infected with a croze for idiotic ragging. It didn't appeal to me. I was used to brainless frivolity— used to meet it in chunks among the monkeys and natives. And I was used to danger. Old Henshaw saw to that. But this particular blend of dangerous joking that animated the antics of the house-party gave me a positive pain. It was simply fierce. I got on to the subject with a very decent fellow— Derby by name— who was also staying in the house. He liked the tone as little as I.

"Dora Groves brought it back after her visit to Beecham Towers," he said, "and her people froze on to it, because they think it's the hall-mark of the Smart Set. They've done nothing sensible since. Bag, rag, rag— from dawn to dewy eve. And the idiots don't know where to stop. There'll be serious trouble before they're through."

"I'll put an end to it," I said. My own confidences make me smile. I'll say straight away, I was a humbler man afterwards. I couldn't tackle my host and hostess— but I got hold of Dora and let her have the great guns of my wrath.

"Look here, Dora," I said straight. "You were the jolliest little kid in creation when I left home, and you're tho jolliest big one now." But I lied, for there was staying at the house then the very nicest girl, of whom more hereafter.

"Frankly," I went on, "these idiotic monkey tricks aren't worthy of you, Dora. They're dangerous, they're brainless, they're discourteous. They're dead against the spirit of hospitality, for which your family is famous. Do make a stand against them, like the dear, brave girl you are. The rest will follow your lead."

She tossed her head contemptuously, and peppered me with small shot. She must have thought me a fine specimen of a long-lipped, weak-eyed kill-joy.

"I'm sorry if our fun has disturbed you," she said. "I should have thought a man of your reputation wouldn't have grumbled about a few jokes. But I'll tell the others, in future, not to try to score off you, as you think it dangerous!"

Off she went, with a cracker in her hand, and a second later the cracker went off— under the door of an invalid spinster. I tackled the lot of them in turn, with about equal success. They took their tone from Dora, as the eldest girl of the family, and she— in turn— was completely infatuated by a fellow of the name of Puffin Lake.

He was the ringleader of the rag. I don't want to do this man an injustice. At the same time, if I were to do him justice, you'd think I was infringing the law of slander. So I'll content myself by saying he was a virulent waster— too brainless to be vicious, too mischievous to be harmless. In a strait-waistcoat, or a monkey-house, he'd have been quite a decent fellow, and good company. I like to be fair.

I lasted out about four days of my visit, keeping a pretty stiff lip, considering my disgust. You can imagine, I was not exactly popular. In return for my gift of the cold shoulder, I got any amount of cool cheek. I did not meditate, however, making tracks for some other cover, when an incident took place which altered my views. I said something about a nice girl who was staying in the house. She will have to figure in this yarn again, so I will put a name to her—not her real one, for obvious reasons. I intend to call her "Silence."

The night in question there was an impromptu dance in the hall. It was the usual combination of a football scrum and a bargain-sale. During the lancers, in the middle of a ring, some fool loosed hands, and the whole lot went flying, like a bead necklace when the thread is snapped. The girl I called silence went spinning into space, made several cannons against different bits of furniture, and ended up with a mighty crack.

My rage was an eye-opener to me. I wanted to charge the lot like a rogue-elephant. I pounded over to help Silence, but directly I hauled her up, she collapsed. Her ankle was broken. After that, there was no stopping me. I let them have my unvarnished opinion of them, served up piping hot, and without trimmings.

"Look here," I said, only I put it stronger, I'm afraid, "fooling is fooling, I grant you, and no harm done. Tea-tray tobogganing and pillow-fights are capital sport, and only come rough ontlhe carpets and pillows. I don't grudge you your greased-pig chase you had round the house, yesterday, for I grant that, at least, you were in congenial society. But, when it comes to a lady being injured, I say your conduct is not worthy of decent fellows— let alone gentlemen! You're about equal to the lowest set of apaches !"

There was a sort of stunned silence. Mrs. Groves, who is a sweet, fat-baby sort of person, bleated out l something about "young folk being young folk." It was her idea of saving the situation. Old Man Groves stuck out his lip and snorted like a cross infant. I knew his sympathies were with me. He had been too badly hit, through his furniture, to approve the rag.

However, things went a trifle slower after that. We actually had a quiet evening the next night, when we bawled out songs from the musical plays. Puffin Lake also entertained us with animal imitations. I will admit— being a fair man— that his imitation of a monkey was pretty nearly perfect. Instinct, I suppose, which I maintain is a throw-back to some previous existence. As I watched his antics, my thoughts went back to steaming forests, and I saw again the creatures leaping and gibbering among the matted ropes of creepers overhead. I wondered how the girls could tolerate anything so lifelike, but to my amazement their enthusiasm was fierce. Not to put too fine a point to it, he possessed the dough.

So far, I'm afraid I must be boring you with this yarn. None of tho thrills I've promised you! Too much of the flour-bag! You're wondering where my whitened poll comes in. Sit tight! I'm coming to the other half, where the grin adds a pothook and turns to "grim."  It's as difficult to divide the two bits of the yarn as to separate a snake into neck and tail.

It appeared that I had offended Dora over the dance episode. Her head did overtime tossing, so I arranged to go, after the fancy-dress ball, which was to take place a few days later. I never went to it, however, because of the events that took place the night before. With your leave, I'll hop right into that evening.

I was walking in the park, about 5 o'clock, in the company of Derby— the nice fellow I mentioned— and with Puffin Lake. No company about him ! It was a nasty evening that reeked of rheumatism. The wind was whistling as shrilly as though it had its fingers between its teeth, and had a bite on, as well. Leaves lay about in rotting piles. The sky had a dirty look, as though the Fiend had trodden heavily on the mud below and spattered the sky with splashes.

Just as we were turning homewards, we met a couple of men. I recognised one of them immediately as being a keeper from the Zoo, which lay the other side of the park. He stopped, knowing me at once from the villainous woodcuts in the rags, which shows how closely they must resemble me. He told me that they were in a stew, as a gorilla— a recent purchase— had made its escape. They were trying to keep it dark, and were organising battues all over the park to trace the brute.

Naturally, our depression vanished on the spot. We were all as keen as mustard, and volunteered to help "in the hunt.

"Is he savage?" asked Lake.

"I wouldn't advise you to take liberties with him," answered the keeper. "Either he'd toss you up in the trees like a pancake, or make you into mincemeat."

"Sounds like a chef!" grinned Lake.

I'll do him the justice to admit that, contrary to my expectations, he did not show any fear, but capered with excitement at the sport. Very likely he hadn't the wit to understand danger. Derby also showed no signs of the white feather, although a dreary park, at shadow o clock, with a possible gigantic ape waiting to drop on one from a tree, is not a cheerful spot.

I'm free to confess that, of the three, I was the most afraid. This sounds odd. The keeper had stopped me purposely, feeling the hunt was in my line. In Africa, day after day, I used to cut my way through forests that supplied plenty of cover for a varied assortment of attacks. I suppose I got case-hardened, for I don't remember feeling especially scared. Yet in the middle of those few acres of park, with the lights from houses and villas twinkling in the distance, my heart was in my mouth the whole time.

It was the idea of the unconscious population that got on my nerves. I thought of sleeping babies in mailcarts, innocent youngsters, careless errand-boys, defenceless maiden ladies, feeble old men, any of whom might cross a lonely corner of the park at any moment to fall a victim to the great simian that lurked somewhere in the under-growth.

I wanted to thrash every acre to the place until we had unearthed the brute, but we had to give in at last, so as not to bo late for dinner. Unpunctuality was the only sin that good Old Man Groves could not forgive.

I went into the big house, full of light and bustle, with a queer, feeling of depression at the thought of the danger still at large in the darkness outside. The first thing I saw was the nice girl— Silence— lying on a couch. She gave me a smile when she saw me, and it flashed across me— a rough, chap who had tramped thousand of weary miles in his time— that it was a good thing to have a smile of welcome at the end. She— bless her— lying there helpless, stood for one of the things we'd fight to protect from all danger present and to come. I went up to dress, feeling the Adam's apple in my throat swelling to a football.

Half way down the corridor Lake sang out to me to come into his room. Spread out on his bed lay an ape's get-up, which he had just sent for from town. It was his costume for the ball. And he wanted my opinion. I think he was surprised at the warmth I bestowed upon his choice, for he wasn't used to giving my approval.

"You'll never look better again in your life," I assured him. "You'll make a thundering good-looking monkey."

He stood there, grinning under the electric light, his puffy pale face and little eyes reflected in the mirror.

"By Jove," he said, with a sudden flicker crossing his features. "What a rag it would be to put it on now and make the girls yell! They'd think it was the gorilla from the Zoo."

In an instant I had my paw round his arm. The gorilla's grip was nowhere in it with my clutch.

"D'you mean to say you've let on to them already about that?" I shouted. "More shame you, then! But I tell you what. You don't stir from this room until you promise not to play any infernal trick in this matter!"

He told me I was no gentleman, and I agreed with him so promptly that it took the wind out of his sails. He liked to have his opinions endorsed. In the end I had his word to abstain from fooling, and I admit I insulted him in my own mind, by wondering how much it was worth.

When I got to my own room, I found that I was in a bad way. I went straight to pieces. My eyes were throbbing as though they had engines inside their balls. I saw shapes stalking me from every corner. I clapped a cold sponge at the back of my neck, but it only ruined my collar. After tying a disreputable bow I turned to a drawer and took out a certain little shooting-friend of mine that has been with me in many a tight corner. Instinctively, I slipped it into my pocket. It made a shocking bulge, besides being incorrect, but at the very feel of it my depression and seediness vanished. Nothing like iron as a tonic for the system!

Dinner was a peaceful meal that night. Something was in the air that seemed hostile to the usual scrap. The servants got through their tasks with relieved faces. Personally, I felt the lull was unusually soothing as I chatted to the nice girl— Silence— who was wheeled in for the meal.

After dinner we all sat in the hall. It was a big, old-fashioned place, oak-panelled and low-ceiled. At one end was a great window, set above a sort of gallery. The house, I'm sorry to say, has long been swept away to make room for the villas and flats that are spreading over the place like fungus.

"Turn out the lights," commanded Dora, "and we'll sit in the dark and tell ghost-stories! That is," she added spitefully, "if Mr. Drake has no objection." Just before the lights were turned down I looked across at Dora. I noticed that she was sitting close to the door. By her side was Lake, and their heads were very close together.

The next minute— darkness

"Yes; talking does make one thirsty. Rather cold, isn't it? Anyway, I'll depart from my usual custom. Three fingers, please! Thanks!..."

Well, to go on... Very soon we were in full blast. A pretty, dark girl, who looked rather hungry, started a spiritualistic story. She managed to hold our attention with a grip of which I should not have judged her capable, and we were hanging on her words when something stirred in the direction of the gallery. We all looked that way. You would have thought our eyes were all connected with one switch, the way they all turned together. I suppose our nerves were on the stretch from the story. We were keyed up and receptive. The air seemed to tinglo and crackle as wo i waited for a tense moment. i Tho whole of what followed hapi pened almost in a brace of seconds, but it will take me much longer to tell. Against the dim square of the window something appeared like the outlines of a gigantic, squashed spider. A crouching form— huge, hairy, monstrous— shot through the frame, and, in one spring, landed almost on the rail of the balcony.

Everyone screamed. Panic was loose in a second, and hopping about like a drop of quicksilver. The groups in the hall broke up like the pieces of a kaleidoscope. One shake, and every one had left his place and was swarming towards the door. Only one person remained in tho deserted spot by the gallery. She had to stay because her foot put her out of the running. It was the nice girl Silence!

I rose to my feet with the rest. Instinctively my hand went to my pocket, and I was covering the crouching form up aloft. I wish I could move this tale along quicker. Remember, it is all passing at record rate. Then, shall I ever forget the concentrated horror of that moment! Two shrieks rang out:

"Shoot man, shoot!" shouted Derby. "The gorilla !" His voice was simply charged with command and conviction.

Almost simultaneously Dora cried out in an agony of appeal: "For God's sake, don't shoot! It's Puffin!"

Now, you, who sit here calmly, try and get inside me, as I stood there faced with the whole responsibility of action. You've been laughing over the old teaser— Which Door! The Lady or the Tiger? Put yourselves in my place as I stood there and grappled with the appalling problem of the man or the monkey? And remember the issues at stake. Mind, I had no time to think it out, to reason calmly, to decide dispassionately. No brainy Sherlock Holmes theory flickered across my brain. Everything had to be settled, as settled it was, between the flutter of a lash, the drawing of a breath, the pause before an ape's spring. Which stood there before me?

For the life of me I could not tell. Remember what I told you of my eye trouble. In the dim right it was impossible to distinguish any salient point of difference. In just the same way I was faced with the double poser. To whose appeal should I respond? Derby's or Dora's? Again I say, put yourselves in my place. Derby was a sensible fellow. He was keen— no fool. He yelled to me to kill the brute.

On the other hand, the whole affair was stamped with the brand of a practical joke. Dora had been sitting with Lake. She must have known if he had slipped from the room. She was possibly in his confidence. I remembered the contempt with which I had received his reluctant promise to abstain from fooling, also the faithfulness of his monkey imitations and the perfection of his masquerading costume. Added to this, Dora's voice was wrung with the agony of conviction as she screamed: "For God's sake, don't shoot!"

Very likely you will think I should have aimed low. I say No! You aim low to wing a man, but to disable a great ape is not to stop him but to infuriate him to madness.

There I stood, faced with the awful riddle. Man or Monkey? Monkey or man? If I fired I might have Lake's blood on my head. If I held my hand I thought of the helpless figure of Silence, lying in the path of the brute. But I do not believe it was then my hair turned white. A long time to tell what happened! A second. In my hand was life or death. Such a responsibility is too heavy for mortal powers. It is rightly in the gift of Higher Hands. But in that moment I accepted the charge. I decided.

Pray you may never know the agony of such a choice! I deliberately singled out a fellow creature for death. There was a chance either way. But I could not give Puffin Lake the benefit of the doubt, Just as he was in the midst of his fooling, I prepared to pong him hrto eternity, to appear before his Maker with the grin still On his lip. I firmly believe that it was in that instant that my hair turned white.

I sighted, fired— twice, thrice. There was an inhuman scream, a fierce choking struggle, and then jre knew that whatever lay there fn the gallery was dead. Some one turned up the lights. Why not before, you say. I repeat it was the work of two seconds. I, distraught and capering like a maniac, was the first to race up the steps to the gallery.

We found there, all crumpled up and distorted, the body of the gorilla. Derby had been right. At the sight I did a queer thing— when I was a tiny chap I took my tannings mute. Yet I sat down and cried like a baby, and then cried and cried again.

I believed that I embraced Puffin Lake like a brother. It is the most painful recollection of the lot. That's all. I came out of the house the next day with nothing to the good but a crop of white hair.

DRAKE stopped and rumpled his white poll.

"Did you get nothing else?" inquired a girl. Drake shook his head.

"Nothing?" persisted the girl. Again he smiled. He was not to be drawn. He looked across at his wife. She was a very nice woman. At one time she must have been a very nice girl. But then, no one could ever call her Silence.

_________________

7: The Intruder

Chris Sewell
fl 1901-1927

World's News (Sydney) 9 April 1927

COMPLETE with revolver and camp stool, I crossed the unhallowed threshold and made for the kitchen —only to find that I had been forestalled.

Understand, upon no other occasion should I have complained; for I love dark hair in a widow's peak upon a square brow, amber eyes which pierce disguises, and perfect teeth, apt to appear on the smallest excuse; but  obviously, spook-hunting is a one-man show: else whence arrives the honor and glory?

Therefore I frowned at the girl who sat on the oak dresser, swinging her legs, and she smiled back as though I rather amused her.

"Hulloa!" she exclaimed. "May I ask—?" I decided in favour of the unadorned truth. Besides, those eyes would have prised it out of me anyway.

"I'm ghost-hunting." I stated, "and you—"

"I'm terribly interested in ghosts."

At this I relented.

"Its jolly plucky of you to venture alone," I admitted. "I heard that no native would look at the place after sundown."

"But I'm not a native— exactly."

"Ah! You're a visitor, like myself?"

I did not catch her answer, for. at that moment a sudden gust of wind slammed the kitchen door.

So I came right in. and, seating myself on the hearth, lighted a cigarette.

"I've walked from Felthamstowe in search of a thrill," I explained, "but if our visitor does not materialise between twilight and dawn it's no use waiting, they say."

"That's so," she replied, with witness-box brevity.

"D'you mind if I share your vigil?"

"Why should I?"

I smoked awhile, and I think she watched me. Shadows stole in and flickered on the ceiling.

"Perhaps, since we're both on the same errand, you'll tell me the story," I  suggested. "I only heard by chance from the Feltham's chauffeur that Custover had a reputation. Just at the interesting part he was called away. Feltham himself is an incurable sceptic, I simply didn't dare to question him. I gathered that a woman was found dead here, and that the farm doesn't let; but if every place where a corpse—"

"Oh! there's more to it than that," my companion said. "I knew her."

"Well?"

"Very well. She rented Custover and tried to make it pay with poultry; but, of course, she didn't. Eventually she took poison."

"Because she couldn't make it pay?"

"No: there was a lover in the case."

"Ah!"

"Its rather banal— really. She was just inexperienced and over-trustful. She thought the lover meant marrying her."

"He was a big pot, of course?" I guessed. "They always are."

She nodded. "With an estate appallingly mortgaged. He seems to have insisted that unless he found a rich wife, it would go into the melting-pot, and then he would cut her throat. Probably he exaggerated. Anyway, he broke with Custover one October evening. There was a storm!"

"Human or meteorological?"

"Both. It was hellish weather. Nobody in the village slept a wink— and they discovered her next morning, twisted up— just where you are. She'd taken some of the poison she kept for the rats and things."

'Was his name mixed up with it?"

"No."

"I suppose I mustn't ask who he was?"

"No, you mustn't ask that."

"And you've come all this way" (I hoped the hint would elicit her present residence), "because you were fond of the poor woman?"

"As a matter of fact, I've been before."

I yearned to inquire what had happened, but something immensely strong like a pushed-out hand kept me silent. I knew she was gazing at me intently, "stripping me with her eyes," as the French say; and all at once I felt a vulgar thruster— a Peeping Tom, who had edged in among holy memories to eavesdrop and stare— perhaps even to shoot.

"Look here," I exclaimed, "you're too polite to tell me I'm a beastly interloper, come to spy on something that's— that's been hurt. But you think it, and—I'm going." I jumped up. "Can I wait outside and see you home?"

"No— really, no— thanks all the same." (Her smile was a benediction.) "It's nice of you to understand so— quickly that this isn't a place for strangers. Somehow I thought you would— Good-bye."

"Good-bye," I said, and withdrew, leaving her to the shadows, and the shadows among the shadows.

I DID NOT mention my adventure to the Felthams. Apart from Feltham's animosity to the occult, I wasn't proud of my exploit.

Elva Feltham had a headache and retired early, and Feltham and I sat in his study, and squabbled until the small hours, because we had been at Oxford together, and squabbling was second nature to us. We got into a silly argument as to whether one Ghey of Balliol was clean shaven or not in his undergraduate days. To settle the question, Feltham leapt up, cigar in mouth, and reached down a red morocco photograph box from a shelf in the bookcase. In doing so, it overtured, and the contents spilled about the floor. They were mostly old photographs, but one was a modern snapshot. I picked it up, and remained staring at it, whilst my heart rattled against my ribs.

"What's amusing you?" demanded Feltham. "Look here, I've found—"

"Who's this girl?" I asked, thrusting my find under his nose.

He took it, and something flickered across his face— and was gone.

"That. Oh! a neighbor of ours. She rented Custover Farm at one time— and died."

"I fancied for a moment that I recognised her," I remarked, and indeed I had, for a widow's peak of dark hair came low on to her brow; her eyes were of the kind which rend aside all veils, and her teeth were showing deliciously. Moreover, she was sitting on a gate, and I think that just before the shutter snapped she had been swinging her legs.

And, like lightning, it came upon me (I had not remembered it before) that Feltham had done very well for himself when he made Miss Elva Biggar of Philadelphia Lady Feltham.

___________________

8: Ella the Ambitious

Guy Thorne

C Ranger Gull, 1876-1923

World's News (Sydney), 16 Aug 1924

C. Ranger Gull

BREAKFAST was ready in the sitting room at the back of Mr. Barrett and Son's, drapery, millinery, and modes establishment, High Street, Morseton.

There were present Mrs. Barrett, a massive, placid woman, rather like an over-ripe pear; Mr. Barrett, an eager, ferret-faced, hand-rubbing little man, dressed in a frock coat too long for him; "Beg" Barrett, representing the "Son" of the concern, an affected young gentleman of twenty-three, more like a tailor's dummy— including the waxen face— than one would have thought it possible for any human to be; and John Barrett, a sturdy, silent schoolboy of fourteen, giving to hacking anyone's shins on the slightest provocation.

Little Mr. Barrett— Who was known as "one eleven three" in Morseton— prodded his bacon.

"Gotter take stock s'morning," he said fretfully, "and Miss Knocks away with noorulger, though I sh'd call it swelled 'ed. Who is to take the underclothing, the Lord only knows, f'r I don't. Yah!"

"Ella will help you, my dear," said Mrs. Barrett quietly.

Mr. Barrett snorted.

"Ella! She don't know a best natural wool Shetland singlet from a pair o' cheap cotton pants. Ella!"

Here he spluttered over his tea, and as he did so his daughter entered. She was a pretty girl of twenty or so, with dark hair and eyes, a good figure, <and a manner of quiet reticence. You could see that she was a girl who thought, someone a little out of the ordinary, and, certainly, a strange flower to be blooming there.

"Here I am, father," she said, "and here's the post."

"Late, as usual," said Mr. Barrett, grabbing at his letters and becoming immersed in them.

"Ella," said Reginald, "father wants you to take charge of the woollens to-day. Miss Knocks is away ill."

Ella gave a quick look of annoyance. "I can't. I can't possibly," she said.

"May your brother be permitted to ask why?" said Reginald, with what he meant to be elaborate irony.

"Yes, there's a special chemistry lecture at the high school which I wouldn't miss for anything. A London Doctor of Science is giving it. I haven't had such a chance for a long time, and Miss Butcher, the headmistress, has specially invited me."

Mr. Barrett looked up quickly. The word science to him was like a red rag to a bull.

"There you go!" he cried, "spendin' yer days in useless pottering about. 'Lectricity! Chemistry! Yah! D'yer think things like that will ever make you able to earn a living or get a husband?"

"There are hundreds of women, father," the girl replied, "who are earning their living at science as teachers, demonstrators, experimentalists. I know I have the aptitude myself if only I had the chance of proper teaching. And as for husbands "

She made a grimace, and shrugged her pretty shoulders in disdain.

"Well see about that," said Mr. Barrett, with the futile menace of a weak man.

His wife sighed heavily.

"And a foreman printer, who hardly ever soils his hands himself and will be a partner some day, very likely, drawing his ten pound a week regular, and putting seven of them by, absolutely dying for the girl!"

Ella flushed a deep red.

"Mother, how can you!" she cried.

"There, let the girl alone," said Mr. Barrett, who was secretly very proud of his daughter. "I can't think why you are all so down on her. Hullo, here's a letter for you," and he threw it over the table to his daughter.

Ella opened it slowly. Her heart was sick within her, and, though a letter was a rare occurrence In her life, she felt no interest. But as she read, her fare changed. The color went from it entirely, her eyes blazed, her lips trembled.

"Oh, mother, Uncle Reginald... he writes to say that I can go to the Science College at Midchester. He will pay a hundred a year for three years, so that I can take my diploma as a qualified instructress. Oh, isn't it wonderful! Isn't tt glorious!"

"Well, I'm jiggered!" said Mr. Barrett, "three 'undred pound, and I bin wanting ta set up a French lace department for years and could never find the capital to do it!"

The placid Mrs. Barrett now asserted herself.

"Uncle Reginald," she said, "is at liberty to provide for any one of my three children. As he has chosen Ella, so much the better; and if Reginald thinks it right to spend all this money on science, then you may depend upon it, there is something in science after all. My brother is not a man to be easily deceived."

Mr. Barrett departed into the shop flapping his coat tails and still audibly being jiggered. Ella went to her mother and held her tight in her arms for a few moments. Then she went up to her own little sanctum, where, among her text books and test tubes, she burst into a flood of happy tears.

IT WAS the end of Ella Barrett's second year at the Technical College, Midchester.

She was sitting in an alcove of the popular and cosy little tea shop known as "The Mikado." Couples occupied every alcove; light-footed waitresses brought fragrant pots of tea and gleaming piles of cakes. In the distance a ladies' orchestra discoursed sweet music. Ella, in a very simple but very smart coat and skirt, was changed from the girl of twenty who had received her uncle's letter two years ago. She was young still, but she carried herself with a confidence and grace born of association with a wider and more cultured world than that of Morseton. Her prettiness had blazed out into something akin to beauty, and men looked at her as she passed by.

Her companion was a young man of six and twenty, clean-shaved, and with a strong, square face. He was decently dressed in a suit of dark blue, but it was not of a fashionable cut, nor did his necktie even remotely resemble those of the smart young men of the great Midland city. Indeed, though he was perfectly at ease, he seemed a little out of place in the fashionable cafe and with this self-possessed and fashionable girl.

"But, Ella, dear," he said, in a low voice; "you tell me you have only just scraped through this second, intermediate examination."

"Yes, Charlie, but I did get through."

"I know, but doesn't it mean— heaven knows I don't want to discourage you— doesn't it mean that you are not really fitted for the scientific life, after all? Dear, I am really quite well off now. I am head of all the executive at Burt and Bascombe's. There is a prospect of a junior partnership in the years to come, and you know they are one of the best and oldest established printing firms in the kingdom..."

"1 congratulate you with all my heart, Charlie."

"Nay, do not take it like that, lass," he said, relapsing for a moment into the speech of his and her youth, as men are apt to do in moments of great emotion. "That's not what I meant at all. Ella, sweetheart, I have loved you since you were sixteen, and I had thought by now we should have been married long since, but this wish of yours to strike out an independent course has spoilt it all.

"But, dear, since you are not so successful as you hoped, isn't it true that you are getting somewhat tired of the whole thing? Give it up. I know in my heart that you were made for something very, different. Something tells me that, something has always told me."

She shook her head.

"Charlie," she said, with a little quiver in her voice, "you are mistaken. I may not have been a great success yet, but I shall be in the future. You must remember that, coming from that wretched shop at home, with all the petty interests involved, to get into this new, spacious, intellectual air was like an escape from prison. It took me a long time to adjust myself to it. It was all so delightful that I couldn't settle down to regular hard work. Now I have got my footing. I have a year before me. You will see that I shall triumph!"

Her eyes shone, her lips curved proudly, as she said this, for Ella Barrett was one of those imaginative people who can make themselves believe whatever they choose for the moment, and taste success in advance without ever reckoning the steepness of the hill that they must climb before they really gain it.

Charles Manscroft sipped his tea. His strong, rugged face was knotted in thought and pain. But he was no sentimentalist; his love was so real a thing that it was centred entirely upon this girl. He would have suffered the pains of the damned to make her happy.

"I have just grasped this, Ella," he said, lighting a cigarette, and speaking brusquely through his puffs., "Is there anyone else that you like better than me?"

She shook her head vehemently.

"No one, Charles, though there is— has been— someone else—"

"Aye?" he answered, pretending an Indifference which he was far from feeling.

This piqued her.

"It's a professor, the Professor of Physics at the College," she said.

Charles laughed grimly.

"I know the sort," he said, "drooping moustache, a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, and so much the gentleman that his own mother wouldn't know him if he'd own her!"

Now, this incisive portrait was just sufficiently true of Professor Ambrose Ward to make Ella wince. It was a caricature, and a bitter one, but there were resemblances.

"Mr. Ward," she said, "is one of the rising scientists of the day."

Charles shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, he said, "each man to his taste, but I am a man who prefers to court his girl out of business hours. I suppose he gets nudging you over the microscope, and comparing the electric current to that of love?"

She flushed.

"Charlie, don't you say such ridiculous things. Please don't. As a matter of fact, Mr. Ward and I don't meet on those grounds at all. Of course, he is my professor, and I attend his lectures, but only yesterday he urged me to do exactly what you have done."

"Did he, by Jove!"

"Yes, he wanted me to give up science entirely."

"And marry him?"

"Well, that was the idea," she replied glancing slyly at her companion.

He looked at his watch.

"I must be catching the train back to Morseton," he said. "Now, the situation, as it appears to me, is just this. Two men have advised you to give up your science. I have advised it because, though I know nothing of the subject, I believe you were made to be a wife, and carry on a home— with nie. T'other man, who, I reckon, knows something about it, wants you for the same reason. You have refused us both, and mean to go on your own way. Well, lass, that being so, all I have got to say is that if I can't have you for my wife, I will live to sympathise with you and help you in your work, and be at your back whenever ybu want me. That's all. You will see how the other man goes on."

And these were the last words of Charles Manscroft that Ella heard for more than twelve months.

THREE DAYS before her final diploma examination, Ella sat alone In her comfortable bed-sitting room at the College. She had locked the door. Her face was pale, her eyes red from weeping.

Three days more! And she knew well that there was no human possibility of her passing the examination! The three years would be almost, entirely wasted, to say nothing of her uncle's money; the prospect before her, the blow to her pride, would be terrible.

She could hear in advance the "I told you so," of her relatives, the malicious pleasure the news of her failure would give to many people at Morseton.

"Either I have not worked hard enough," she thought, "or I have over-estimated my own powers. I am sure I am not a fool, and yet there is nothing more certain than that I shall not even scrape through this diploma examination."

Only that morning the young and handsome Professor Ward had renewed his offer of marriage. He did not think that Ella had any chance of doing more than just manage to pass her examination, though he imagined that she would do that, for she had kept the real state of things from him as far as she could. But he did realise that here was a girl who had been attracted by the outer and more fascinating side of science, but who quite lacked the real scientific temperament. Nothing would ever give her that, and, though he feared to wound her by too much plain speaking, he had hinted at it pretty plainly as he poured out his love for her in the library that morning.

She had not accepted him, neither was he definitely rejected, and now, torn by half a dozen conflicting impulses, Ella was trying to plan a course of action.

There came a knock at the door. Hastily drying her eyes, she opened it, to find the under porter of the College with a registered envelope. Thanking him, she took it mechanically and relocked the door. Then her eyes fell upon the handwriting. It was from Charles Manscroft. and, with a faint tinge of color in her face, she tore it open.

What was this? A few lines of writing on a card and a bundle of printed papers.

She took up the card. These were the words upon it:—

"I said I would do anything and everything to help you. Here's a proof of it. I understand that it is not a competitive examination, merely for the teaching diploma."

With a gasp, Ella dropped the card and snatched up the other papers.

They were the complete examination papers for the three days' diploma examination!

She saw it all in a flash. The old established firm of which Charles Manscroft was now manager did all the printing for the Midchester University. Without exciting any suspicion, Charles could easily obtain these copies of the papers set.

Her first thought, to the exclusion of all others, was to scrutinise the questions. She sat down in her basket armchair, her hands trembling with excitement, and read the papers through from first to last. When she had finished, she leant back in the chair and closed her eyes.

It was perfectly true, she could never have gained her diploma on those papers. They hit her in every weak point of her knowledge. as if deliberately designed to search out her deficiencies. And now?— ah, now the horse was of another color. Three, four hours, in looking up references, and she would have everything at her fingers' ends; to pass the examination, and to pass it brilliantly, was easily within her power.

So much for the first half-hour after the receipt of the letter. Now a certain personage who is reputed to make cowards of us all, uncoiled himself from sleep and jumped into her mind. Conscience began to have his say.

"You could not possibly do this, Ella; you have never stooped to dishonesty yet."

"That is all very well, my dear Conscience, but is it dishonest? Technically, I admit that it is. but I am not going to be frightened by mere words. The examination is not, as Charlie pointed out, a competitive one. If I pass I shall be injuring nobody in the world. I am perfectly qualified to teach science to children, and I should get a well-paid post at once. There is not the least necessity, really, for any science teacher to know ail that is implied by these papers, and I have already passed the two preliminary exams. It will mean simply that I can earn my own living in a useful and honorable way, and that my uncle and my relatives will not be disappointed."

"But you will be a pretence and a sham. One person will know, at least."

Ella had an excellent answer to this.

"He has sacrificed something, Conscience. He will be sacrificing more than I. because,, out of his great love for me, he is betraying the confidence of his employers. Nothing can alter the fact that he has already done so, and were I not to accept his sacrifice I should make matters even worse. And. moreover, in his sending me these papers, Charlie knows quite well that he is definitely giving me up. It is noble of him, and then, as Ella suddenly began to cry bitterly. Conscience shrugged his shoulders, and departed, not, however, without plans tor the future.

A WEEK after the diploma examination. Professor Ward, who was not one of the examiners. came into the hall of the College just in time to see the secretary fixing the results to the notice board. The young professor. with an elaborate assumption of unconcern, strolled across the hall, and then, as he put on his gold-rimmed pince-nez, he started with surprise.

The name of Ella Barrett was at the top of the whole list. This would not mean any advantage in the subsequent apportioning of posts, but it was a College honor, and the professor could hardly believe his eyes.

He had been mistaken all along," then, and for the first time in his career.

"Love blinded me," he thought sadly, as he turned away. "In my hope of winning her, I minimised her attainments. It is obvious that she is eminently suited for the teaching career, and will never be mine or any other man's,"

Then, for, he was a generous-minded, and warm-hearted fellow. Professor Ward decided he would take the train to Morseton and be the first to bear Ella the news of her success. "It will be hail and farewell," he thought, "for I shall never see her again."

After ringing the bell of the private door at the side of the shop, the Barretts' little servant maid announced that Miss Ella had gone for a walk along the river side.

The professor thanked her, and proceeded through the little town towards this favorite promenade of the inhabitants.

It was a summer's afternoon, but the leavy walk was almost deserted, until, at last, in turning round a bend of the river, he saw the girl of his heart.

She was not alone. With her was a sturdy man of thirty in a grey flannel suit, a man with a clean-shaved, powerful face and a steady eye.

Her brother perhaps?

Lifting his hat, Ward went up to the couple.

"Miss Barrett, he said. "I could not help giving myself the pleasure of hastening to you with some good news. Some very good news. You have passed the diplofna examination, and stand first on the whole list!"

How odd her manner was. Her face showed not the slightest pleasure.

"Thank you very much indeed for coming to tell me," she said, "but I am not going to take up science teaching after all. May I introduce you to my fiance? Professor Ward, Mr. Manscroft."

____________________

9: The Lady With the Hatchet

Maurice Leblanc

1864-1941

Transl. by Edgar Jepson, 1863-1938

Metropolitan Magazine May 1922

In: The Eight Strokes of the Clock, 1923

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March 1943

Maurice Leblanc

Author of the lengthy "Arsène Lupin" series. Until c. 1917 his stories were translated into English by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (1865-1921). Later English translations were often uncredited but known to be by Edgar Jepson.

ONE of the most incomprehensible incidents that preceded the great war was certainly the one which was known as the episode of the lady with the hatchet. The solution of the mystery was unknown and would never have been known, had not circumstances in the cruellest fashion obliged Prince Rénine— or should I say, Arsène Lupin?— to take up the matter and had I not been able to-day to tell the true story from the details supplied by him.

Let me recite the facts. In a space of eighteen months, five women disappeared, five women of different stations in life, all between twenty and thirty years of age and living in Paris or the Paris district.

I will give their names: Madame Ladoue, the wife of a doctor; Mlle. Ardant, the daughter of a banker; Mlle. Covereau, a washer-woman of Courbevoie; Mlle. Honorine Vernisset, a dressmaker; and Madame Grollinger, an artist. These five women disappeared without the possibility of discovering a single particular to explain why they had left their homes, why they did not return to them, who had enticed them away, and where and how they were detained.

Each of these women, a week after her departure, was found somewhere or other in the western outskirts of Paris; and each time it was a dead body that was found, the dead body of a woman who had been killed by a blow on the head from a hatchet. And each time, not far from the woman, who was firmly bound, her face covered with blood and her body emaciated by lack of food, the marks of carriage-wheels proved that the corpse had been driven to the spot.

The five murders were so much alike that there was only a single investigation, embracing all the five enquiries and, for that matter, leading to no result. A woman disappeared; a week later, to a day, her body was discovered; and that was all. The bonds that fastened her were similar in each case; so were the tracks left by the wheels; so were the blows of the hatchet, all of which were struck vertically at the top and right in the middle of the forehead.

The motive of the crime? The five women had been completely stripped of their jewels, purses and other objects of value. But the robberies might well have been attributed to marauders or any passersby, since the bodies were lying in deserted spots. Were the authorities to believe in the execution of a plan of revenge or of a plan intended to do away with the series of persons mutually connected, persons, for instance, likely to benefit by a future inheritance? Here again the same obscurity prevailed. Theories were built up, only to be demolished forthwith by an examination of the facts. Trails were followed and at once abandoned.

And suddenly there was a sensation. A woman engaged in sweeping the roads picked up on the pavement a little note-book which she brought to the local police-station. The leaves of this note-book were all blank, excepting one, on which was written a list of the murdered women, with their names set down in order of date and accompanied by three figures: Ladoue, 132; Vernisset, 118; and so on.

Certainly no importance would have been attached to these entries, which anybody might have written, since every one was acquainted with the sinister list. But, instead of five names, it included six! Yes, below the words "Grollinger, 128," there appeared "Williamson, 114." Did this indicate a sixth murder?

The obviously English origin of the name limited the field of the investigations, which did not in fact take long. It was ascertained that, a fortnight ago, a Miss Hermione Williamson, a governess in a family at Auteuil, had left her place to go back to England and that, since then, her sisters, though she had written to tell them that she was coming over, had heard no more of her.

A fresh enquiry was instituted. A postman found the body in the Meudon woods. Miss Williamson's skull was split down the middle.

I need not describe the public excitement at this stage nor the shudder of horror which passed through the crowd when it read this list, written without a doubt in the murderer's own hand. What could be more frightful than such a record, kept up to date like a careful tradesman's ledger:

"On such a day, I killed so-and-so; on such a day so-and-so!"

And the sum total was six dead bodies.

Against all expectation, the experts in handwriting had no difficulty in agreeing and unanimously declared that the writing was "that of a woman, an educated woman, possessing artistic tastes, imagination and an extremely sensitive nature." The "lady with the hatchet," as the journalists christened her, was decidedly no ordinary person; and scores of newspaper-articles made a special study of her case, exposing her mental condition and losing themselves in far-fetched explanations.

Nevertheless it was the writer of one of these articles, a young journalist whose chance discovery made him the centre of public attention, who supplied the one element of truth and shed upon the darkness the only ray of light that was to penetrate it. In casting about for the meaning of the figures which followed the six names, he had come to ask himself whether those figures did not simply represent the number of the days separating one crime from the next. All that he had to do was to check the dates. He at once found that his theory was correct. Mlle. Vernisset had been carried off one hundred and thirty-two days after Madame Ladoue; Mlle. Covereau one hundred and eighteen days after Honorine Vernisset; and so on.

There was therefore no room for doubt; and the police had no choice but to accept a solution which so precisely fitted the circumstances: the figures corresponded with the intervals. There was no mistake in the records of the lady with the hatchet.

But then one deduction became inevitable. Miss Williamson, the latest victim, had been carried off on the 26th of June last, and her name was followed by the figures 114: was it not to be presumed that a fresh crime would be committed a hundred and fourteen days later, that is to say, on the 18th of October? Was it not probable that the horrible business would be repeated in accordance with the murderer's secret intentions? Were they not bound to pursue to its logical conclusion the argument which ascribed to the figures— to all the figures, to the last as well as to the others— their value as eventual dates?

Now it was precisely this deduction which was drawn and was being weighed and discussed during the few days that preceded the 18th of October, when logic demanded the performance of yet another act of the abominable tragedy. And it was only natural that, on the morning of that day, Prince Rénine and Hortense, when making an appointment by telephone for the evening, should allude to the newspaper-articles which they had both been reading:

"Look out!" said Rénine, laughing. "If you meet the lady with the hatchet, take the other side of the road!"

"And, if the good lady carries me off, what am I to do?"

"Strew your path with little white pebbles and say, until the very moment when the hatchet flashes in the air, 'I have nothing to fear; he will save me.' He is myself... and I kiss your hands. Till this evening, my dear."

That afternoon, Rénine had an appointment with Rose Andrée and Dalbrèque to arrange for their departure for the States. * Before four and seven o'clock, he bought the different editions of the evening papers. None of them reported an abduction.

* See The Tell-tale Film.

At nine o'clock he went to the Gymnase, where he had taken a private box.

At half-past nine, as Hortense had not arrived, he rang her up, though without thought of anxiety. The maid replied that Madame Daniel had not come in yet.

Seized with a sudden fear, Rénine hurried to the furnished flat which Hortense was occupying for the time being, near the Parc Monceau, and questioned the maid, whom he had engaged for her and who was completely devoted to him. The woman said that her mistress had gone out at two o'clock, with a stamped letter in her hand, saying that she was going to the post and that she would come back to dress. This was the last that had been seen of her.

"To whom was the letter addressed?"

"To you, sir. I saw the writing on the envelope: Prince Serge Rénine."

He waited until midnight, but in vain. Hortense did not return; nor did she return next day.

"Not a word to any one," said Rénine to the maid. "Say that your mistress is in the country and that you are going to join her."

For his own part, he had not a doubt: Hortense's disappearance was explained by the very fact of the date, the 18th of October. She was the seventh victim of the lady with the hatchet.

"THE ABDUCTION," said Rénine to himself, "precedes the blow of the hatchet by a week. I have, therefore, at the present moment, seven full days before me. Let us say six, to avoid any surprise. This is Saturday: Hortense must be set free by mid-day on Friday; and, to make sure of this, I must know her hiding-place by nine o'clock on Thursday evening at latest."

Rénine wrote, "THURSDAY EVENING, NINE O'CLOCK," in big letters, on a card which he nailed above the mantelpiece in his study. Then at midday on Saturday, the day after the disappearance, he locked himself into the study, after telling his man not to disturb him except for meals and letters.

He spent four days there, almost without moving. He had immediately sent for a set of all the leading newspapers which had spoken in detail of the first six crimes. When he had read and reread them, he closed the shutters, drew the curtains and lay down on the sofa in the dark, with the door bolted, thinking.

By Tuesday evening he was no further advanced than on the Saturday. The darkness was as dense as ever. He had not discovered the smallest clue for his guidance, nor could he see the slightest reason to hope.

At times, notwithstanding his immense power of self-control and his unlimited confidence in the resources at his disposal, at times he would quake with anguish. Would he arrive in time? There was no reason why he should see more clearly during the last few days than during those which had already elapsed. And this meant that Hortense Daniel would inevitably be murdered.

The thought tortured him. He was attached to Hortense by a much stronger and deeper feeling than the appearance of the relations between them would have led an onlooker to believe. The curiosity at the beginning, the first desire, the impulse to protect Hortense, to distract her, to inspire her with a relish for existence: all this had simply turned to love. Neither of them was aware of it, because they barely saw each other save at critical times when they were occupied with the adventures of others and not with their own. But, at the first onslaught of danger, Rénine realized the place which Hortense had taken in his life and he was in despair at knowing her to be a prisoner and a martyr and at being unable to save her.

He spent a feverish, agitated night, turning the case over and over from every point of view. The Wednesday morning was also a terrible time for him. He was losing ground. Giving up his hermit-like seclusion, he threw open the windows and paced to and fro through his rooms, ran out into the street and came in again, as though fleeing before the thought that obsessed him:

"Hortense is suffering.... Hortense is in the depths.... She sees the hatchet.... She is calling to me.... She is entreating me.... And I can do nothing...."

It was at five o'clock in the afternoon that, on examining the list of the six names, he received that little inward shock which is a sort of signal of the truth that is being sought for. A light shot through his mind. It was not, to be sure, that brilliant light in which every detail is made plain, but it was enough to tell him in which direction to move.

His plan of campaign was formed at once. He sent Adolphe, his chauffeur, to the principal newspapers, with a few lines which were to appear in type among the next morning's advertisements. Adolphe was also told to go to the laundry at Courbevoie, where Mlle. Covereau, the second of the six victims, had been employed.

On the Thursday, Rénine did not stir out of doors. In the afternoon, he received several letters in reply to his advertisement. Then two telegrams arrived. Lastly, at three o'clock, there came a pneumatic letter, bearing the Trocadéro postmark, which seemed to be what he was expecting.

He turned up a directory, noted an address— "M. de Lourtier-Vaneau, retired colonial governor, 47 bis, Avenue Kléber"— and ran down to his car:

"Adolphe, 47 bis, Avenue Kléber."

HE WAS SHOWN into a large study furnished with magnificent book-cases containing old volumes in costly bindings. M. de Lourtier-Vaneau was a man still in the prime of life, wearing a slightly grizzled beard and, by his affable manners and genuine distinction, commanding confidence and liking.

"M. de Lourtier," said Rénine, "I have ventured to call on your excellency because I read in last year's newspapers that you used to know one of the victims of the lady with the hatchet, Honorine Vernisset."

"Why, of course we knew her!" cried M. de Lourtier. "My wife used to employ her as a dressmaker by the day. Poor girl!"

"M. de Lourtier, a lady of my acquaintance has disappeared as the other six victims disappeared.

"What!" exclaimed M. de Lourtier, with a start. "But I have followed the newspapers carefully. There was nothing on the 18th of October."

"Yes, a woman of whom I am very fond, Madame Hortense Daniel, was abducted on the 17th of October."

"And this is the 22nd!"

"Yes; and the murder will be committed on the 24th."

"Horrible! Horrible! It must be prevented at all costs...."

"And I shall perhaps succeed in preventing it, with your excellency's assistance."

"But have you been to the police?"

"No. We are faced by mysteries which are, so to speak, absolute and compact, which offer no gap through which the keenest eyes can see and which it is useless to hope to clear up by ordinary methods, such as inspection of the scenes of the crimes, police enquiries, searching for finger-prints and so on. As none of those proceedings served any good purpose in the previous cases, it would be waste of time to resort to them in a seventh, similar case. An enemy who displays such skill and subtlety would not leave behind her any of those clumsy traces which are the first things that a professional detective seizes upon."

"Then what have you done?"

"Before taking any action, I have reflected. I gave four days to thinking the matter over."

M. de Lourtier-Vaneau examined his visitor closely and, with a touch of irony, asked:

"And the result of your meditations...?"

"To begin with," said Rénine, refusing to be put out of countenance, "I have submitted all these cases to a comprehensive survey, which hitherto no one else had done. This enabled me to discover their general meaning, to put aside all the tangle of embarrassing theories and, since no one was able to agree as to the motives of all this filthy business, to attribute it to the only class of persons capable of it."

"That is to say?"

"Lunatics, your excellency."

M. de Lourtier-Vaneau started:

"Lunatics? What an idea!"

"M. de Lourtier, the woman known as the lady with the hatchet is a madwoman."

"But she would be locked up!"

"We don't know that she's not. We don't know that she is not one of those half-mad people, apparently harmless, who are watched so slightly that they have full scope to indulge their little manias, their wild-beast instincts. Nothing could be more treacherous than these creatures. Nothing could be more crafty, more patient, more persistent, more dangerous and at the same time more absurd and more logical, more slovenly and more methodical. All these epithets, M. de Lourtier, may be applied to the doings of the lady with the hatchet. The obsession of an idea and the continual repetition of an act are characteristics of the maniac. I do not yet know the idea by which the lady with the hatchet is obsessed but I do know the act that results from it; and it is always the same. The victim is bound with precisely similar ropes. She is killed after the same number of days. She is struck by an identical blow, with the same instrument, in the same place, the middle of the forehead, producing an absolutely vertical wound. An ordinary murderer displays some variety. His trembling hand swerves aside and strikes awry. The lady with the hatchet does not tremble. It is as though she had taken measurements; and the edge of her weapon does not swerve by a hair's breadth. Need I give you any further proofs or examine all the other details with you? Surely not. You now possess the key to the riddle; and you know as I do that only a lunatic can behave in this way, stupidly, savagely, mechanically, like a striking clock or the blade of the guillotine...."

M. de Lourtier-Vaneau nodded his head:

"Yes, that is so. One can see the whole affair from that angle... and I am beginning to believe that this is how one ought to see it. But, if we admit that this madwoman has the sort of mathematical logic which governed the murders of the six victims, I see no connection between the victims themselves. She struck at random. Why this victim rather than that?"

"Ah," said Rénine. "Your excellency is asking me a question which I asked myself from the first moment, the question which sums up the whole problem and which cost me so much trouble to solve! Why Hortense Daniel rather than another? Among two millions of women who might have been selected, why Hortense? Why little Vernisset? Why Miss Williamson? If the affair is such as I conceived it, as a whole, that is to say, based upon the blind and fantastic logic of a madwoman, a choice was inevitably exercised. Now in what did that choice consist? What was the quality, or the defect, or the sign needed to induce the lady with the hatchet to strike? In a word, if she chose— and she must have chosen— what directed her choice?"

"Have you found the answer?"

Rénine paused and replied:

"Yes, your excellency, I have. And I could have found it at the very outset, since all that I had to do was to make a careful examination of the list of victims. But these flashes of truth are never kindled save in a brain overstimulated by effort and reflection. I stared at the list twenty times over, before that little detail took a definite shape."

"I don't follow you," said M. de Lourtier-Vaneau.

"M. de Lourtier, it may be noted that, if a number of persons are brought together in any transaction, or crime, or public scandal or what not, they are almost invariably described in the same way. On this occasion, the newspapers never mentioned anything more than their surnames in speaking of Madame Ladoue, Mlle. Ardent or Mlle. Covereau. On the other hand, Mlle. Vernisset and Miss Williamson were always described by their Christian names as well: Honorine and Hermione. If the same thing had been done in the case of all the six victims, there would have been no mystery."

"Why not?"

"Because we should at once have realized the relation existing between the six unfortunate women, as I myself suddenly realized it on comparing those two Christian names with that of Hortense Daniel. You understand now, don't you? You see the three Christian names before your eyes...."

M. de Lourtier-Vaneau seemed to be perturbed. Turning a little pale, he said:

"What do you mean? What do you mean?"

"I mean," continued Rénine, in a clear voice, sounding each syllable separately, "I mean that you see before your eyes three Christian names which all three begin with the same initial and which all three, by a remarkable coincidence, consist of the same number of letters, as you may prove. If you enquire at the Courbevoie laundry, where Mlle. Covereau used to work, you will find that her name was Hilairie. Here again we have the same initial and the same number of letters. There is no need to seek any farther. We are sure, are we not, that the Christian names of all the victims offer the same peculiarities? And this gives us, with absolute certainty, the key to the problem which was set us. It explains the madwoman's choice. We now know the connection between the unfortunate victims. There can be no mistake about it. It's that and nothing else. And how this method of choosing confirms my theory! What proof of madness! Why kill these women rather than any others? Because their names begin with an H and consist of eight letters! You understand me, M. de Lourtier, do you not? The number of letters is eight. The initial letter is the eighth letter of the alphabet; and the word huit, eight, begins with an H. Always the letter H. And the implement used to commit the crime was a hatchet. Is your excellency prepared to tell me that the lady with the hatchet is not a madwoman?"

Rénine interrupted himself and went up to M. de Lourtier-Vaneau:

"What's the matter, your excellency? Are you unwell?"

"No, no," said M. de Lourtier, with the perspiration streaming down his forehead. "No... but all this story is so upsetting! Only think, I knew one of the victims! And then...."

Rénine took a water-bottle and tumbler from a small table, filled the glass and handed it to M. de Lourtier, who sipped a few mouthfuls from it and then, pulling himself together, continued, in a voice which he strove to make firmer than it had been:

"Very well. We'll admit your supposition. Even so, it is necessary that it should lead to tangible results. What have you done?"

"This morning I published in all the newspapers an advertisement worded as follows: 'Excellent cook seeks situation. Write before 5 P.M. to Herminie, Boulevard Haussmann, etc.' You continue to follow me, don't you, M. de Lourtier? Christian names beginning with an H and consisting of eight letters are extremely rare and are all rather out of date: Herminie, Hilairie, Hermione. Well, these Christian names, for reasons which I do not understand, are essential to the madwoman. She cannot do without them. To find women bearing one of these Christian names and for this purpose only she summons up all her remaining powers of reason, discernment, reflection and intelligence. She hunts about. She asks questions. She lies in wait. She reads newspapers which she hardly understands, but in which certain details, certain capital letters catch her eye. And consequently I did not doubt for a second that this name of Herminie, printed in large type, would attract her attention and that she would be caught to-day in the trap of my advertisement."

"Did she write?" asked M. de Lourtier-Vaneau, anxiously.

"Several ladies," Rénine continued, "wrote the letters which are usual in such cases, to offer a home to the so-called Herminie. But I received an express letter which struck me as interesting."

"From whom?"

"Read it, M. de Lourtier."

M. de Lourtier-Vaneau snatched the sheet from Rénine's hands and cast a glance at the signature. His first movement was one of surprise, as though he had expected something different. Then he gave a long, loud laugh of something like joy and relief.

"Why do you laugh, M. de Lourtier? You seem pleased."

"Pleased, no. But this letter is signed by my wife."

"And you were afraid of finding something else?"

"Oh no! But since it's my wife...."

He did not finish his sentence and said to Rénine:

"Come this way."

He led him through a passage to a little drawing-room where a fair-haired lady, with a happy and tender expression on her comely face, was sitting in the midst of three children and helping them with their lessons.

She rose. M. de Lourtier briefly presented his visitor and asked his wife:

"Suzanne, is this express message from you?"

"To Mlle. Herminie, Boulevard Haussmann? Yes," she said, "I sent it. As you know, our parlour-maid's leaving and I'm looking out for a new one."

Rénine interrupted her:

"Excuse me, madame. Just one question: where did you get the woman's address?"

She flushed. Her husband insisted:

"Tell us, Suzanne. Who gave you the address?"

"I was rung up."

"By whom?"

She hesitated and then said:

"Your old nurse."

"Félicienne?"

"Yes."

M. de Lourtier cut short the conversation and, without permitting Rénine to ask any more questions, took him back to the study:

"You see, monsieur, that pneumatic letter came from a quite natural source. Félicienne, my old nurse, who lives not far from Paris on an allowance which I make her, read your advertisement and told Madame de Lourtier of it. For, after all," he added laughing, "I don't suppose that you suspect my wife of being the lady with the hatchet."

"No."

"Then the incident is closed... at least on my side. I have done what I could, I have listened to your arguments and I am very sorry that I can be of no more use to you...."

He drank another glass of water and sat down. His face was distorted. Rénine looked at him for a few seconds, as a man will look at a failing adversary who has only to receive the knock-out blow, and, sitting down beside him, suddenly gripped his arm:

"Your excellency, if you do not speak, Hortense Daniel will be the seventh victim."

"I have nothing to say, monsieur! What do you think I know?"

"The truth! My explanations have made it plain to you. Your distress, your terror are positive proofs."

"But, after all, monsieur, if I knew, why should I be silent?"

"For fear of scandal. There is in your life, so a profound intuition assures me, something that you are constrained to hide. The truth about this monstrous tragedy, which suddenly flashed upon you, this truth, if it were known, would spell dishonour to you, disgrace... and you are shrinking from your duty."

M. de Lourtier did not reply. Rénine leant over him and, looking him in the eyes, whispered:

"There will be no scandal. I shall be the only person in the world to know what has happened. And I am as much interested as yourself in not attracting attention, because I love Hortense Daniel and do not wish her name to be mixed up in your horrible story."

They remained face to face during a long interval. Rénine's expression was harsh and unyielding. M. de Lourtier felt that nothing would bend him if the necessary words remained unspoken; but he could not bring himself to utter them:

"You are mistaken," he said. "You think you have seen things that don't exist."

Rénine received a sudden and terrifying conviction that, if this man took refuge in a stolid silence, there was no hope for Hortense Daniel; and he was so much infuriated by the thought that the key to the riddle lay there, within reach of his hand, that he clutched M. de Lourtier by the throat and forced him backwards:

"I'll have no more lies! A woman's life is at stake! Speak... and speak at once! If not...!"

M. de Lourtier had no strength left in him. All resistance was impossible. It was not that Rénine's attack alarmed him, or that he was yielding to this act of violence, but he felt crushed by that indomitable will, which seemed to admit no obstacle, and he stammered:

"You are right. It is my duty to tell everything, whatever comes of it."

"Nothing will come of it, I pledge my word, on condition that you save Hortense Daniel. A moment's hesitation may undo us all. Speak. No details, but the actual facts."

"Madame de Lourtier is not my wife. The only woman who has the right to bear my name is one whom I married when I was a young colonial official. She was a rather eccentric woman, of feeble mentality and incredibly subject to impulses that amounted to monomania. We had two children, twins, whom she worshipped and in whose company she would no doubt have recovered her mental balance and moral health, when, by a stupid accident— a passing carriage— they were killed before her eyes. The poor thing went mad... with the silent, secretive madness which you imagined. Some time afterwards, when I was appointed to an Algerian station, I brought her to France and put her in the charge of a worthy creature who had nursed me and brought me up. Two years later, I made the acquaintance of the woman who was to become the joy of my life. You saw her just now. She is the mother of my children and she passes as my wife. Are we to sacrifice her? Is our whole existence to be shipwrecked in horror and must our name be coupled with this tragedy of madness and blood?"

Rénine thought for a moment and asked:

"What is the other one's name?"

"Hermance."

"Hermance! Still that initial... still those eight letters!"

"That was what made me realize everything just now," said M. de Lourtier. "When you compared the different names, I at once reflected that my unhappy wife was called Hermance and that she was mad... and all the proofs leapt to my mind."

"But, though we understand the selection of the victims, how are we to explain the murders? What are the symptoms of her madness? Does she suffer at all?"

"She does not suffer very much at present. But she has suffered in the past, the most terrible suffering that you can imagine: since the moment when her two children were run over before her eyes, night and day she had the horrible spectacle of their death before her eyes, without a moment's interruption, for she never slept for a single second. Think of the torture of it! To see her children dying through all the hours of the long day and all the hours of the interminable night!"

"Nevertheless," Rénine objected, "it is not to drive away that picture that she commits murder?"

"Yes, possibly," said M. de Lourtier, thoughtfully, "to drive it away by sleep."

"I don't understand."

"You don't understand, because we are talking of a madwoman... and because all that happens in that disordered brain is necessarily incoherent and abnormal?"

"Obviously. But, all the same, is your supposition based on facts that justify it?"

"Yes, on facts which I had, in a way, overlooked but which to-day assume their true significance. The first of these facts dates a few years back, to a morning when my old nurse for the first time found Hermance fast asleep. Now she was holding her hands clutched around a puppy which she had strangled. And the same thing was repeated on three other occasions."

"And she slept?"

"Yes, each time she slept a sleep which lasted for several nights."

"And what conclusion did you draw?"

"I concluded that the relaxation of the nerves provoked by taking life exhausted her and predisposed her for sleep."

Rénine shuddered:

"That's it! There's not a doubt of it! The taking life, the effort of killing makes her sleep. And she began with women what had served her so well with animals. All her madness has become concentrated on that one point: she kills them to rob them of their sleep! She wanted sleep; and she steals the sleep of others! That's it, isn't it? For the past two years, she has been sleeping?"

"For the past two years, she has been sleeping," stammered M. de Lourtier.

Rénine gripped him by the shoulder:

"And it never occurred to you that her madness might go farther, that she would stop at nothing to win the blessing of sleep! Let us make haste, monsieur! All this is horrible!"

They were both making for the door, when M. de Lourtier hesitated. The telephone-bell was ringing.

"It's from there," he said.

"From there?"

"Yes, my old nurse gives me the news at the same time every day."

He unhooked the receivers and handed one to Rénine, who whispered in his ear the questions which he was to put.

"Is that you, Félicienne? How is she?"

"Not so bad, sir."

"Is she sleeping well?"

"Not very well, lately. Last night, indeed, she never closed her eyes. So she's very gloomy just now."

"What is she doing at the moment?"

"She is in her room."

"Go to her, Félicienne, and don't leave her."

"I can't. She's locked herself in."

"You must, Félicienne. Break open the door. I'm coming straight on.... Hullo! Hullo!... Oh, damnation, they've cut us off!"

Without a word, the two men left the flat and ran down to the avenue. Rénine hustled M. de Lourtier into the car:

"What address?"

"Ville d'Avray."

"Of course! In the very center of her operations... like a spider in the middle of her web! Oh, the shame of it!"

He was profoundly agitated. He saw the whole adventure in its monstrous reality.

"Yes, she kills them to steal their sleep, as she used to kill the animals. It is the same obsession, but complicated by a whole array of utterly incomprehensible practices and superstitions. She evidently fancies that the similarity of the Christian names to her own is indispensable and that she will not sleep unless her victim is an Hortense or an Honorine. It's a madwoman's argument; its logic escapes us and we know nothing of its origin; but we can't get away from it. She has to hunt and has to find. And she finds and carries off her prey beforehand and watches over it for the appointed number of days, until the moment when, crazily, through the hole which she digs with a hatchet in the middle of the skull, she absorbs the sleep which stupefies her and grants her oblivion for a given period. And here again we see absurdity and madness. Why does she fix that period at so many days? Why should one victim ensure her a hundred and twenty days of sleep and another a hundred and twenty-five? What insanity! The calculation is mysterious and of course mad; but the fact remains that, at the end of a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five days, as the case may be, a fresh victim is sacrificed; and there have been six already and the seventh is awaiting her turn. Ah, monsieur, what a terrible responsibility for you! Such a monster as that! She should never have been allowed out of sight!"

M. de Lourtier-Vaneau made no protest. His air of dejection, his pallor, his trembling hands, all proved his remorse and his despair: "She deceived me," he murmured. "She was outwardly so quiet, so docile! And, after all, she's in a lunatic asylum."

"Then how can she...?"

"The asylum," explained M. de Lourtier, "is made up of a number of separate buildings scattered over extensive grounds. The sort of cottage in which Hermance lives stands quite apart. There is first a room occupied by Félicienne, then Hermance's bedroom and two separate rooms, one of which has its windows overlooking the open country. I suppose it is there that she locks up her victims."

"But the carriage that conveys the dead bodies?"

"The stables of the asylum are quite close to the cottage. There's a horse and carriage there for station work. Hermance no doubt gets up at night, harnesses the horse and slips the body through the window."

"And the nurse who watches her?"

"Félicienne is very old and rather deaf."

"But by day she sees her mistress moving to and fro, doing this and that. Must we not admit a certain complicity?"

"Never! Félicienne herself has been deceived by Hermance's hypocrisy."

"All the same, it was she who telephoned to Madame de Lourtier first, about that advertisement...."

"Very naturally. Hermance, who talks now and then, who argues, who buries herself in the newspapers, which she does not understand, as you were saying just now, but reads through them attentively, must have seen the advertisement and, having heard that we were looking for a servant, must have asked Félicienne to ring me up."

"Yes... yes... that is what I felt," said Rénine, slowly. "She marks down her victims.... With Hortense dead, she would have known, once she had used up her allowance of sleep, where to find an eighth victim.... But how did she entice the unfortunate women? How did she entice Hortense?"

The car was rushing along, but not fast enough to please Rénine, who rated the chauffeur:

"Push her along, Adolphe, can't you?... We're losing time, my man."

Suddenly the fear of arriving too late began to torture him. The logic of the insane is subject to sudden changes of mood, to any perilous idea that may enter the mind. The madwoman might easily mistake the date and hasten the catastrophe, like a clock out of order which strikes an hour too soon.

On the other hand, as her sleep was once more disturbed, might she not be tempted to take action without waiting for the appointed moment? Was this not the reason why she had locked herself into her room? Heavens, what agonies her prisoner must be suffering! What shudders of terror at the executioner's least movement!

"Faster, Adolphe, or I'll take the wheel myself! Faster, hang it."

At last they reached Ville d'Avray. There was a steep, sloping road on the right and walls interrupted by a long railing.

"Drive round the grounds, Adolphe. We mustn't give warning of our presence, must we, M. de Lourtier? Where is the cottage?"

"Just opposite," said M. de Lourtier-Vaneau.

They got out a little farther on. Rénine began to run along a bank at the side of an ill-kept sunken road. It was almost dark. M. de Lourtier said:

"Here, this building standing a little way back.... Look at that window on the ground-floor. It belongs to one of the separate rooms... and that is obviously how she slips out."

"But the window seems to be barred."

"Yes; and that is why no one suspected anything. But she must have found some way to get through."

The ground-floor was built over deep cellars. Rénine quickly clambered up, finding a foothold on a projecting ledge of stone.

Sure enough, one of the bars was missing.

He pressed his face to the window-pane and looked in.

The room was dark inside. Nevertheless he was able to distinguish at the back a woman seated beside another woman, who was lying on a mattress. The woman seated was holding her forehead in her hands and gazing at the woman who was lying down.

"It's she," whispered M. de Lourtier, who had also climbed the wall. "The other one is bound."

Rénine took from his pocket a glazier's diamond and cut out one of the panes without making enough noise to arouse the madwoman's attention. He next slid his hand to the window-fastening and turned it softly, while with his left hand he levelled a revolver.

"You're not going to fire, surely!" M. de Lourtier-Vaneau entreated.

"If I must, I shall."

Rénine pushed open the window gently. But there was an obstacle of which he was not aware, a chair which toppled over and fell.

He leapt into the room and threw away his revolver in order to seize the madwoman. But she did not wait for him. She rushed to the door, opened it and fled, with a hoarse cry.

M. de Lourtier made as though to run after her.

"What's the use?" said Rénine, kneeling down, "Let's save the victim first."

He was instantly reassured: Hortense was alive.

The first thing that he did was to cut the cords and remove the gag that was stifling her. Attracted by the noise, the old nurse had hastened to the room with a lamp, which Rénine took from her, casting its light on Hortense.

He was astounded: though livid and exhausted, with emaciated features and eyes blazing with fever, Hortense was trying to smile. She whispered:

"I was expecting you... I did not despair for a moment... I was sure of you...."

She fainted.

An hour later, after much useless searching around the cottage, they found the madwoman locked into a large cupboard in the loft. She had hanged herself.

HORTENSE refused to stay another night. Besides, it was better that the cottage should be empty when the old nurse announced the madwoman's suicide. Rénine gave Félicienne minute directions as to what she should do and say; and then, assisted by the chauffeur and M. de Lourtier, carried Hortense to the car and brought her home.

She was soon convalescent. Two days later, Rénine carefully questioned her and asked her how she had come to know the madwoman.

"It was very simple," she said. "My husband, who is not quite sane, as I have told you, is being looked after at Ville d'Avray; and I sometimes go to see him, without telling anybody, I admit. That was how I came to speak to that poor madwoman and how, the other day, she made signs that she wanted me to visit her. We were alone. I went into the cottage. She threw herself upon me and overpowered me before I had time to cry for help. I thought it was a jest; and so it was, wasn't it: a madwoman's jest? She was quite gentle with me.... All the same, she let me starve. But I was so sure of you!"

"And weren't you frightened?"

"Of starving? No. Besides, she gave me some food, now and then, when the fancy took her.... And then I was sure of you!"

"Yes, but there was something else: that other peril...."

"What other peril?" she asked, ingenuously.

Rénine gave a start. He suddenly understood— it seemed strange at first, though it was quite natural— that Hortense had not for a moment suspected and did not yet suspect the terrible danger which she had run. Her mind had not connected with her own adventure the murders committed by the lady with the hatchet.

He thought that it would always be time enough to tell her the truth. For that matter, a few days later her husband, who had been locked up for years, died in the asylum at Ville d'Avray, and Hortense, who had been recommended by her doctor a short period of rest and solitude, went to stay with a relation living near the village of Bassicourt, in the centre of France.

________________

10: They Dine in Darkness

Arthur Leo Zagat

1895-1949

Dime Mystery Magazine Sep 1935

Arthur Leo Zagat

1. Dark Hallways

JUNE FORSYTHE'S hand flew to her throat as though to stifle the scream that rose in it— the scream that, if given utterance, would betray her to the unknown horror that lurked in that ancient corridor. She stood stock-still, horribly unable to move as she listened to the grisly, scraping sounds that came from out of the eerie shadows ahead— the shadows through which she must pass.

The sounds were tiny sounds, such as might have been made by the scrape of claws on wood, the rubbing of a furry form against the rotting, mildewed plaster. From each of the many doorways let into the walls of this high-ceilinged passageway the sounds had come at intervals. Each doorway was a pocket of ominous blackness, and in each pocket sly horror lurked.

June's white lips moved in a soundless prayer for light. If only she possessed even a candle, she might be able to drive back the things that waited out there, but in the sprawling expanse of this rotting, deserted old office building there was no light of any kind, or any means of obtaining one. There was nothing at all but reverberant emptiness, hollowly, faintly echoing the city's roar that seeped vaguely through the thick old walls. Nothing but the dank fetor of a dead structure that had once been overwhelmingly alive... Nothing but the whispering scamper of the vileness its death had spawned.

But she couldn't stay here forever like this, rigid in the numbing grip of fear. The things that awaited her must be met, eventually— and they would not wait indefinitely. They would creep upon her, if she delayed too long, emboldened by her stillness— they would leap at her...

The girl drew a long quivering breath and dashed forward. Small, loathsome creatures squealed and scattered before the reckless impetuosity of her flight. One sleek gray beast, larger than the rest, did not flee. It crouched, and bared white fangs that gleamed in the darkness. Before it could spring, June's slim shoe struck it. There was a crunch of a small, snapped spine, the feel of a crushed body. June whimpered as nausea swept over her, and fled on down the hall on trembling limbs.

The patter of her rushing footfalls echoed and reechoed through the brooding silence. She snatched at a verdigrised doorknob. Sheer momentum almost tore her grasp from it. She held, and it swung her around to face tall double-doors of time-darkened oak, deeply set back in an arched embrasure. She opened the door and went it.

"Good morning, Miss Gordon," a voice greeted her.

June stood with her back against the door and shuddered. Hand to heaving breast she fought for breath, for control of her nerves. But Jeffery van Gandt had not looked up from the chaotic litter on the table he used as a desk. "I hope your dreams were pleasant ones." It was his customary greeting, spoken in deep-throated, mellow tones.

The grime on the huge window behind him could not keep out the blaze of the morning sun, so that van Gandt's body was detailless, a black silhouette against the glare. A silhouette such as might have been cast by a beau of the last century. For he wore a broad-brimmed grey top-hat on his finely modelled head, and a high, wing collar and big-knotted cravat added their bits to his old-fashioned outline.

"I won't come here any more!" June sobbed. "I won't!... They'll drive me mad!"

Van Gandt's look was mildly questioning. "What have your dreams, mad or otherwise, to do with your working for me?"

Hysteria was plucking at the girl's nerves, pulsing in her throat. "Dreams? Not dreams! Rats! The place is alive with them. Crawling with them!"

"Rats?" The man seemed puzzled. "Of course there are rats." He rose, came forward. He was very tall, and where the hair showed from under his anachronistic headgear it was quite white. But his clean-shaven face was fresh-complexioned, unwrinkled; and his figure slender, lithe within his grey frock coat, double-breasted vest, and tight pantaloons.

He peered nearsightedly at the girl. "My child," he exclaimed, suddenly solicitous. "You are pale. You stare so. You— you are frightened." He laid a long, sensitive hand on her arm, gently.

"Frightened! I'm terrified!" But even as she said it her terror seemed to be oozing away, almost as if that hand on her arm were driving off the fear.

"Yes." His tone was musing, thoughtful. "Yes, I see that you are frightened... of rats." He hesitated, seemed to ponder. His hand fell away.

Mechanically June removed her hat, her trim suit-coat, got crisp paper from the drawer of her own small desk that she might fold and clip it for cuffs. The accustomed routine was bringing her back to normal, but within she was still trembling.

"Are others as afraid of rats as you?" There was an oddly eager light in the bleared grey of van Gandt's eyes.

"All women fear them. Terribly. They're so— so terribly cruel." She could not repress the long shudder that ran through her delicately molded body.

"And men?"

"And men too, I think. I made Dan admit that he did, once. Before— before..." She caught herself. That was a slip. Van Gandt mustn't know that she had been married. But she had to blink back the tears that the thought of her stalwart husband still brought to her eyes.

It had been two years since that single, despairing radio call had come out of the sea's grey mystery: "Help! Help! Oh God, help us!"—but these two years had not availed to heal the hurt of her great loss. She had had him for so short a time, and then he had sailed away on the Marietta, and the secret of the ship's vanishing had never been solved. There had been no hint as to her fate except a tramp steamer's report of a red flare on the horizon, just about where the doomed vessel might have been.

Van Gandt went back to his table. Somehow his footfalls made no sound on the splintered, bare floor. "Rats," he murmured musingly as he collected a number of white papers covered with minuscule writing and tapped them into a neat pile. "I must make a note of that."

June Forsythe bustled busily at her own place, but from the corners of her eyes she watched her employer open a small and battered safe that stood under the broad sill of the window, watched him place the mass of papers within. Her pulse pounded sharply as she glimpsed the safe's shadowed interior. The grey back of an account book, inside, was splotched with red ink.

Van Gandt swung the iron door closed, twirled the combination dial. He did that every morning, right after she came in, and always there were more white sheets in the mass than there had been the morning before. He must write all night, June thought, by the light of his green-shaded oil lamp. What was it that he wrote, that he must guard it so carefully?

She inserted paper into her shiny typewriter. For the three days since she had answered van Gandt's ad she had copied long columns of names and figures from dusty, time-yellowed ledgers. The pages of the ancient books crumbled as she turned them, sent little spurts of dust up into her face. June shivered a little— not with the cold of and dampness that pervaded this place with the atmosphere of a tomb— with dread. With the creeping, almost tangible dread that seemed the only really live thing in this place. But stronger than that was the hate burning like a cold flame within her to temper the steel-hard determination with which she faced the grisly menace of the rat-infested passageways.

Suddenly van Gandt's voice came from beside her. "I will return shortly," he said. He moved like a wraith, this man, like an immaterial phantom! "Continue with your work."

He was going out! He was leaving her here alone! June fought to keep her elation from showing in her face. Her chance had come so soon! She watched the great door shut behind his tall, out-of-date figure. And then she leaped to her feet, panic surging through her brain, as a metallic click came sharply from that door!

She was at the door, was tugging at its knob. It refused to move. Appallingly it refused to move! He had locked her in! Good Lord! He had locked her in with...

With what?

The girl twisted about to face the room. Her apprehensive glance swept its expanse, probed its every inch. There were her desk, his, the safe behind it, the window, darkening already with the shadow of the skyscraper whose towering, windowless wall it faced. There was the other long table to the right, with its row of cane-bottomed chairs. There was the closet door in the wall on the left, the door that she had never seen opened. And there was nothing else. No one else. Whence, then, came the feeling of another presence, the spine-chilling sensation of eyes, of inimical, hostile eyes, glaring at her?

June flattened herself against the door, as if she were trying to force herself through the very wood and thus escape from this dreadful chamber. She was afraid, with a fear the more hideous for its being seemingly baseless. It clutched her throat with icy fingers, shook her quivering body in a palsy of terror.

There was nothing of which to be afraid. Nothing. She said it over and over to a tight brain that would not listen. There was no one in the office with her. Van Gandt did not suspect her— could not possibly suspect her. He had locked the door unthinkingly, through habit. It was only three days after all, that she had been with him; before that he had always had to lock the door when he went out.

Even through that door's thick wood the rat noises came in from the corridor, their scamperings, their little squeals. They seemed to be gathering around the threshold, to be waiting for her. Even if she could she would not dare go out there!

She was alone in the rambling, ten-story structure. Utterly alone. The building, long ago, had been scheduled to be torn down to make way for just such a skyscraper as the two between which it cowered. The other tenants had been evacuated, electricity, telephones, had been cut off. Van Gandt had delayed, loath to quit the second-floor office where his whole working life had been spent. The prospective builders had humored him. And then the fateful October ninth of 'Twenty-nine had swooped down upon them and the project had been abandoned. He had stayed on ever since, rent free, undisturbed, and alone.

June shook herself angrily. She must get her nerves under control. She was not in danger. Nothing threatened her, nothing could possibly harm her. If she could not get out of the office, neither could anyone get in.

The pounding of her heart eased. She pushed herself away from the door. She was wasting time. Van Gandt might be back before...

Wood scraped on wood, loudly! Right here! Right in the office with her—

June froze.

Oh God! The heavy window was moving slowly upward. Through the coating of dirt that made its glass translucent the terrified girl could see a huge, shapeless bulk, and fingers jogged the lower edge of the dirt-drab sash. Mother in Heaven! Those fingers were black, were shaggy with coarse hair! And the way they grasped the wood was weirdly, blood-chillingly unhuman.

2. The Man Who Screamed

A SCREAM grew in June's chest, seared upward, died at her pallid lips in a choked rasp. The strength drained out of her legs so it seemed in the next moment she must crumple to the floor. There was infinite threat in the window's slow movement, in the way the hand, leathery and black, snaked in, closed in a strained clutch on the sill-edge. The other hand shifted. The sash squealed as it moved rapidly in its groove.

That sound released the girl from the fear-paralysis that held her. There was only one hiding place for her, only one possible sanctuary. She darted across the room to the closet door, jerked at it, gasped with quick relief as it opened. Quickly she sprang into the yawning darkness and slammed the door between her and terror.

A silent sob shook her. There was no way to bar this door. No way at all. If the prowler found her here she was trapped, hopelessly trapped. Out there she might at least have dodged him for a while, might have snatched up some impromptu weapon, might have gotten to the open window and screamed. Here she was completely helpless. What a fool she had been!

There was a dull thud on the floor. He was in the room, then... It was in the room! No man possessed a hand like that. No man could climb twenty sheer feet of brick wall to reach that window. Some impossible monster was out there in the office. Some Thing of faceless horror moved about in there, snuffling, thudding blindly against the room's furnishings, searching, searching...

The sounds of movement stopped! What was he doing? Was he crouching before this frail panel that was the only thing between them? Was he reaching a dreadful hand, black and shaggy with coarse hair, to twist its knob? To twist, momentarily afterward, her neck? In fancy June could feel thick, spatulate, savage fingers closing on her throat...

Something cold struck her cheek, something cold and damp! A heavy something bumped flaccidly against her, from behind! June twisted about in the utter dark, flailed out insanely with her small fists. Clammy flesh soughed under the impact of her blows, a cold hand caught at her wrist, missed its mark.

The girl whirled again, clawed at the closet door. Nothing could be worse than this horror in the dark. The barrier gave way, she fell through, sprawling out face down across the office floor.

A guttural snarl came from the direction of van Gandt's table. Through the space under it she saw a dark, hunching, ungainly figure. It had beady, feral eyes that stared at her behind a mop of shaggy hair.

Thick, bestial lips drew back from yellow fangs. The awful face moved, came towards her. Terror exploded in June's brain, blinded and deafened her. She was dizzy in a whirlpool of swirling blackness. "June! June!" Dan's voice called to her from beyond his watery grave. She slid down and down into merciful oblivion...

HANDS tore at her. June beat weakly at her attacker, kept her eyes tight shut, knowing that sight of him must drive her surely mad.

"No," she moaned. "No"

"Wake up, child," Jeffery van Gandt's voice said. "Wake up." Liquid coolness splashed against her lips. He was holding a glass of water to her mouth and his eyes were anxious. "What happened to you?"

The water was grateful to the girl's parched throat. She gulped it down, pushed herself up in a sitting posture, looked fearfully around. "Where— where is he?" she quavered.

"Where is who?" Fine wrinkles sprayed from the corners of van Gandt's eyes and his lids narrowed. June saw that they two were alone in the office. Nothing appeared disturbed and the closet door was closed. "When I opened the door there was no one here but you—on the floor, in a dead faint." Something flickered, evasively, behind the bland veil of his aquiline face.

June got slowly to her feet. Now she could see that the window, also, was tight shut. She ran unsteady fingers through her close-cut boyish hair, straightening as best she could its unruly tangle of tight brown curls. Thought slid through her mind like a blurring cinema film. She came to a decision.

"I— I felt ill," she said slowly, "and dizzy. I had an impression that someone came into the room, but it must have been an illusion." She forced a smile, a toss of the head. "I don't know why it should have happened to me unless it's because of the scare the rats gave me. This is the first time in my life that I have fainted."

"Perhaps you ought to go home now, rest up. There is no hurry about the work you are doing, you know."

"No, thank you. I shall stay. I am quite all right. There is no need of my going home." If she could. If she only could! But there was her promise to Dan's memory. There was the oath she had sworn to his picture on that dreadful night when she had found the entry in his diary and at last had given up hope.

June imagined that the spirit of the old building resented the tapping of her typewriter. After so many long years of bustle the place was weary, longed for sleep. And now she was waking it with vibrant challenge... June bit her lip. These were mad thoughts crawling through her brain! She must stop them— stop them!

"SS. Holden Hall," she wrote, heading a new sheet. "From La Guiara 15 April, 1896." This one had carried hides that voyage and its hold must have been alive with rats. The Marietta had carried hides, too, down into the limbo of oblivion. Had the rats poured up on deck in the final, awful moment? Had they attacked the crew in their frenzy, attacked Dan—? Oh God!

White teeth bit into the girl's lower lip. Steady, June, steady. Enough that those pictures, those visions, trail through your dreams at night, and wake you, screaming, to lie awake through the awful hours. Go on with your work. Go on!

"Puerto Cabello, 15 April, no cargo," she copied the next entry. Then she turned the ledger page, began again. And a frigid chill ran through her. "21 July, 1897," she wrote. "Received from Marine Underwriters Ltd. $45,000 in settlement of all claims for loss of ship and cargo."

Good Lord! Had it begun so long ago? So... long... ago!

Van Gandt seemed almost asleep in his chair, he was so quiet, so motionless. But his eyes were fixed on her, speculatively. The nape of the girl's neck bristled and her breath came a little faster. Someone fumbled furtively at the door behind her!

Before June could turn, another sound came into the room's quiet, a queerly muffled thump against the panel. Again. There was a weird combination of timorousness and insistence about the furtive rap, as though he who was asking admittance were terrified at the thought of what awaited him, yet wanted to get the inevitable over and done with. An answering apprehension stirred in the girl's bosom as she rose and moved toward the entrance. Obscurely she sensed that she was threatened by the same influence that the visitor seemed to dread. She opened the door hesitantly.

"Mr. van Gandt iss in?"

June stared, momentarily speechless. Coming from the man-mountain who bulked in the doorway, the thin piping voice was weirdly incongruous. The face that hung before her was like a full moon of hairless pink flesh in whose rounded contours a tiny mouth pursed. Pendulous fat rolls concealed the neck and lay quivering on the outcurve of a clothed balloon that was his chest and unbelievably bloated abdomen.

"Yes," the girl managed to gasp. "Who is it?"

The caller sucked in breath, simpering. "Karl Potten, please." At the end of one columnar arm a hand like half-shaped dough clutched an umbrella by the middle. "I can see Herr van Gandt? Yes?"

"Yes," June repeated, parrotlike. "I suppose so." But she did not move aside to permit his entrance.

His hat was in his other hand and he was completely bald. A cold shiver so shook the girl that she could barely conceal it. Her fascinated gaze sought his eyes, tiny beads almost lost in the billowing expanse of his cheeks. Behind their china-blue hardness she sensed a soul in torment.

"Karl!" Startlingly van Gandt's voice was right behind her. "Come in, man. Come in."

Her employer had the visitor by the arm, as much of it as his long fingers could encompass. "It has been a long time since last we met," he went on, his mellow accents warm, cordial. The two, contrasting so sharply that their juxtaposition was grotesque, moved across the long room. Van Gandt's progress was as eerily soundless as usual, but Potten's great weight brought his feet down with a peculiarly distinctive sound: pud, pud, pud...

Van Gant pulled a second chair over to his desk. Potten lowered himself to it gingerly, as though expecting it to collapse, and June caught herself holding her breath in expectation of the same catastrophe.

"Miss Gordon," van Gandt said. "Will you take your lunch now, please?"

June realized that he was demanding privacy for the interview with Potten. "Very well," she murmured, and turned to the rack holding her street clothes.

She went out into the gloomy, rat-infested corridor. Her heels clicked as she broke into a run down the hall. Van Gandt would expect her to run through the menace of the rodents...

The girl ran the length of the corridor, then she turned about and tip-toed back to the door she had just left. She pressed up against it, her ear close against its rough surface. Behind her the grisly small creatures seemed to her to make a semi-circular ring of red-eyed threat, a ring that slowly, implacably closed in upon her.

But the girl, shivering with fear though she was, stuck to her post.

Karl Potten's piping voice came clearly through the wood. "Name your price, Cheffery, und I vill pay it. Udderwise..." He broke off. Somehow June could guess at the gesture that accompanied that pause. He would have made it with the ponderous arm that held the umbrella, and it would not have been pleasant.

Van Gandt's insouciant answer seemed quite irrelevant. "You and I are old, Karl," he said. "Old enough to be afraid of death." The eavesdropper pictured his slow cold smile. "It is not the young who fear death, it is easy to recruit armies, hazardous expeditions, from among them. But naturally enough, as a man approaches nearer and nearer his inevitable dissolution, his fear of that inescapable end grows greater and more insupportable. It makes a groveling, superstitious coward of him, Karl, a spineless creature ready to bribe God or the Devil for a few more days, a few more hours. Life becomes a torture to him because of the terror of oblivion that gnaws at his brain, and claws at his entrails, and clots in his hardening veins, yet he will not let it go."

"Vot are you talking aboudt?" The other's voice thickened with the fear that was in him. "Vy do you say dot?"

"Because, my old friend, in the next few seconds one of us will be released from that fear." The words dripped slowly into an aghast silence, as honey drips from a broken comb. And a threat buzzed in it as robbed insects buzz angry threat. "Released from fear by the thing he fears. By death!"

"Very well," Karl Potten responded, a new grimness in his thin voice. "If dot iss the way you want it..."

Momentarily there was no further sound within there. No sound at all. But June knew that in that room horror grew like a bubble, grew, grew, till its walls were too thin to hold longer—

There was a scream that was a thin sound of uttermost agony. It wavered, faded, rose again to insupportable intensity, thickened and spread into an obscure burbling... ended with an awful finality. Ended— but echoed still in June's ears, in her reeling brain...

Someone moved on the other side of the door. Someone turned its knob. The girl crushed herself against the side of the embrasure. The great wooden leaf swung outward, hiding her from whoever was coming out of that chamber where a man had screamed—and hiding him from her...

Who was it that rushed away down that long corridor and vanished beyond a further curve?

3. Horror's Prisoner

JUNE FORSYTHE licked her parched lips as she crouched in the triangular space between the open door and the narrow wall of the archway within which it was sunk. Silence beat dully against her ears. Even the rats seemed silenced by horror, even the senile groans of the ancient structure seemed stilled. June Forsythe recoiled in every atom of her being from the thought of entering the room where death lurked—and knew that she must do so.

It was her chance, the chance she had waited for. Once before the opportunity had been offered her and had been snatched away. She must not fail her husband, her lover this time. She must not fail.

Shadows blurred the corners of the soundless office. Beyond the table van Gandt used as a desk something was on the floor, something that had not been there before. From where she stood, in the doorway, June could not see what it was. But, of course, she knew what it was. Dreadfully, she knew. Only its identity was unknown to her.

A viscous, unseen fluid seemed to cling to her legs, so that she had to force her way through it, slowly. The journey across the room was interminable. Was it from van Gandt she had learned the trick of moving so that her shoes made no sound on the uncarpeted floor? Or was she dreaming this? Was it part of the nightmare she had lived since Dan had left her?

She reached the desk. She swayed, rested one hand on its paper-littered top to steady herself. She moved around the table towards the end where was the chair, now empty, upon which Karl Potten had sat.

Breath hissed from between her teeth. The mound on the floor was like a deflated balloon. The hat was still clutched in one hand, the umbrella in the other. June held on to the table and stared at it, and the gray-white head seemed to her like that of some noisome slug, mysteriously grown enormous.

The black, decent clothing of that gross corpse was hardly disarrayed. The body lay almost as if it were asleep— except that its head was grotesquely twisted to the left, and that there were blue blotches on the fat-drowned neck, blue blotches that were bruises made by brutal, murderous fingers.

As a deep cut by a clean blade is its own anesthetic, so excess of horror lost its power to shock the girl. She gazed almost calmly at the thing lying there, and wondered that there had been strength enough in van Gandt's fingers to have done this thing.

Wind from the opened window rustled papers, and June jumped. Her eyes went to the safe from whose iron the paint had peeled, but on whose front faint gold letters still were legible: "J. van Gandt and Partners. Shipping." She would, she saw, have to touch that which had been Karl Potten not so long ago. It lay so that she would have to climb over it to reach that safe. She could not hope to move it.

The cadaver was still warm, still soft. She slipped. Her knee sank into its mass and it seemed to move under the pressure. Panic seized June again, stopping her breath, clutching her heart. She had to put her hand on the massive face to push herself over. The damp clamminess sucked at her fingers, engulfing them. Hysteria gibbered in her skull.

"Dan," she whispered. "Dan." The softly repeated name took hold of her like tender hands— quieted her. She knelt in front of the antique strong box. She had prepared for this moment, knew just what to do, knew that in minutes the iron door would swing open for her. She was trembling again, but not with fear.

June got her ear against the cold metal, just above the dull nickel of the combination-dial. This brought her around so that she had to look at the corpse and she shut her eyes against the gruesome vision. Her hand closed on the dial. She turned it slowly, was concentrated on listening for the first click of tumblers falling into place...

An arm slid around her waist, lifted her. A hand clamped over her face, a rasping, rough-palmed hand. It shut off breath and blinded her!

June flailed frantic heels backward. They beat a futile tattoo against muscles that had no resilience. She squirmed, tried to bite the hand that stifled and blinded her. As well bite tanned, hardened leather. Her captor's strength was enormous, she was utterly helpless. He was carrying her off, easily as one would carry a doll, despite her desperate struggles.

The girl's lungs were laboring agonizedly and darkness swirled in her brain, mingling pain and terror. She tugged feebly at the arm that encircled her, that crushed her. Appallingly she realized that it was sleeveless, that it was covered by shaggy, coarse hair...

The Thing that had hold of her snuffled revoltingly. Its hand lifted away from her face for an instant, clamped down again. She had just time to snatch a breath of air tinctured with a musty, indescribable odor, to glimpse the same brutish, savage countenance that before had stared at her from under van Gandt's desk!

June was not unconscious, but sensation, thought, were a chaotic whirlpool within her that was the essence of madness. Her horrid captor's lewd face gibbered at her from the swirling darkness, hooked talons, blackly hirsute, clawed at her as though to strip her naked. June came momentarily back to some dim sanity and was aware that her captor was climbing stairs, that he was grunting a bit with the effort.

Terror, and unutterable fear and despair flooded in on her once more, swamping consciousness...

WHEN June regained her senses, she was lying, asprawl, on a wooden floor.

She dared not open her eyes. Another glimpse of the monster that had brought her here would, she knew, send her back into the grey and horrible mists of insanity, and she would never again escape from them.

It was quiet here. There wasn't any sound, except her own breathing. Surely, pressed against the floor as she was, she should hear, sense, some vibration if anyone was near. Perhaps her fearful captor had gone to complete whatever task he had been engaged in, before— finishing with her.

She was alone in the room. June opened her eyes and looked fearfully about her, sat up. This place was just like the other office except that it was unfurnished. There was the big arc-topped window, and behind her the door— but this one had a glass transom over it...

June got to her feet, swaying. Agony pounded in her temples. Her knees buckled with weakness, but she managed to get to the door, to try it. She wasn't surprised to find that it was locked. But— the window...

Her muscles were so sluggish, responded so dully. If she didn't hurry the monster would be back before she could reach the window, and then...! June whimpered. Thick dust on the sill was gritty to her palms as she leaned on them, resting momentarily. Dirt coated the glass so that light filtered through only dimly.

It was so hard to move the window-sash. So awfully hard. Strained muscles tore at the small of her back, but at last, it grated open. Cool air, coming through the slowly widening opening, was grateful. Traffic noises came in, also, blessedly sane. The blare of motor horns, the far-off shrilling of a policeman's whistle.

Far-off! Far down! June leaned out to gaze down and down the precipitous steep wall to a concrete alley appallingly far below. She was on the top floor! There could be no escape this way! No use, even, to scream for help. A towering, unpierced wall leered at her from across the alley. The skyscraper that was to have been built on this site was planned to abut on that other with no provision for light or air. Behind that wall were hundreds of people, only a score of feet away, yet she was as alone, as far beyond the reach of aid, as though she were buried in primeval jungle.

Sound pulled June around to face the door, slithering sound from the corridor beyond it. Her skin, prickled with terror and despair, was a leaden weight in her breast.

The noise of the monster's approach came nearer, nearer. His return was leisurely. She was safely held, he knew, for his pleasure when he chose to take it

June turned, climbed up and crouched on the broad window-sill. The giddy height made her dizzy, urged her to plunge out and down. Her burning eyes sought the entrance. When it opened— he must see how she had escaped him— she would lean out through the window, would let go all holds.

Soft footfalls thudded closer. A tiny muscle in June's cheek began twitching. She put a finger to it to try and stop it. Her other hand was over her head, holding on to the sash. Straightening that arm would send her spinning out...

Now! The footfalls were at the door, right outside... were passing!... were moving away, down the hall! It wasn't her captor at all! It was someone else! Someone who might help her. And she was letting him go! June slid off the sill to the floor and her throat constricted to a cry for help...

But before she could give it utterance a new thought blazed across the chaos of her brain. Suppose it were another such monster as the one that had brought her here! Suppose it were van Gandt, looking for her. She knew that he was a murderer— and murderers did not hesitate to kill again! Before she called she must see who walked out there.

The white-faced girl slipped off her shoes, darted across the floor. She lifted a stockinged foot to the doorknob, clawed at the door itself with desperate fingers. She was up, was clinging to the transom ledge with clutching hands, and her face was level with the glass. She rubbed away dust, peered through.

The long, hazy vista of the corridor stretched away. Halfway to the disused elevators and the stairway, she could see the figure of a man moving along, wearily. He came into a shaft of light from an open door and there was something queerly familiar about him—

"Help!" June screamed. "Help!"

The man hesitated, as if uncertain that he had heard aright. Started on again. "Help!" the girl shrilled. He turned.

And then June knew she had gone completely mad.

Dead eyes stared out of deep-sunk, dark pits in the face that was turned toward her. One side of it was eaten away by a livid scar that jutted a hairless wedge into the man's scalp and wrenched his mouth out of shape to make of it a horrible, one-sided grin. But battered, dreadful as that face was, it was the face of Dan Forsythe— of her husband who had died two years ago!

4. What Fed In The Dark?

THE impact of that vision was like a physical blow, striking June away from her precarious hold. She reeled, her hand slipped on the ledge, her foot almost slipped from the knob. By some miracle her toes clung, and her fingertips— and contorted her body, fighting to save herself from a bone-crashing fall. Then she caught herself, and got a new grip on the transom frame with cold, shaking hands, and thrust her twitching face hard against the glass, against the peephole she had made in its film of grime.

The long passage was blurred to her straining vision. Then her sight cleared and she saw that the hall was horribly, mockingly empty...

Where had he gone? Oh, merciful God! Where had Dan gone?

Had she seen him at all? Had she seen anyone? In the glass before her, June's reflection stared back at her, features sheet-white, drawn, eyes great dark pools outlined by quivering, blue lids, colorless lips twisting... The face of a madwoman!

No! She was not mad! She had seen Dan! Dan had come back to her! He was alive! He was out there somewhere...

June's little fist beat at the transom glass. Went through. The shards splintered about her face, ripped her hand, her arm. Crashed to the floor below. She tugged at the jagged remnants of glass still remaining in the frame and they were slippery with her blood, so that her grip slithered off. Whimpering with the pain, the girl struck and tugged at the remaining shards.

The opening was wide enough at last. June pulled herself up, got a knee up on that high ledge, pulled herself through. Sharp points tore at her clothes, ripped her blouse away from one shoulder, dug into her flesh. She squirmed around, hung from extended arms, dropped. Twisted lithely as a cat as she fell, so that she faced the direction in which she had seen, or thought she had seen, Dan. She ran down the corridor in stocking feet with blood streaming from her cheek from her gashed shoulder. With blood, that she did not feel, dripping down across one white breast.

"Dan!" she cried. "Dan...!"

The hollow, empty labyrinths of the old structure took up her cry, and flung it from one moldering wall to another, mocking her with their endless echoing of his name. She reached the room with the open door and stopped to glance in, saw only dust and vacancy, and ran out. She reached the staircase that spiralled down as they used to build them, above the elevator shaft.

"Dan!" she called down that lightless well. "Dan!" Listened for a reply— The musty darkness swallowed her agonized call, muffled it. Then the staircase was as silent as it was dark.

June Forsythe held herself upright by wedging herself into the wall-corner behind her. Tears were hot in her eyes, and her heart pounded against its caging ribs as though about to break through. She had found him only to lose him again. He was gone— irretrievably gone. For her utter damnation she had been given one last glimpse of him, of his flame-seared, fire-tortured features, and then he had gone from her forever.

He had not even known how near she was. He had not heard her call.

If that which she had seen were a phantom, a ghost out of the dead past sent to torture her, it would have known she was there, it would have come to her through the very walls. No! Dan was alive. It was Dan she had seen. Thus the thoughts whirling through her tortured brain. Dan had gone down those stairs, down to where van Gandt, the murderer, lurked. Down to where the monster prowled. They would kill him again, one or the other of them.

She must follow— to warn him, to save him. She must follow down through that ominous, dreadful darkness. Even though terror of what she might encounter clawed her breast—

From the gloom below a wail floated up. It rose higher and higher in pitch until it was a thin scream of unendurable pain, of torment unspeakable. And then, suddenly, terribly, the sound choked off.

Deathly silence closed in... What new horror was enclosed in those ghastly walls? Jeffery van Gandt had struck again. But whom? Oh God! Whom?

June Forsythe half ran, half fell, down interminable steps. In the dark rectangles that marked the exits from each floor, gibbering, murderous things seemed to crouch, waiting for her— seemed to snatch at her with long, misty arms. Between, on the stygian flights, there was a scuttering of furry small bodies, and the gnashing of long fangs in pinched, sharp jaws, and the fetor of the rats. One blundered into her, squealed, and ran on up the stairs. Another. By tens, by scores, they poured past her, scampering upward. They went past her, as though she were not there, as though blinded to her presence, blinded by fear.

Something unutterably fearsome was down below. Something from which the rats fled headlong, their ferocity forgotten, swamped by terror. The monster was somewhere down there, the monster from whose cell she had escaped; and Jeffery van Gandt was down there, surely awake now to the danger for him that her continued existence implied. They were waiting for her...

If she turned off at one of these floors she was passing, hid in one of these deserted offices, they would never find her. There were thousands of cubicles in the ten-story, sprawling building, dozens of interlaced, wandering corridors. It would take an army to ferret her out. She could be safe from them—so easily she could be safe...

But Dan was down there. Dan!

June hurried on, downward through the unending darkness.

The pound of each footfall sent darts of pain stabbing up her weary legs. Pain tore at June's laboring lungs, and utter exhaustion beat heavily within her skull. She must rest... She clung desperately to an unseen railing, held herself erect with the last shred of her strength. The damp cold of the brick wall was grateful to her throbbing forehead. In a minute— in just a minute she would go on again.

Just below her in the darkness there was a soft sound. The lipping of an arid mouth against torn flesh. The gnawing of teeth on bone.

Just below her, just around the sharp corner of the elevator shaft, something fed, snuffling with gluttonous, bestial satisfaction. Dead flesh thumped dully as the feaster tugged at it. It sounded like an arm threshing about, thudding against the wall. Icy prickles crawled up June Forsythe's backbone. Cold talons clutched her throat. What was it upon which the unseen carnivore fed? Who was it?

She must know! The need to know fought within her against soul-searing dread, against revulsion, against unutterable fear. Step by step it dragged her down to where the treads became triangular to turn the shaft-corner, dragged her around that corner...

Something bulked blackly against the grey oblong of the floor door. A beast large as a Newfoundland dog, incredibly large as a month-old calf. A loathsome thing whose shape was unmistakable against the pallid light by which it was half-revealed: sleek, narrow body, long head, sharp-pointed, pinched jaw with out-jutting teeth that tore into flesh and stripped it from bones. It was an enormous, a gigantic rat... Impossibly, it was a rat bloated to ten times the size of the largest rat that ever was, its foulness multiplied a thousandfold. And that over which it slavered, that which it nuzzled and tore at and vilely munched, that unbelievable rodent's dreadful meal still retained some grotesque semblance of its original— of its human— form!

Here, on the steps down which she was so certain Dan had preceded her, a human being had been struck down by this overgrown foulness...

The giant rat snarled, whipped around to her. It had scented her, heard her. It raised itself from its crouching posture. Its vile head was breast high to her. Its sinister eyes glowed redly in the murk. Its forelimbs were oddly, repugnantly man-like as they dangled in midair before it, and each yellow, encrusted fang was the size of a big man's thumb. Its black, split lip twitched, waving the long bristles of its mustache in unison, but the brute made no sound. Horribly, it made no sound.

Its odor reached, enveloped June. Her senses reeled with the stench of the beast. Every quivering cell of her shrieked separate warning that the brute was about to leap upon her, was about to drag her down. In anticipation her flesh felt the rip of those awful fangs, the slice of those terrible claws. But appallingly she could not move. As if she were a reptile-fascinated bird, a nightmare paralysis had her in its inexorable grip, a rigidity that would not loose her to flee. She could only shudder, and moan— and wait helplessly for the gargantuan rat to spring.

The gaunt, horrible body tautened for the lethal leap. A prayer rose in the maelstrom of her mind. "Oh Father, take me..."

The beast crouched...

Thunder blasted in June's ear and orange flame darted past her, searing her cheek. The rat jerked, snarled. The gun barked again. The beast whirled, was gone through the door behind it.

June's knees folded, refused support. She toppled, slid down along the shaft-wall, bumped headlong down the few remaining steps to the landing. Her hand thrust forward to break her fall and went into warm, viscous liquid. A face stared into her own, a face from which the flesh had been stripped so that it was a gory, grinning skull. Whose? Oh merciful God! Whose?

Her other hand came forward, pawed for the torn body. Felt shredded flesh, bared ribs. Found a flank that had been spared, that her coming had saved from the mammoth rodent's slicing teeth. Felt hair, shaggy coarse hair matting that bloody side. Hair such as she had felt— it seemed ages ago— on the arm of a two-legged brute that crushed her to its shaggy breast and carried her off to its lair.

Not Dan! Oh, thank God! Not Dan.

She was conscious of a presence above her. She twisted about to stare upwards at Jeffrey van Gandt! He towered above her, impeccable, and in his steady, almost transparent hand a revolver rested. June got unsteadily to her feet. The gun gestured toward her, she flung herself backward, twisted around the lintel of the floor door, and dashed down the passage. Before van Gandt could get into the corridor for a clear shot at her she had reached, dived down, a side hall, had twisted into another. She flattened herself into a doorway and waited, listening.

5. Footfalls of Doom

THERE was no indication that van Gandt had followed her. The silence of the ancient building closed in around June, brooding, pregnant with cryptic threat. He moved so noiselessly, so sinisterly without sound, that he might be almost upon her, might be there, just around that wall-angle that blocked off her sight. The girl's heart pounded, and fear crawled in her veins. He knew probably every nook and cranny of the place— he might be circling to creep up on her from the other side, hoping to catch her unaware.

June felt behind her, found a doorknob, twisted it. In there she would be safer by a tiny bit, would at least have warning of his approach. She was inside, the door was closed, the room's mustiness folded about her.

She was his quarry, his prey. He would track her down. He must hunt her down. He dared not let her escape. He dared not let her get out into the street with her story of what had happened to Karl Potten. At her report the police would come, would search...

Would open his safe and find there the damning evidence of his more horrible crimes which she had risked so much, endured so much, in the attempt to obtain!

No. Jeffrey Van Gandt would never let her get out of here alive. He dared not...

But why, then, had he saved her from the giant rat?

June shuddered, remembering the horror the unbelievable beast had wrought, remembering how it had crouched to leap upon her. A bullet would be more merciful. If rightly aimed death would be swift, painless. Almost, she wished she had stayed to take van Gandt's shot. Then she could have joined Dan, somewhere beyond the Veil...

But Dan wasn't dead. Memory ran through her, warning her. How could she have forgotten? She had seen Dan, had followed him...

Where was he? Where in this dim maze of death, of the fear of death and the fear of things far worse than death was her husband, her lover? He was sick, feeble! Mentally ill. The one glimpse she had had of his face had told her that. And there was so much of danger in this place to threaten him. She must find him! She must find her Dan!

But how? Where could she look... June's throat tightened at the thud of a footfall near by. She whirled... There was no one here. No one at all. Only she was here within these leprous walls. Yet those were footsteps of an invisible walker, coming towards her! Heavy, ponderous footfalls she recognized. Pud— pud... She could feel the floor shake to their steady fall. Pud— pud... Footfalls of approaching doom. Footfalls like those of Karl Potten walking across van Gandt's office. Walking to his death!

The air was suddenly icy, in this chamber where an unseen corpse walked. June thrust shaking, cold hands out in front of her, fending it off, fending off the menace she could not see, the thing of utter fear that thudded toward her—slowly, implacably. Without conscious volition, she backed from before its steady approach...

The dank odor of a sepulchre was in her nostrils, dank breath of a tomb brushed her with feathery touch. She was against the mildewed, damp wall, she was crushed against the wall, and still the ominous, slow march came on. She could go no further. She was lost. Irredeemably she was lost...

And then it was upon her! Its unseen, flabby hands were at her throat. A shriek burst from that throat before it was too late, before she could shriek no longer...

June slid, limply, to the floor. The thudding footfalls continued. They went on. On— through the solid wall against which she lay! They faded, pounding off into the distance.

The girl crouched on the floor, racked by supernatural fear. The terrors that thus far she had endured, soul-wrenching as they had been, were more or less explicable, more or less within the bounds of reason. But this—this invisible, intangible sound that had come slowly toward her with infinite menace, this parade of footfalls made by legs, which she had seen immobile in death, that had come in to her through solid brick and plaster, that had gone out through walls as impenetrable—what hypothesis could explain that? Except— that the wrath of Karl Potten had returned to stalk his murderer— to hunt down Jeffery van Gandt as van Gandt hunted her.

But— but that was utterly mad! There were no such things as ghosts. There was no such thing as survival after death...

Was there not? What was it, then, that had walked through a wall into this room, and out through another wall. What—if not a ghost, a vengeful wraith?

But if the dead veritably walked in this house of ancient evil, then was Dan— the momentary glimpse of whom had wrung her heart and awakened full force all her burning love for him, all the torment the frustration of that love had brought upon her— was Dan a ghost? Was he a phantom come back to haunt the schemer who had sent him back to die? Only a phantom?

June's brow furrowed in an attempt at thought. Her reason groped in dim, unfamiliar channels. If, by some miracle, Dan had survived the Marietta's destruction, had lain somewhere hurt, delirious perhaps, had recovered at last and found his way back to New York, he would have come to her at once. Of course he would...

It was, then, not Dan whom she had seen. Not a living Dan. Dan was dead and the hope, the pain-shot joy that had flared within her at the sight of him must be quenched by final despair...

No! God would not be so cruel. Dan was alive. He was somewhere within the time-blackened walls of this building and she would find him!

The girl's lips tightened as she forced herself painfully to her knees. Her wounds had ceased to bleed, but everywhere dried blood caked her skin, and pain throbbed in a network encasing her tortured body. She pushed herself laboriously erect, reeled to the door of the room where she had vainly sought sanctuary.

The passage outside was long, and very dim. June was conscious of a feeling that night was near. The passage was dim and silent, and dread lay in it like a palpable presence. Flecked-off, once-showy gilt lettering on the door through which she had just come read, "Room 263."

Hazily, this made June aware of her location. She was on the second floor once more. To the left, down this corridor, then left again, and again left, was van Gandt's office. That was the way to the room of uncanny death, the room where there was a corpulent corpse that would not lie still, where a closet hid some dreadful secret. Where the giant rat...

June pulled back into the doorway's embrasure, her heart pounding. A barely heard whisper of movement had warned that someone was nearby. Her fingers curled, trembling, about the doorknob, turned it slowly, without sound. She must get back in there, must hide...

But— suppose it were Dan coming, searching for her. Suppose she hid from him, and he passed, and they never could find one another again...! In reality it was less than the space of a clock-tick, but it seemed to June that she hesitated for hours, while that soft susurration brushed nearer— nearer— bringing deadly peril or the lost lover for whom her arms ached.

Which? She must know! She must know, despite terror that stopped her breath, robbed her of strength...

Slowly her hand let the doorknob come back. Then, trembling violently, she peered around the corner of the wall.

The corridor was a long tunnel of darkness, a narrowing vista that ended in a greyish translucence that was the pallid wall of another hall. For an instant June saw nothing—then there was something against the wan screen, a tall silhouette, the detailless black outline of a tall man out of the past, with canted top-hat and wing collar, and tight pantaloons. But one black hand of this silhouette was thrust stiffly out before it, and in that hand snouted the black shape of a very modern, very efficient revolver.

Van Gandt's shadow drifted to her right across the end of the corridor and was gone. Breath burst from June's aching lungs— caught at her throat. Another silhouette had thrust out against that oblong of greyish light. Another form was momentarily occupying that eerie stage. Like the enormous projection of a close-up on a cinema screen it bulked for an instant; sharp-snouted, thin-legged, scaly-tailed— a macaber picturization of foul ferocity, of dire and dreadful death. The great rat crept with belly close to the ground, and its progress was utterly, gruesomely, silent as it stalked the human killer who had gone before.

It, too, vanished. Like a grisly nightmare the two had passed across her vision and were silently gone, the brute human stalking— herself— and the foul beast that hunted him.

June's mouth twisted with a grim, sardonic humor. Van Gandt had saved her from the rodent, was the rodent now to save her from van Gandt? There would be weird justice in such a denouement.

Her way was clear! Realization beat in on her consciousness. Her way to van Gandt's office was clear, her way to van Gandt's office and the safe in that office, and the grey book with the ink-splotched back that lay in that safe.

She started running, breathlessly, down the corridor. She reached its end in the passage along which he had gone— he who was at once hunter and hunted, and the thing that hunted him. She threw a wild, frightened look over her shoulder as she twisted to the left. A little way beyond, that hall turned again, and they were beyond the turn. She kept on, fear prickling her spine, the nape of her neck, fear that they might hear, that they might return. The fetor of the giant rodent was strong in the stagnant air.

She turned left again. Somewhat safer now. Left once more. This corridor was more familiar— this corridor and the door at its further end.

She crept down the long hall to the door, turned the knob, and entered the musty office where all this weird adventure had begun. The sheet on which she had been working when Karl Potten knocked, asking admittance to death, was still in the typewriter. The table-desk before the window was quite undisturbed. But— there was no cadaver on the floor before the safe!

June flung a harried glance at the inscrutable door of the closet to the left. There was space in there, space even for Potten's tremendous bulk to companion that other cold and clammy thing that had resented her hiding there. She pulled her eyes away from that, saw a huge packing case bulking against the other wall. A stab of eerie terror shot through her as the faint sound of furtive movement seemed to come from within it. Her lips tightened and she went on toward her objective. She had too much to fear from the living to be afraid of the dead. Even of the dead who walked.

She crept past the desk, knelt in front of the safe. She put her cheek against the chill of its iron and twirled the dial, listening for the fall of the tumblers into their places. Elation surged within her, momentarily surmounting her fear—the ghastly memory of what had occurred when once before she had attempted this deed. The shaggy brute, at least, would not trouble her again. Faint nausea retched at her as she remembered how she had seen him last...

It was done. The last tumbler clicked, and June pulled the door open. The safe's shelved interior was open to her...

Dismay spread like a black pool in her consciousness. The ancient shelves before her was empty. Swept clean. The grey book was not there. The manuscript on which van Gandt had labored was gone...

"Something told me that I should find you here," a mellow, suave voice said from behind her. "I am fortunate to have gotten back in time."

6. Monsters of Darkness

DESPAIR and the realization of utter defeat engulfed June. She came slowly erect, turned about. She had put her hands on the back of van Gandt's chair to steady herself as her legs threatened to refuse support.

The room was almost quite dark now, so that he was a looming, indefinite shadow in its gloom. The fantastic quality with which his outdated dress had always invested him was emphasized by the darkness, so that he seemed altogether unreal. He was a vague clotting of the darkness, a tall spectre of infinite threat. But a stray gleam of light impinged on the gun in his pale hand, and that was all too concrete.

The tiny metallic glitter pulled June's eyes to it. Why didn't he shoot, she wondered wearily, and end this agony? Why did he stand there so silently? Why did his smouldering eyes sweep up and down her quivering frame? She was half-nude, she knew. But he must have seen feminine flesh before— flesh not torn, not lacerated as hers was.

"Where—" he said at last— "where are the things that have been taken from that safe?" His speech was still quiet, still low-pitched. But behind the tone of imperative demand in it there were undertones of an inexplicable scorn, of savage anger. "Where have you hidden them?"

That was why he had saved her from the giant rat, why he did not shoot her now, off-hand. Someone had beaten her to it, had extracted the account-book and the manuscript from their repository, and he thought it was she. He would not kill her until they were back again in his hands.

June lifted her head to look squarely at him. Her lips moved. At first they made no sound. Then words breathed from between them. "I did not— hide them. I did not— take them."

She said it, and then gasped, within herself. It was the wrong thing to say. Utterly the wrong thing. If he believed her there was no longer any reason for him to spare her, every reason to do away with the sole witness to his murder of Potten. If he did not believe her he would try to force the answer to his demand from her. And there was that in his face, even in the posture of his body, that told her he would stop at nothing to force her...

"Where— are— they?" Syllable by soft syllable the question thudded into the room's gathering darkness.

June's throat constricted. He did not believe that she knew nothing about the book's whereabouts and that of the manuscript. He didn't believe...

"I tell you I don't know." The sentence tore her throat as she formed it and a sob was its period, a sob she could not repress. She was tired, so terribly tired of fighting, of pain. "I— don't— know."

Even in the murk she could see her tormenter stiffen, could sense the decision to which he had come. "It would be better for you to remember," he said, and there was a new grimness, a new threat in his voice. "Before I—take steps to make you— remember."

The gentleness was gone from his features now. They had sharpened, somehow, and the muscles beneath the anomalous youth of his skin seemed to have melted, so that his face was a skull-like mask of sadistic ferocity through dark pits in which eyes stared that mirrored madness. And suddenly van Gandt advanced toward the terrified girl. He seemed to grow taller as he came, appallingly to grow taller, so that he seemed a spectre of doom.

June's hand fluttered to her mouth in an uncontrollable gesture of abandoned terror as van Gandt came to the desk, moved silently around it to reach her. She was utterly incapable of movement, utterly unable to make even a futile gesture at escape.

He was upon her! His free hand lashed out, its skinny fingers closed on her arm, dug in. Each separate digit burned into her quivering flesh. A supernatural strength was in those fingers and all the slender, frail-seeming frame of the man. June was forced backward, irresistibly backward, till the upper edge of the open safe door was against her back.

Van Gandt thrust his knee within the steel portal, held it immovable. The inexorable pressure of the hand on June's arm bent her over backward, the small of her back fulcruming on the metal, bent her still further backward until burning pain cut across her spine, tore across the stretched muscles of her abdomen.

A scream burbled in the girl's chest. Van Gandt's hand released her arm, lashed for her throat, clenched it, quenched the shriek before it reached her lips. Her own arm was caught behind her in the narrow V at the hinge of the safe door, and the door was closed upon it, clamped it.

Van Gandt's knee was on the outside of the door now, and his hand that still clutched his gun utilized the tremendous leverage to close the steel upon the girl's soft arm. It was crushing her bone. The pain she had already suffered was as nothing to the excruciating agony that slowly closing vise inflicted now...

"Will you— tell me— now?" van Gandt grunted, and the clutch of his grip on her throat relaxed an instant.

"Can't," the agonized girl forced out. "Don't— know—"

Rage flared in the torturer's eyes, and his hot breath gusted in her face. "You'll tell before I am through with you," he grunted. "You'll tell." He swung his hip against the safe door and it was forced an inch nearer to closing. Pain burst the bonds of June's arm, shrilled through her whole body. Pain insupportable. The tortures of hell could be no worse... Blackness swirled about June, but she prayed in vain for the release of unconsciousness.

Then, dimly she realized that the agonizing pressure was relaxing, that there was sound somewhere, the sound of heavy footfalls, of rapping on the office door.

People were out there, were demanding admittance. People! Had Dan managed to get out, to call the police? Was it Dan come to rescue her...?

"One moment, please, while I light up." Van Gandt must have iron nerves! His voice was steady, unperturbed, and as he spoke he lifted her free of the safe. She could breathe but his hand remained on her throat, in warning to silence. June knew only hazily what was going on, her perception fogged by the swirling chaos that consciousness had become for her. But she was aware that the man was moving swiftly to get something out of his desk drawer, that her lips were suddenly tight clamped by something he had stripped across them, that the same something was binding her wrists, her ankles. That was adhesive tape gagging her, holding her helpless.

He rolled her under the table, and lit the oil lamp above. Its dull glow filled the office that had been a torture-chamber, but where June was the shadow was impenetrable. Anyone looking in her direction would be blinded by the blaze of light above, could not possibly see her in the deep blackness where she lay. But she lay facing the door and the room, and could see everything there.

Whoever was at the door rapped again, but so swiftly had van Gandt worked that there was yet no real impatience in the knock. He flitted across the room, turned the key in the lock.

"Come in," van Gandt said smoothly. "I must have fallen asleep while I was waiting for you and when your knock woke me it was pitch-dark."

Hope seeped from June, left her trembling with despair. He had been expecting the newcomers. Of course! They were friends of his, men come to take away the packing case and its grisly contents. They would be gone in a few minutes and he would again be free to torture her...

The black tide of physical suffering and mental despair welled up into her consciousness, blotted sight, hearing. Then a stab of poignant pain cleared her senses again. She saw legs, feet moving across the floor, three pairs of them. She recognized van Gandt's in the lead by their gray gaiters, tight-fitting over elastic-sided Congress shoes. The others were modern, a pair of brown ties, a snub-nosed, stumping pair of black oxfords. The six feet thumped across the floor, and their footfalls pounded on June's rasped nerves, on the unbearable ache of her crushed, limp arm, so that her brain swam.

They were going toward the packing case, where it stood at the head of the long table. It was so big, June fretted in a queer inconsequence that was delirium, and what was in it was so heavy that two men wouldn't be strong enough to carry it...

"Will you take your accustomed seats, gentlemen," Jeffery van Gandt said, amazingly, "and we'll get down to business." There was a crisp competence in his tone that had not been there before.

An answering voice was age-thinned, querulous. "What is your purpose in bringing us here again, Jeffery? I thought we'd split up for good. Settled everything." Chairs scraped. June could see up as far as the chair seats, could see spindly shanks, thin buttocks, settle into one; could see a sturdier form occupy the other. Van Gandt remained standing, at the head of the table. One hand rested on the huge box, the other was unconcernedly in a pocket of his long frock coat where a lump might be his fist— or the revolver.

"There is something still to adjust, Hugh Tomlinson," he responded in a grim voice. "Something I did not know about last month, when we split partnership."

"You're not going back on our bargain now," the third man rumbled. "You got all the better of it as it is. We gave you what was left of the business when we pulled out. I'm not signing any more documents."

"Yes, you are, Stoughton," van Gandt said softly. "Yes, you are." His hand that was on the case moved out of June's sight. A paper rustled as if he were bringing it out of a breast pocket. "You are signing this one."

Tomlinson's senile utterance cut across the other's sentence. "Where's Karl? Where's Karl Potten? I don't see why Karl Potten isn't here."

June could sense the hard-mouthed leer in the reply. "Don't worry about Karl. I've settled with him already." She wondered if the others realized the threat in what he said. If she could warn them. If only she could warn them!

"What's on that paper?" Stoughton's deep tones fell flatly into the momentary pause. "What is it you want us to sign?"

"A confession." It seemed as though van Gandt were relishing each word, so slowly did it come forth. "A confession—of grand larceny, fraud, and—mass murder."

"What!" His chair went spinning across the room as Stoughton lunged out of it to his feet. "You're insane..."

"Hold it!" Van Gandt's gun was out of its concealing pocket now. Its blue barrel jutted rock-steady, menacing. "I'll use this if I have to."

The man's big-thewed limbs froze, but June saw the tensity of their muscles, the taut quiver of their knees. This man was not licked, not yet. He was waiting, hawklike, for a momentary wavering in van Gandt's attention, the flicker of a chance for him to spring, to wrest the gun from the other, to beat him to his knees. The girl prayed that he might have that chance.

"I knew I shouldn't come here," Tomlinson wailed. "My heart—"

"Shut up you old fool," Stoughton growled. Then, to van Gandt. "What's this rigamarole you're pulling on us?"

"Listen! Here's the confession you are going to sign before you leave here. I'll read it so that Hugh also will understand, I see he is too upset to put on his spectacles:

'We the undersigned, Hugh Tomlinson and James Stoughton, for fifty years members of the firm of J. van Gandt and Partners, in the business of owning, chartering and operating freight ships, do hereby confess that during the said fifty years we conspired to destroy, and did destroy without trace, ten various vessels owned by the said firm, together with the crews thereof, for the purpose of securing to ourselves the insurance upon said vessels and upon the cargoes thereof which we had insured at far above their actual value. The names of the said vessels are attached hereto.

'We also state that Jeffery van Gandt of the said firm was at no time aware of the said conspiracy and is altogether innocent of participation therein.

'In witness whereof...!' "

The floor seemed to heave under June, her blood to curdle in her veins. It was all true, then, the crime Dan had suspected, evidence of which she had come here to uncover. It was true, but van Gandt was setting upon it the capstone of a greater infamy. With the disappearance of that very evidence he was sliding out from under its revelations, was foistering his own guilt on his ex-partners. Whether or not they were tarred with the same pitch, this confession would sign their death warrants and let him go free! He was evil incarnate...

"And how are you going to make us sign?" Stoughton was saying. "By holding a gun on us?" Mass murderer, or not, he was courageous. His feet were planted foursquare, his voice had no quiver in it. "We'd be signing our own death warrant. It would be better to die with a swift bullet than in the electric chair." Tomlinson was slumped laxly in his chair. Had he fainted, or...

Van Gandt chuckled. "No, James. Knowing you I do not expect to force you to sign this confession by threatening to shoot you. It is because I did not quite see how I could accomplish it that I waited, writing the history of the frauds, petty and great, that my partners perpetrated during our long association. You left the books with me, you know. The books wherein the seeing eye could easily trace out that history.

"In the meantime I studied something else, James. I studied fear. In literature, James, and in life. And, curiously enough, it was your own emissary that taught me how to make you sign, James. Your emissary who succeeded in opening my safe— too late." The man's short laugh was humorless, cruel. "Isn't it funny that the girl you sent to steal from me should give me the weapon I needed?"

June caught her breath with the realization that van Gandt thought these men had sent her. He thought they had sent her to open his safe and steal—

"What weapon?" asked Stoughton hoarsely. "What weapon?"

"Are you afraid of rats?" van Gandt said softly. "Are you afraid of rats, James?"

"Of rats. You're crazy! Of course not!"

Under the table in the pool of darkness blacker than night, fear clotted around June as she sensed what van Gandt intended. His hand was back to the packing case, was fumbling at a metal catch she had not before noticed.

"I think you will be afraid of this one, James." The case's wooden sides dropped away, their metal lining flashing momentarily as it caught the rays of the lamp. Then there was a cage beside the tall, gaunt man, a cage of inch-thick bamboo shafts. And within that cage was an ungainly grey form that heaved to splay feet and stood for a moment blinking little red eyes at the light. A gigantic rat, larger even than the one that had prowled the dank corridors, thrust a sharp nose against the bamboo and twitched split, black lips to reveal long, cruel fangs.

"Ohhh!" Tomlinson squealed, his flaccid limbs jerking to sudden life. "Ohhh!" he gurgled. "My heart!" He pitched out of his chair down onto the floor. He shuddered, lay still.

"Are you not afraid of this rat, James Stoughton?" van Gandt asked again as he backed slowly away from that cage and its dreadful prisoner, backed on silent feet to the room door. "Are you not afraid?"

7. From Beneath the Table

JUNE could not see Stoughton's face, but she could see his great hands, his big-knuckled hands, tight against his trouser legs. She could see them open and close, open and close, in the pregnant silence. She could see them begin to quiver, could see them flutter like the leaves of an aspen in the wind.

Jeffery van Gandt was at the door. He faced the office, and his revolver snouted from his hip, menacing. Momentarily the shocked silence held. And then was broken by the scrape of great yellow teeth.

The sound pulled June's gaze back to the cage in time to see a splinter tear away from a bar of that cage, to see the rat's fangs return to the attack and tear off another long shred of fibrous wood.

"How long," van Gandt asked, conversationally. "Do you think it will take him to get out, if I do not shoot him?"

Stoughton's words were a husked stage-whisper. "You don't dare let him out, Jeffery. He'll get you too."

"No. I can get out in time, and lock the door. But you— Stay back!" Orange flame spat from van Gandt's gun, a bullet plunked into the floor at Stoughton's feet. "The next one will break your leg, James, and stretch you helpless for the rat!"

Stretch him helpless! Good God! June herself was already stretched helpless on the floor where the rat must surely find her. A swift vision rose before her of that other rat's prey, of the grinning skull to which shreds of torn flesh still adhered. If Stoughton did not sign—

"Will you sign, James? Will you sign so that I may use a bullet on the brute? Or shall I leave you here with the rat of which you are not afraid?"

"Damn you, van Gandt," Stoughton groaned, broken-voiced.

Crrrack! The huge rodent had already gnawed half through the bar. It worked steadily, savagely, ignoring the men's voices, ignoring the terror it inspired. Those teeth, that sheared tough bamboo so readily, what would they do to human flesh, to human bone?

Why didn't he give in? Oh, God! Why didn't Stoughton give in?

"Well?" Van Gandt's free hand was behind him. The rattle of the turning doorknob added its omen to the steady rasp of the rat's teeth. The great wooden leaf was slowly moving, June could see the opening widen. "I can't wait much longer, James."

Stoughton's hands were like writhing snakes. June's ear was against the floor and she could hear sound not audible to the others. The sound she heard was the thump of a ponderous foot that was dead. Pud— pud... It didn't mean anything to the girl just then. She too, would be dead in moments. Horribly dead.

Crrrack! There was only a thread of fibre remaining, now, to hold that rat in. Only a thread. June could not tear her eyes from the cage, though she heard the door squeak fully open.

"Shoot! For God's sake shoot it! I'll sign!" It was the gibbering, fear-maddened voice of Stoughton. "Here. I've signed it."

The last filament of the bar broke through. The rat's fangs clenched on the severed rod, bent it inward. But there was no shot! The great, vile beast was free!

"Karl!" van Gandt choked. "Don't, Karl"

A columnar, black-clothed arm was clamped around van Gandt's chest. A tremendous hand, doughy pale, was folded over his gun, was wresting it from him. The murderer, struggled with the apparition of his victim, surged backward, out of the room. The door slammed shut!

The rat crouched, its beady, ferocious eyes on Stoughton. It leaped...

June closed her eyes as a heavy body struck the floor, as a strong man screamed in uttermost horror and agony. There was the sound of a brief struggle out there on the floor. Then there was only the snarling snuffle of a feeding rodent, the scrape of fangs on bared bone.

Suddenly the grisly sounds stopped too. The girl was aware of eyes upon her, of a hostile stare prickling her spine with warning. She had to look.

The huge beast was crouched over the gory, indescribable thing that not so long ago had moved, and spoken, and known fear. Its pinched jaw thrust at June where she lay in shadow, and its pointed nose wrinkled to the scent that had just come to it...

Movement pulled June's eyes beyond the creature. The office door was once more open. Its opening framed— Dan!

Dan's arm crooked. There was a gun in his hand and that gun belched flame. The rat jerked to the impact of its projectile. Jerked again— and again. Then it collapsed, lifeless atop the bloody body upon which it had dined.

Dan leaned against the door-jamb. The color had drained from his face, except where his scar flamed scarlet across tortured flesh. His eyes were agonized as he stared at the shambles in that room, at what once was Stoughton, at Tomlinson's corpse with its blue-tinged face and hands telling the story of an overburdened heart that terror had burst, at the rat. His head turned to the door, and he said, in a dull dead voice—"She isn't here..."

June writhed, arced her body, threw herself over. Rolled out from under the table. Dan saw her and a great joy flashed into his face, transfigured it.

"June!" he cried. "My little wife!" He was on his knees beside her. She was in his arms again, and his kisses were warm on her torn face. She gestured and he pulled the tape from her mouth so that she could answer those kisses, from her wrists so that she could answer his embrace.

"Haven't you two love-birds had enough?" van Gandt asked.

Terror was a cold tide sweeping June once more. "Dan!" she croaked. "Watch out, Dan!"

"It's all right, darling," Dan said. "Quite all right"

"No!" Jeffery van Gandt denied. "It is not all right. Not yet." He was still tall, still saturnine in the doorway, but his tall hat was gone, his coat ripped from his shoulders, his collar ripped from his neck. "It will not be all right till I make such amends as I may to Mrs. Forsythe for what I have done to her."

June pulled herself to a sitting posture. "Done to me!" she gasped. "What about what you have done to him and those who sailed with him on the Marietta? What about what you did to those other crews—"

"No, June," Dan interrupted. "No! I've read the books that were in the safe and I know now that van Gandt knew nothing about the conspiracy. He only discovered it afterward and was working to expose his ex-partners. They got wind of what he was doing. Stoughton sent men to steal it, Potten tried to buy him off—"

"But he killed Potten, and then the German came back to haunt him. I—"

"June! Potten wasn't killed. Goonah knocked him out, but he came to after a while, and..."

"Goonah?"

"The half-crazy Lascar stoker Stoughton hired to get van Gandt's manuscript. A hairy ape he was, if there ever was one..."

"The— monster! Dan! Was he the monster that carried me off?"

"Yes. To hide you from van Gandt. We were afraid that..."

"We were afraid. Were you mixed up in... Look here, Dan, you had better tell me about all this from the beginning. That is if you want to keep me sane."

"Another kiss first." Dan held her.

June pushed him away. "You didn't seem to think enough of me to let me know you were alive. Dan— why...?"

The man's head hung, abashed. "I'm so hideous. I didn't think you could stand the sight of me. I didn't think you would love me any longer."

"You foolish, foolish boy." June kissed him as the tears welled in her eyes. "But I'm still waiting for your story," she said at last.

"The Marietta went up in a sudden blaze," began Dan, "and there wasn't a dog's chance of anyone's surviving, except that we were hove to, and I happened to be out overside in a dinghy, looking over the hull to see if it needed painting. As it was, a spurt of flame burned me terribly, and when I was picked up, days afterward, I was out of my mind. I was taken to a hospital in New Zealand, took a year to recover, another to work my way back home. But all the time I was thinking of something I had seen here in this office in an old account book that I glimpsed over Tomlinson's shoulder. It was a list of lost vessels and the insurance collected for them, and at the bottom there was a notation that..."

"Yes, I know. You wrote about in your diary, and about the suspicions of organized ship-scuttling it roused in you— and your intention of looking into the matter further when you came back from that voyage. When the Marietta was lost I made up my mind to bring the criminals to justice. That is why I tried to get into this office, and finally succeeded..."

Dan smiled his pathetically twisted smile. "I had forgotten that I made that entry. So you wanted to avenge me, you brave kid, and bit off more than you bargained for. Well, I sneaked into this building last night, but I found the old curmudgeon writing all night. There was plenty of room to hide in this place however, and I did so. Van Gandt did leave the room early in the morning, and I got into it. But he came back almost immediately and I just about managed to slide into that closet over there just in time. I was in there when you came in, and recognized your voice. I was frantic to get to you, but he was in the room...

"I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew you came bounding into the closet as if the devil himself were after you. I touched you, started to speak to you, when you screeched and dived out again. I followed, saw you on the floor, saw a shaggy-haired brute at the safe, working to open it. Before I could do or say anything van Gandt was at the door again.

"The Lascar dived out of the window, and I saw that he had come down a rope from an upper floor. I followed him, swarmed up the rope after him, and we pulled it up just in time to avoid van Gandt's seeing it.

"Goonah told me he was after something in the safe, that he had been hired to get it. He assumed that Tomlinson or Potten had sent me on the same mission, fell in easily with my suggestion that we work together. I told him that you were my girl, that I was afraid for you and anxious to get you out of here. He slid down the rope once more to spy.

"Van Gandt saw him, got off some rigamarole about death, and suddenly whirled to grab at him. He pulled Goonah in, but the Lascar sent him spinning. Potten made a grab at him, and he twisted the Dutchman's neck, came back up the rope. He told me what had happened, that van Gandt had run out of the room, scared. I sent him down to make a try at the safe.

"You had beaten him to it. He remembered what I had said about wanting you out of there, picked you up and scooted. Took you all the way up to the top floor and locked you in a room. I went up to look for you, but suddenly Goonah called me from below and I started down again. Before I got two flights down he screamed, horribly. I rushed down the rest of the way, saw that a capybara had gotten him, that it was too late for me to do anything, and got out of the way before the thing would go for me."

"What was that you called it?" June stirred. "A capy— what?"

"A capybara. It's a ratlike animal from the wilds of Brazil. I can't imagine where van Gandt could have gotten them. I thought the only specimen in this country was in the Bronx Zoo."

"I had a couple in a South Street warehouse waiting to be shipped to the Cleveland Park," van Gandt interrupted. "The first time I went out, this morning, I arranged to have them sent here. One got away and it took me hours to track it down, kill it."

"At any rate," Dan resumed, "I finally got a chance to come down the rope, get into the safe, get what I was after. I was upstairs again, had just discovered van Gandt's innocence, when I heard shots, shouting, rushed down here and saw him struggling with Potten. 'Save the girl,' he yelled as he saw me, 'in there,' and kicked a gun that was on the floor at me. I knew the girl must be you, snatched up the gun and came in, and..."

"I suddenly realized that none of my three sweet partners," Jeffery van Gandt explained, "had given any evidence of knowing of your existence. I knew then that I was mistaken in thinking you were an emissary of their's and when I saw Forsythe I sent him in to save you from the capybara. That's only the beginning of my payment for torturing you. I am a bachelor, have no relatives. You shall be my heirs."

It was not till the next day, when Dan came in to tell her of the arraignment of Karl Potten before a magistrate and his being held for the Grand Jury that June remembered how he had walked invisibly through the room where she was and terrorized her. She told Dan about it. He scoffed at her, gently.

"But I did hear him. It was as if he were in the very room with me and yet he wasn't. It was Room 263—"

"Wait," Dan grunted. "Wait, Joan. I know the answer. The rooms in that corridor are back to back with the one where van Gandt's office is, and the floor boards run right through. Potten was walking in the passage, but he walks so heavily that the boards carried the sound right through into the room where you were."

"There goes my last ghost," June mourned— and the word "ghost" came faintly, all but smothered out beneath June's smiling lips.

____________________

11: A Yarn of a Pub

Ernest Favenc

1845-1908

Evening News (Sydney) 3 April 1897

"Jim" appears in a number of Ernest Favenc's humorous yarns of the supernatural.

JIM wrote to me the other day as follows:

I have got a yarn for you, and though you know I much prefer telling tales to writing one, in this case I have to write it.

AN OLD FRIEND of mine, called Jerry Downes, you will remember his name was Jerry. because there was a Sam Downes, who got into trouble. He came to see me the other night— Jerry, not Sam— and he told me this yarn of what happened to him a short time back away up in Queensland.

Jerry was travelling at the time, and he came to a small roadside pub about 3 o'clock. It was dry weather at the time, and Jerry thought it one of the prettiest places he'd seen. There was a good spring and a patch of black soil, and everything was green just about; while there was a good garden. The house was well built, with a broad, shady verandah, an altogether very inviting look to a tired man on a hot day. Says Jerry, 'I'll make a short day of it, and turn out.' There was another horse tied up outside the verandah; so Jerry rode up, tied his prad up, too, and went inside.

What he saw nearly struck him silly. It was a neat, tidy bar, and inside stood a decent old man and a pretty girl, seemingly his daughter, for just as Jerry got inside she screamed out, 'Owch, father! there's one gone down my back; stop him for me.'.

Her father did so, and then commenced chasing some invisible object over the counter with the bottom of a thick 'free-fight' tumbler.

The other occupants of the room were an old bummer, sitting on a bench with a glass of rum, and a young fellow standing just in front of Jerry. Presently the old bummer jumped up with a yell, and -hopped round swearing that something or other had gone up the leg of his trousers. Then the girl hopped put of the bar, holding her skirts tightly round her ankles; while the landlord still kept pursuing nothing across the counter with the tumbler.

The other man turned to look at Jerry, and said, 'What the blazes is this? Is it loonies or jumps?'

'It's triantalopes!' yelled the old bummer. (As you know, some people call those big spiders, triantalopes.')

'Triantelopes be absquatulated,' said Jerry; 'there's no triantolopes here!'

'Oh! ain't there,' said the landlord. 'What's this? and this?' and he banged and thumped.

'If that's the styles of brands you keep,' said the man, 'I'll get my drink elsewhere.'

Jerry looked all round, but not a trace of a spider could he see. '

'Look here!' he said. There's two men says that the place is full of blooming triantolopes, or whatever you call them, and there's two men as says there's not one on the place. Now, we'll have drinks on that, and chance the jim jams.'

The girl I may mention, had retired to investigate matters in private.

Jerry and the man went up to the bar, and the landlord left off his pursuit, and put the bottles down.

'Now produce your triantolopes!' said Jerry.

'There's one, and there's one,' said the landlord.

Then a strange thing happened. The man who had entered just before Jerry suddenly exclaimed; 'By —— ! he's right!' and lifting his whip struck at something on the counter. Jerry looked down, and suddenly caught sight of a great hairy spider on his shirt sleeve.

Then they saw them everywhere— great brutes with red eyes and long hairy legs, running about all ever the place.

'Here!' said the man; 'I'm off. I don't like this kind of stock on a run.' And he went out, get on his horse, and rode away.

Jerry was nearly following, but he thought he would like to find out how it was that they did not see these wretches, when they first came in. Now they were plain enough. Above all, they did not seem to bite, and it was impossible to hit one, no matter how you tried.

'What's the meaning of this?' he asked.

'Don't I wish I could tell you,' says the landlord.

'But where do they come from; and why didn't we two see them when we first came in?'

'Ask me something easy. I bought them with the place that's all I know.'

'What did you buy them for? Hanged if I'd have done it.'

'Bought them because I didn't see them, like you. I'll tell you all about it. These triantolopes have made up their minds nobody shall live in this place, and when there's buying and selling going on they keep quiet and don't show. This place has changed hands scores of times. It's a nice little spot, barring these scarecrows. They're as cunning as camels, and almost as big. I'm afraid the place is too well known for me to sell.

'Do you get used to them?'

'No; just look at 'em. Now, could you? A spider's not a racehorse, as a rule, but you might as well try to catch one as the other. They don't bite, only stare at you and run over you, and drive all the custom away.'

'They're not natural spiders, seemingly.'

'They are not; they're demons, that's just what they are. if you like to stop and see more of 'em you' can— for they go away at eight.

Jerry felt interested, and thought he would, and in fact stopped two or three days. He had a good look through the place, and saw that it would pay well. There was a good paddock and stables, and it stood on freehold ground. For a man like myself, thought Jerry, a bit of a racing man, it would be a little paradise; but those spiders would have to clear out first.

Jerry didn't let on, but just watched and observed the habits of those spiders, and he was convinced that they were spooks of some sort— you could never get used to their blamed ugly ways.

Now, he knew my taste on the matter, and as soon as he'd finished his yarn he says: 'Jim, this is right into your hand. You go up with me and have a look at the house, and if you think you can do anything towards curing the place, why, it's a bargain. We'd get it for a song between us.'

'I've been thinking over Jerry's proposal, and have concluded it's a deal. I can get away for a few months without much, trouble, and there's evidently money in it. Now, what I want of you is to get me all the books you know about spooks and send them to me to study. I must go up prepared. If you'd look through them and mark any part you think applies to the case, I should feel greatly obliged.'

I got the books, and l had a look through, but found nothing to apply to the case, of a house haunted by demon tarantulas, so I sent them on and asked him to write me how he got on. It was nearly three months before I heard as follows:

I BEAT THEM all right, but it was a hard job— the hardest I ever tackled. They were demons. Jerry and I went up there, and I found it just all he said— the completest and snuggest little crib going— and I felt bound to have it, spiders or no spiders. The landlord was more worried than when Jerry had seen him, and when he asked him about business he just laughed. a hideous, joyless laugh, and says:

'Business! The business I do would astonish you. It's no use pretending, because your mate here knows, all about it; but business is just this way. Men ride along here and pull up and sing out underneath the verandah, 'How's spiders today?' or 'What price triantalopes?' That's the brisk and lively trade that I'm doing.'

We were, very cautious about it, and at last got the place for a trifle. Then when Jery and I were alone, I started to work studying the books, and meanwhile tried a few experiments of my own. I'd lecture them on their evil ways, point out to them that their proper place was in the wood-yard, ask them why they didn't take their drinks and go, and all that. But it didn't do a bit of good; and, in fact, I never expected it would, but I was just keeping my hand in. I went into their habits, and found that they must be spooks, from their complete way of disappearing at night. If they'd been genuine spiders they'd have been, knocking about just the same. But no! they went clean away.

I may as well tell you that while the negotiations for the sale were going on they had evacuated the premises. I wondered very much what sort of spooks they were? Had they any right to the place before the whites came? Were they the souls of niggers who had been murdered? I could make nothing of them at all.

I stuck to those books, and I must say that they were the heaviest reading- I ever tackled. I soon saw the modern ones were no good, so I turned to the ancient ones. I tried the different methods of expelling devils, but I might as well have tried castor oil. I saw plenty of charms for warts, and how to make love potions; but it was useless trying those. I began to think that I was going to bf licked this time, and Jerry began to get down-hearted, for scarcely a soul came near us, only out of curiosity, and to ask what the market value of spidens was, and whether there was a boom in them.

I began to think we would have to find some mug to sell it to, and all Jerry's visions of a neat racing stable and a horse or two for country meetings began to disappear. I'd been reading one day about witches in an old book amongst them, a tattered old one you bought second-hand— and I didn't take much stock of it.

Turning over a page, I went on, and began to get interested. Jerry had gone to bed, and the spiders had all vanished, as usual, and, of course, there were no customers.

I found out that witches put on oM kinds of aippearanees, daytime as well as night; but it said nothing about them turning themselves into spiders— only cats and hares. The only thing I had found about spiders was in the matter of charms, in which they were very useful. Suddenly I came on these words in fat black letters:

ARUZEEANNACOMZABAL.

ZAOBAL. ZABAL. ZABAL!

A very potent chanm against Finland and Lapland witches, making them show themselves in their true shapes, and straightaway vanish, sometimes with loud cries.

Somehow that word fascinated me. Tihere was a taking sort of sound, that was fetching about it. I tried it over several times until I had got the hang of it, and read the directions. It was to be said slowly, in a distinct and commanding voice, particularly the last three repetitions. It also pleased me to find that there was no danger connected with using it. I got quite excited, and went and woke Jerry up, to try how at felt on him; but the only thing he said was, 'Jim, you've been, at the whisky.'

I explained matters, and went to bed with my precious book under my pillow. In the morning we were up nearly; in fact, you had to be, because the spiders took to running over you.

I had gone out in the paddock and made myself perfect, and then we went in the bar, and I started.

At the first syllable there was a commotion amongst the spiders. When I got to the end of the long word every tarantula had gathered round and was gazing at me with fiery eyes of hate. It was an awful feeling to be so surrounded by these repulsive things, knowing they were not natural. I stuck to it, though, and at the second Zarbal they commenced to swell in size.

'Oh Lord! Jim, you've done it now!' cried Jerry, and ducked behind the bar.

'Zarbal!' I cried the third time, in as commandlng a voice as I knew how; and instantly they changed into native cats— wild cats.

O, the row! Spitting, screaming, growling, they rushed out of the door, across the verandah, and vanished in the bush. The string looked half a mile long.

The house was cleaned, and Jerry and I sat down and finished a bottle of wihisky. The next smarty that came along and inquired about spiders, we called him in, told him to see there wasn't one in the place; then we gave him a drink and told him to tell the people in town.

Lord, what a rush we had! We were drunk out. But we would not tell how we did it; but an old nigger who had seen the mob of cats bolting, and nearly turned white with fear, gave us away. But they never heard the whole truth.

Jerry wrote to his wife and children, and made some improvements at once, and I left him up there to it, and I think we'll both make a good thing of it.

Now, can you tell me what those Finland and Lapland witches wanted there? how they came there? when they came there? why they came there? and where they've gone to?

I WROTE back:

'Dear Jim,

I can only answer your last question. They've probably gone where you will go when you die if you dabble with any more magic, or have any more dreams, or see any more sights from drinking whisky at bush pubs.'

____________________

12: The Man Who was Not on the Passenger List.

Grant Allen

1848-1899

In: In a Steamer Chair and Other Stories, 1892

Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen

"The well-sworn Lie, franked to the world with all

The circumstance of proof,

Cringes abashed, and sneaks along the wall

At the first sight of Truth."

THE Gibrontus of the Hot Cross Bun Line was at one time the best ship of that justly celebrated fleet. All steamships have, of course, their turn at the head of the fleet until a better boat is built, but the Gibrontus is even now a reasonably fast and popular boat. An accident happened on board the Gibrontus some years ago which was of small importance to the general public, but of some moment to Richard Keeling—for it killed him. The poor man got only a line or two in the papers when the steamer arrived at New York, and then they spelled his name wrong. It had happened something like this: Keeling was wandering around very late at night, when he should have been in his bunk, and he stepped on a dark place that he thought was solid. As it happened, there was nothing between him and the bottom of the hold but space. They buried Keeling at sea, and the officers knew absolutely nothing about the matter when inquisitive passengers, hearing rumours, questioned them. This state of things very often exists both on sea and land, as far as officials are concerned. Mrs. Keeling, who had been left in England while her husband went to America to make his fortune, and tumbled down a hole instead, felt aggrieved at the company. The company said that Keeling had no business to be nosing around dark places on the deck at that time of night, and doubtless their contention was just. Mrs. Keeling, on the other hand, held that a steamer had no right to have such mantraps open at any time, night or day, without having them properly guarded, and in that she was also probably correct. The company was very sorry, of course, that the thing had occurred; but they refused to pay for Keeling unless compelled to do so by the law of the land, and there matters stood.

No one can tell what the law of the land will do when it is put in motion, although many people thought that if Mrs. Keeling had brought a suit against the Hot Cross Bun Company she would have won it. But Mrs. Keeling was a poor woman, and you have to put a penny in the slot when you want the figures of justice to work, so the unfortunate creature signed something which the lawyer of the company had written out, and accepted the few pounds which Keeling had paid for Room 18 on the Gibrontus. It would seem that this ought to have settled the matter, for the lawyer told Mrs. Keeling he thought the company acted very generously in refunding the passage money; but it didn't settle the matter. Within a year from that time, the company voluntarily paid Mrs. Keeling £2100 for her husband.

Now that the occurrence is called to your mind, you will perhaps remember the editorial one of the leading London dailies had on the extraordinary circumstance, in which it was very ably shown that the old saying about corporations having no souls to be condemned or bodies to be kicked did not apply in these days of commercial honour and integrity. It was a very touching editorial, and it caused tears to be shed on the Stock Exchange, the members having had no idea, before reading it, that they were so noble and generous.

How, then, was it that the Hot Cross Bun Company did this commendable act when their lawyer took such pains to clear them of all legal liability? The purser of the Gibrontus, who is now old and superannuated, could probably tell you if he liked.

WHEN THE negotiations with Mrs. Keeling had been brought to a satisfactory conclusion by the lawyer of the company, and when that gentleman was rubbing his hands over his easy victory, the good ship Gibrontus was steaming out of the Mersey on her way to New York. The stewards in the grand saloon were busy getting things in order for dinner, when a wan and gaunt passenger spoke to one of them.

"Where have you placed me at table?" he asked.

"What name, sir?" asked the steward.

"Keeling."

The steward looked along the main tables, up one side and down the other, reading the cards, but nowhere did he find the name he was in search of. Then he looked at the small tables, but also without success.

"How do you spell it, sir?" he asked the patient passenger.

"K-double-e-l-i-n-g."

"Thank you, sir."

Then he looked up and down the four rows of names on the passenger list he held in his hand, but finally shook his head.

"I can't find your name on the passenger list," he said. "I'll speak to the purser, sir."

"I wish you would," replied the passenger in a listless way, as if he had not much interest in the matter. The passenger, whose name was not on the list, waited until the steward returned. "Would you mind stepping into the purser's room for a moment, sir? I'll show you the way, sir."

When the passenger was shown into the purser's room that official said to him, in the urbane manner of pursers—

"Might I look at your ticket, sir?"

The passenger pulled a long pocket-book from the inside of his coat, opened it, and handed the purser the document it contained. The purser scrutinized it sharply, and then referred to a list he had on the desk before him.

"This is very strange," he said at last. "I never knew such a thing to occur before, although, of course, it is always possible. The people on shore have in some unaccountable manner left your name out of my list. I am sorry you have been put to any inconvenience, sir."

"There has been no inconvenience so far," said the passenger, "and I trust there will be none. You find the ticket regular, I presume?"

"Quite so—quite so," replied the purser. Then, to the waiting steward, "Give Mr. Keeling any place he prefers at the table which is not already taken. You have Room 18."

"That was what I bought at Liverpool."

"Well, I see you have the room to yourself, and I hope you will find it comfortable. Have you ever crossed with us before, sir? I seem to recollect your face."

"I have never been in America."

"Ah! I see so many faces, of course, that I sometimes fancy I know a man when I don't. Well, I hope you will have a pleasant voyage, sir."

"Thank you."

No. 18 was not a popular passenger. People seemed instinctively to shrink from him, although it must be admitted that he made no advances. All went well until the Gibrontus was about half-way over. One forenoon the chief officer entered the captain's room with a pale face, and, shutting the door after him, said—

"I am very sorry to have to report, sir, that one of the passengers has fallen into the hold."

"Good heavens!" cried the captain. "Is he hurt?"

"He is killed, sir."

The captain stared aghast at his subordinate.

"How did it happen? I gave the strictest orders those places were on no account to be left unguarded."

Although the company had held to Mrs. Keeling that the captain was not to blame, their talk with that gentleman was of an entirely different tone.

"That is the strange part of it, sir. The hatch has not been opened this voyage, sir, and was securely bolted down."

"Nonsense! Nobody will believe such a story! Some one has been careless! Ask the purser to come here, please."

When the purser saw the body, he recollected, and came as near fainting as a purser can.

They dropped Keeling overboard in the night, and the whole affair was managed so quietly that nobody suspected anything, and, what is the most incredible thing in this story, the New York papers did not have a word about it. What the Liverpool office said about the matter nobody knows, but it must have stirred up something like a breeze in that strictly business locality. It is likely they pooh-poohed the whole affair, for, strange to say, when the purser tried to corroborate the story with the dead man's ticket the document was nowhere to be found.

The Gibrontus started out on her next voyage from Liverpool with all her colours flying, but some of her officers had a vague feeling of unrest within them which reminded them of the time they first sailed on the heaving seas. The purser was seated in his room, busy, as pursers always are at the beginning of a voyage, when there was a rap at the door.

"Come in!" shouted the important official, and there entered unto him a stranger, who said—"Are you the purser?"

"Yes, sir. What can I do for you?"

"I have room No. 18."

"What!" cried the purser, with a gasp, almost jumping from his chair. Then he looked at the robust man before him, and sank back with a sigh of relief. It was not Keeling.

"I have room No. 18," continued the passenger, "and the arrangement I made with your people in Liverpool was that I was to have the room to myself. I do a great deal of shipping over your—"

"Yes, my dear sir," said the purser, after having looked rapidly over his list, "you have No. 18 to yourself."

"So I told the man who is unpacking his luggage there; but he showed me his ticket, and it was issued before mine. I can't quite understand why your people should—"

"What kind of a looking man is he?"

"A thin, unhealthy, cadaverous man, who doesn't look as if he would last till the voyage ends. I don't want him for a room mate, if I have to have one. I think you ought—"

"I will, sir. I will make it all right. I suppose, if it should happen that a mistake has been made, and he has the prior claim to the room, you would not mind taking No. 24—it is a larger and better room."

"That will suit me exactly."

So the purser locked his door and went down to No. 18.

"Well?" he said to its occupant.

"Well," answered Mr. Keeling, looking up at him with his cold and fishy eyes.

"You're here again, are you?"

"I'm here again, and I will be here again. And again and again, and again and again."

"Now, what the—" Then the purser hesitated a moment, and thought perhaps he had better not swear, with that icy, clammy gaze fixed upon him. "What object have you in all this?"

"Object? The very simple one of making your company live up to its contract. From Liverpool to New York, my ticket reads. I paid for being landed in the United States, not for being dumped overboard in mid-ocean. Do you think you can take me over? You have had two tries at it and have not succeeded. Yours is a big and powerful company too."

"If you know we can't do it, then why do you—?" The purser hesitated.

"Pester you with my presence?" suggested Mr. Keeling. "Because I want you to do justice. Two thousand pounds is the price, and I will raise it one hundred pounds every trip."

This time the New York papers got hold of the incident, but not of its peculiar features. They spoke of the extraordinary carelessness of the officers in allowing practically the same accident to occur twice on the same boat. When the Gibrontus reached Liverpool all the officers, from the captain down, sent in their resignations. Most of the sailors did not take the trouble to resign, but cut for it. The managing director was annoyed at the newspaper comments, but laughed at the rest of the story. He was invited to come over and interview Keeling for his own satisfaction, most of the officers promising to remain on the ship if he did so. He took Room 18 himself. What happened I do not know, for the purser refused to sail again on the Gibrontus, and was given another ship.

But this much is certain. When the managing director got back, the company generously paid Mrs. Keeling £2100.

______________________

13: The Gun Girl

Rathburne Case
fl 1926

Blue Book, April 1926

The only known story by this otherwise unknown writer

THE youth in the gray-green ulster peered cautiously along the edge of the train and then dropped to the ground from the rear platform and stepped rapidly across the tracks toward the screening barricade of a row of box-cars. His lean jaws were set, his gray eyes uneasy.

All Woodford seemed to have come down to the station to watch the unbelievable arrival of No. 43-West. And that was not good. He had counted upon no such enthusiastic reception. Enough that he should dare to come back to the town of his birth and risk a casual tecognition, without running the gantlet of the entire community the moment he stepped from the train.

It was to have been expected, of course, that watching the arrival and departure of the train would constitute one of Woodford’s principal amusements. The town was what it had always been, conservative, unchanging, as bigoted in its pleasures as in its morals. And so it would always be until it should die of inanition. But in the old days— so far away now that they seemed like a period in a previous incarnation— the important work of making certain that No. 43-West got in on schedule and out again had been intrusted to a distinct group that seldom changed its personnel: old Truax, driving the bus for the Overton House; Hendryx the hardware man; Miller the editor; Miss Agnes Adams, the social arbiter; Freddy Millet, the town drunkard; Jacques Freet, the town idiot; and a few other dignitaries of similar note. But today, despite the chill wind from the north and the hint of snow from off the lake, at least fifty men, women and children were pressing toward the forward Pullmans, where a porter had alighted with his little rubber-topped stool to carry out the provisions of the time-card and assist in detraining a “passenger from points east of Pittsburgh.”

THE significance of this matter came to David Branscombe before he was well across the tracks, and he came to a sudden stop. He would have to investigate: better now than later— and easier. He dropped his bag, stepped quickly back to the rear platform, and peered around the corner for a second time.

Up toward the center of the train the porter was pushing back the press of citizenry with a black handbag and flaming yellow suitcase. He turned again to give a hand to some one coming down the steps of the car and for a moment Branscombe caught a glimpse of a slim, lithe figure in purple and furs— a queen, from the studied angle of her chin to the calm certainty of her step. She was holding a corsage of violets and a beaded purse in her right hand, and reaching for the guard-rail with the left.

If he felt relief at the discovery that the assembling of the tribes of Woodford had been brought about through no indiscretion of his own, that the high-priests and the pharisees were gathered here to welcome home a great lady, the young man gave no sign. Momentarily he had forgotten the reason for his interest, in the sudden discovery that he knew this girl and that yet she was some one he had never known. It was not her queenly poise—he had had little to do with queens; nor was it the beauty of her profile against the dark background of the cars.....

As he puzzled over it, the queen reached the bottom step and did a very unaccountable thing, for a queen. She tripped. Her corsage and bag flew out into the crowd, and she pitched forward into the arms of the startled porter. When she regained her balance, her little toque, a thing of fur and gold, was pushed down over one eye, and her right leg was amazingly entangled in an egg-crate. Branscombe started with a glad cry that might have betrayed his presence had not the welcoming populace been occupied in a closer inspection of the queenly downfall.

“Miriam Halley!” He repeated the name almost prayerfully. He moved back toward where he had dropped his baggage, no longer aware of Woodford and its hideous red station or its background of flaming oak trees or the wrinkled ghouls who were milling around back there on the platform.... He was walking across the rails with a little girl in pigtails— poor little awkward Miriam, helpless hoyden and harbinger of trouble. In the old days, if anyone had to fall out of a hayrick, or break through the ice, or lose her pocketbook, or miss her train, or come undone on a dance-floor, or otherwise contribute to the general embarrassment of her escorts and the amusement of the cynically tolerant haut ton, that one would be Miriam! She was beautiful now— splendidly beautiful. But apparently she had not changed.

THE sight of a shed nestling under the north fence of Spencer’s lumber-yard beyond the switch-tracks brought him out of his reminiscent mood. He recalled that he had seen the girl in the dining-car, and that momentarily he had felt the suggestion that he had known her somewhere. He felt that she had not seen him. And he was thankful for that. The chance that had placed him on the same train with her out of New York apparently had compensated somewhat for the error by keeping her out of his way during the journey. It would not be well to renew the acquaintance of this girl, above all others.

He selected a key from his ring and slipped it without hesitation into the lock on the shed door. He stepped inside and surveyed with considerable satisfaction a mud-spattered car that filled the inclosure. It had one flat tire,

So far, his orders had been well carried out. If luck remained with him, he would be out on the Northfield road before the train was well on its way, and he would slip into the Goodcare Garage a casual overland tourist in trouble, instead of a pseudo-stranger who migħt be metamorphosed into the returning prodigal that he was if he stepped from the New York train under the inquisitive noses of townspeople who had known him from boyhood. From his suitcase he took two Idaho license-plates which he fastened on the empty racks. Then, with a brief glance to make certain that this back alley was as it always had been, completely deserted and screened from the vision of station loiterers by the implement-shed along the . switchtrack, he backed slowly out and moved silently away from the railroad in a detour to the Northfield road.

Five minutes later he came slowly to a stop in front of the garage. Cyrus Friend— proprietor of the livery stable in that previous existence that was now coming back to Branscombe so vividly— shuffled out to the curb.

“Trouble?” he inquired hopefully.

“Yes,” said Branscombe from the depths of his ulster collar. “Blowout. There’s a knock in the motor, too. Better take a look at it. The old can hasn’t had much attention since I left San Diego.”

Umph,” replied Friend. He paid no attention to Branscombe— did not look at him after the first glance when he emerged from his office. Branscombe was pleased to note that the psychology of the situation was working out as he had planned it. In a few brief words he had established himself as a motorist from California. From that point it would require real effort to make Friend believe that he might be somebody and something else. One changes even under normal circumstances in six years.

“Big jam at the station,” observed Branscombe confidently. ‘Coolidge paying you a visit?”

Sour old Cyrus Friend wrinkled his cracked old face into a leer.

“Funnier than that,” he declared. “Little Mimmie Halley just come home from Paris to give us yokels a treat. Been studyin’ music there.

“You gotta know the Halleys to appreciate it. Yessir, you gotta know ’em. : Aint had their noses out the air for forty year come Christmas, when Old Tom Halley falls heir to some title with a couple o’ second mortgages on it in England. It purty nigh busted him clearin’ title to his ancestral estate, an’ then he loses the whole works. But old Helen Halley—that’s Mimmie’s granny,—the one that comes home today from Paris where she’s studyin’ music,—she aint never forgot what good people she is. It’s plumb sickenin’.

“Well, today Mimmie’s comin’ home. Everybody knows it. S’far as I know, nobody cares a hoot except to hope she doesn’t bust somethin’ while she’s here. An’ then this mornin’ here comes a Toledo newspaper which everybody in this town reads; an’ look what it says—”

Friend drew a folded paper from the hip pocket of his graphite-etched overalls and extended it. For all his nerve-control and preparation, Branscombe felt a sudden unaccountable shock as he found himself looking at a picture from which stared up at him the troubled eyes of Miriam Halley. It was only later— a definite time later— that he was conscious of the caption which emblazoned the photograph:

“Worlds Champion Pistol-shot— Mlle. Artheris in U. S. for Short Tour.”

It was none of Branscombe’s business, but he felt himself growing irritable. The caption explained everything. The Toledo newspaper inadvertently had played an excellent jest. It had poked fun at the sacred Halleys. And then all of Woodford had gone down to the station to see with its own eyes the dénouement of this merriment. It would not have been Woodford had the town overlooked this chance to sneer at greatness even as exemplified by poor little blunder-footed Miriam. And it was like Miriam that she should have been the victim of such an egregious mistake, and that she should have done her part so thoroughly. in adding to its effect as a jest by leaping into the arms of a stout porter.

“Well, that ought to please old Mrs. What’s-her-name,” he said noncommittally as he handed the newspaper back to the garage man.

“Yeh,” retorted old Friend with a still wider display of yellow teeth. "That sure put a dent in the old high hat—sure did!”

MIRIAM HALLEY preceded her grandmother up the broad steps of the old brownstone house on the lake front, conscious at every stride that she had hoped quite fervently never to see the place again. Helen Halley, a stately figure despite her seventy-odd years, and beautiful with that patrician poise and charm with which years deal so lightly, came serenely behind her like a mother who must keep a watchful eye on a difficult child. Miriam submitted without visible resentment to this obvious patronage. It was as if the years of her absence had never been, and she was once more in her girlhood as she had been before she went away, subject in all things to her grandmother, conscious of her need for this enveloping care.

And yet psychologically she was not as she had been— as she should be now in this step back into the bourne behind the calendar. She was conscious of a fierce and indescribable hatred for Woodford and all that it represented. She hated this gloomy old manse for its position, its architecture and its traditions. She hated the weird plaint of the wind in the tops of the oaks, eternally chanting the bugaboos that had frightened her as a child. She hated the ceaseless lapping of the waves about the little boat-landing that jutted out into the lake at the end of the leaf-strewn drive. She hated the morrow that would find her there in that house with a respectful sun peering in solemnly under the heavy hangings of her window.

The limousine drew away down the drive, crackling over dead leaves. Miriam and her grandmother stood without speaking at the top of the steps while the bell tolled somewhere away in the depths of the house, and a maid’s steps echoed in leisurely cadence over the parquet floors in answer to it.

IT was not until they stood before the blazing log fire in the library that Grandmother Halley embarked upon the indictment that Miriam had been expecting since the moment her heel caught on the bottom step of the Pullman.

“Well,” she said, “your home-coming was certainly characteristic.”

Miriam turned her eyes to the fire.

“I dare say it was,” she replied resignedly. “I guess I never shall learn. But you must admit that I started out well.”

Her grandmother considered a moment.

“Yes,” she admitted at length, “I must confess that for the moment I had hopes. I was boiling angry at all those nincompoops there just to see you make a show of yourself, and I prayed that you might disappoint them. It was almost pitiful to see their faces when you came down the first two steps—”

Miriam turned quickly and angrily. But when she replied, it was to walk over and put an arm about Helen Halley’s lean shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Grandma,” she said. “I was nervous. I’ve always been nervous. And when I saw that horrible picture in the paper just before I got off the train, I knew what was in store for me.”

The old lady sank into a deep leather chair and for a long time stared silently into the fire. Suddenly she covered her eyes with her hands.

“I hate this place,” she declared with a display of emotion that brought a chill of fright to Miriam. “I hate it.”

“But, Grandmother,” protested the girl, kneeling hastily at her side, “I thought—”

“I hate it,’ repeated Helen Halley. “The devil is in the town, and there’s worse than that in this house. I am an old woman, child. I came here with your grandfather when I had a rifle in my hands more often than my baby. I helped him to fight the Indians for the right to live, and the whites for the right to eat. I wanted to make sure that my children and my children’s children would have what I had missed...  Always, until the very last, I hoped that we might go back one day to England, where blood and breeding stand for something. And now there is very little left to fight for. Everything that I loved is gone. I have no friends— not a friend in all Woodford, and I believe I should miss my enemies.”

“You are overwrought,” said Miriam soothingly. “You mistake isolation for enmity. People could not respect you as they do if they didn’t love you.”

Grandma Halley seemed to be paying no attention to her.

“Why,” she suddenly demanded, “why should anybody break into this house?”

“I can’t imagine,” answered the girl. “I don’t know why anybody should. I don’t suppose anybody ever will.”

“That’s just it. Somebody would. And somebody has.”

“What?”

“It’s the truth, Mimmie. Not once, but three times. I put dogs out in the park, and they were poisoned. I hired watchmen, but somebody left a case of whisky on the boat-landing, and they found it and got drunk. I know I oughtn’t to be talking about this to you, of all people— but I have to tell some one. .... If I only knew what they want— I think I could face a burglar, even at my age. But I can’t keep from being frightened at prowlers who never take anything, who come and go as they please in the night... Oh, Mimmie, if only you had been a boy!”

MIRIAM averted her head at the final prayer. Yet it gave her definite relief, in that it showed her grandmother’s mind to be working normally. Helen Halley had nevér been entirely reconciled to Miriam’s sex. Probably the very first faux pas of the long list that had made Mimmie’s life of such interest to Woodford had been her failure to be born a boy. And with her realization that Grandma Halley was talking much as she had always talked came a shiver in sympathy with her grandmother’s fears.

“Why not move away from here?” she suggested with all her old-time helplessness. She knew in advance what Helen Halley’s answer would be.

“I'll not move away. I'll not be frightened out of my own house. Your cousin George suggested that. It was like him to want some one else to run away from a responsibility. He’d have done it himself long ago, but he was afraid to leave has certainly showered me with blessings in my grandchildren.”

Miriam remained meekly silent. There had been an occasion— so many years back in her childhood that the details of the incident had been forgotten— when she had learned the futility of argument with this purposeful old crusader. Something had happened to her—perhaps it was the time when she had broken her leg attempting to ride David Branscombe’s pony... David Branscombe— what had become of him in those six long years?

“I am sorry, Grandmother,” she commented dutifully, only half detaching herself from her reverie. “But I cannot forget the ill-luck that has attached to this neighborhood. We were happy here when we were children, but I think that was only because we could not realize what unhappiness was. Something was always happening here... Does anyone ever hear anything of the Branscombes?”

The old lady looked at her sharply, with a sudden tightening of the lips.

“You mean David Branscombe, I suppose,” she replied, bitterly ironical. “No. We haven’t heard about him here. I suppose he has been in the penitentiary. A proper place for a thief.”

Miriam seemed not to have heard her.

“I don’t believe he ever was a thief,” she said mechanically. “There was something about Davy Branscombe that I liked.”

“The Branscombes were no good,” declared the grandmother harshly. “Not any of them. They came of poor stock.”

“Anyway, I liked Davy.”

“It would be like you to show affection toward them, Mimmie. It would be thoroughly in keeping with your capacity for the unexpected. But you can put Davy Branscombe out of your head, child. He wont come back. Gallows-birds never do.” She paused and looked into the fire without displaying the emotions that were surging within her.

She was experiencing a sense of defeat. She had planned when Miriam went away to have forgetfulness assist in the elimination of the troublesome David Branscombe. And now it was evident that there was no forgetfulness. Fear and hope and several well-directed hatreds struggled within her. The sun was sinking behind the oaks, and the color of the dying autumn was red on the window and on the paneled walls of the library. There was something prophetic in the desolation of the scene— something more prophetic in the howling of the wind that presently would bring the snow.

“I called you home,” she said abruptly, “to tell you that Henry Savage wants to marry you.”

THE news was delivered slowly and with emphasis. Helen Halley was not the one to overlook its dramatic value. Henry Savage, of the Twin Island Savages, was a man of breeding and great wealth— an aristocrat and distinctly a “match.” But Miriam, whose nervous excitement on occasion could be so overpowering and so provocative of embarrassment, heard the message with a stoical lifting of her eyebrows.

“I don’t want to marry Henry Savage,” she stated with finality. “We don’t need his money. I don’t like his company and never did.”

Grandma Halley accepted the decision placidly.

“As for his money, it might some day be much needed,” she said. “As for his company, one might reconcile oneself to that if the necessity were great enough.”

“I cannot imagine so great a necessity.”

“It really is not so difficult to imagine. Our support— your support— is beginning to look to me just as mysterious as the other strange things about this house. There’s nothing more queer about a thief who never steals anything, than about a quarterly income from a dead uncle who never lived.”

“What do you mean?”

“My meaning is plain enough. I haven’t said anything, because you had to have your schooling. And besides, I didn’t want to do anything that would give these Woodford fools a chance for gossip. But our income has puzzled me since the day that Cleveland lawyer came here and spoke to me about it.”

“But I know all about that, Granny. It’s all legal and complicated, but really there’s nothing mysterious about it. Somebody dies and makes a will, and then the probate court does something to it, and then they pay you your money every so often.”

Helen Halley smiled, and waved her hand.

“I know all about that part of it,” she interrupted. “I have seen a lot of wills made and probated since this family had money enough to hold its head up. I have  sven estates go into the probate court, and nothing but receipted bills come out. But I wish you’d tell me who made the will that gives us ten thousand dollars a year income without warning or explanation.”

“The lawyer from Cleveland said it was Uncle Henry’s will. He said—”

“Yes, child, yes. I can remember what he said. The point I’m getting at is: who is— or was— Uncle Henry? He was no kin of mine. I was an only child, and so was my mother. My father’s brothers died when I was a young girl. And yet this ‘Uncle Henry’— this shadow from Colorado who conveniently dies and providentially leaves us a two-hundred-and-fiftythousand-dollar estate when poverty is staring us in the face—this benefactor is called by the lawyers ‘Henry Westcott.’ And Westcott is my name.”

MIRIAM shrugged deprecatingly.

“I don’t think I should worry about it,” she said. “So long as the money comes in, we have only to use it.”

“We can’t help ourselves,” declared her grandmother with a hint of bitterness.

“Well, then let’s not go looking the gift horse in the mouth. Uncle Henry must have been somebody, or he wouldn’t have had the money. That seems to be obvious. And he must have willed the money to us, or the Cleveland lawyer would not have said so. I wouldn’t bother to say a word about it.”

The old lady sighed.

“There isn’t much that can be said about it,” she admitted. “But it worries me— and it always has worried me. At first, when your father’s estate was reconstructed from the bills he left behind him, I was glad of any relief from the ghouls who were waiting to make gossip out of us. Everybody knew that the creditors had inherited the factory, and the whole town had hopes of seeing us behind a counter in some store. Of course I didn’t argue with the lawyer when he came and told me that we had been left a fortune. It was a gift from heaven, and I accepted it without any questions, praying all the time that he might not discover his mistake. But now I wonder if I did right.”

“Of course you did. There was no mistake about it. Lawyers don’t make mistakes like that.”

“Perhaps— but unknown relatives who die so conveniently are less numerous than you might think, Mimmie. And I am getting too old to care for mysteries. There have been so many of them. First there was Davy Branscombe turned thief—natural enough, when you analyze it, considering his stock and everything.... Then there was all that money missing when your father died.... Then this Uncle Henry, whoever he may be. And finally the prowling about this house. I wish you’d marry young Savage, Mimmie, and come back here to live with me. I won't go away, I won't be forced to do anything by Woodford and its vultures. ... And I’m getting too old to be alone.”

She rose suddenly and sked out of the room, motioning Miriam back when she sought to accompany. The firelight was giving its own coloring to the room. The sun had dropped out of sight beyond the grove, and the autumn twilight was thickening fast. Already the shadows were deep and purple under the trees, and the motor-drive was a vague streak of gray.

Beneath the broad French windows Miriam caught a faint but startling sound. It seemed to her that stealthy footsteps were moving quickly among the dry leaves along the roadway. She ran to the windows, precipitously as always, and swung them over with a squealing of hinges that could be heard as far as the boat-landing. When she looked out, there was no sign of an intruder in the shadows— no sign that anyone had been there.

AS Helen Halley had said, the family had been a great disappointment to Woodford. The prestige of the blood, so great in the days when a few English families had brought their spinning-wheels, their civilization and their traditions to, this wilderness on the Lakes, had lost its potency as new racial mixtures came to make up the bulk of the population with the lengthening years. By sheer force of personality Grandma Halley had forced her leadership upon these people when the family was in funds. By sheer personality she had commanded their grudging admiration when Tom Halley had sacrificed everything in his wild bid for aristocratic distinction. The town bowed the knee dutifully to her now, and resented her rulership with caustic bitterness when her back was turned. Who were the Halleys, that they should set themselves up as arbiters for their betters? There was Mimmie Halley, whom the town remembered principally as a misfit little creature, all legs and arms, who was never out of trouble. She had gone to Paris, abode of wickedness, to acquire a knowledge of music and heaven only knew what other subjects. There was George Halley, her second cousin, last of the Halley male line— a merciful Providence be praised for that! He lived all alone over there by the lake shore beyond old Helen’s place in his rambling bungalow since his wife hanged herself there three years ago— a pleasant creature, very, to be held up to the townsfolk as the heritor of the purple!

George’s wife who had hanged herself had, in the opinion of the citizenry who survived her, shown great good sense.

She had not been the first to come to a bad end through having been too intimate with the Halleys. Davy Branscombe’s turn to thievery was a case in point. Woodford did not sympathize much with Davy. For that matter, it did not sympathize much with the late Mrs. George Halley. It seemed to be useless to spill theoretical tears over the accomplishment of the foreordained. Davy Branscombe had been a thief, worse than that, a confessed thief; and virtuous Woodford naturally could hold no converse with so abandoned a creature. For a time at least he had been in the graces of the Halleys, favored even by Helen above the other boys who fished Mimmie out of the lake or carried her home from her other numerous accidents. It gave her a feeling of superiority to the proletariat to despise him, now thaf test had shown him to be a felon.

Had he been an enemy of the Halleys at the time of his defection, Woodford might have found a saving clause in its moral code to excuse him— perhaps even to feel sorry for him. For it was Tom Halley’s money that he was supposed to have taken. A rare joke on the Halleys it had been, too: Davy there in the old house with George and Mimmie; Tom shouting for the police like any ordinary citizen of Woodford, and complaining bitterly that he had been robbed and ruined; old Stockbridge, the butler, telling everyone who would listen that such things must happen where commoners are admitted to the presence of the elect; Helen stern and relentless and silent, reserving judgment; little Mimmie weeping hysterically at the foot of the broad stairs; and Davy calmly admitting the theft and refusing to divulge what he had done with the loot— a splendid scene! Woodford would never forget it.

It was already a popular topic at all the dinner-tables in the town. Miriam’s arrival, with its weird advance notice in the Toledo newspaper, and its consequent dramatics at the railroad station, had revived the whole affair with vividness and detail.

The quiet, gray-eyed young man who looked so much like some one the hotel proprietor had seen somewhere before, was told all about it as he inquired about the best road to Cleveland while waiting for his evening meal.

DARKNESS had settled down like a widow’s veil over the grim old house by the lake front when Cousin George arrived to pay his belated respects. Miriam found that he had changed only slightly, and that for the worse.

George, the pimply-faced, oily-haired boy, had become George, the pimply-faced, oily-haired man. Age and a certain restraint of manner were the only gifts that the years had brought him.

He held out a limp hand and looked at Miriam disapprovingly.

“You don’t look well in red,” he told her after a critical glance. “But you’re a little fatter than you were, and that’s an improvement.”

“I don’t know whether you have changed or not, George,” Miriam answered. “I don’t seem to remember how you looked before I went away.”

“They tell me you kissed the porter good-by when you left the train.”

“How stupid of me to have been so demonstrative in public! Of course nobody in Woodford could understand how kind he had been to me.”

“It shows that Paris hasn’t spoiled you, anyway. You were always impulsive. I can remember the day you pulled the tail of Jones’ mule—”

“It overwhelms me to think that I have been in your mind all these years. But I have thought of you too, George. I can remember the time little Phil O’Malley blacked your eyes for kicking his dog.”

George did not reply immediately. He looked at Mimmie in obvious surprise. Her descent from the Pullman car as described by William the gardener had not prepared him for any such psychological change as was evident in her speech. Her memory was longer than he had supposed, and her tongue had become much too facile.

“Did Granny tell you that we have been having burglaries and other mysterious doings hereabouts?” he inquired, with patent intent to steer the conversation away from unpleasant personalities.

“Yes, she said something about her suspicions," Miriam replied. “I wondered that you hadn’t moved over here to look after her.”

“Just my idea,” stated her cousin briskly. “I suggested it to her. But she wouldn’t hear of it. You know Granny. She wouldn’t accept help from anyone if the house was besieged. Let’s go into the library, and TIl show you just where the burglars broke in.”

“I don’t want to go into the library,” declared Miriam with a keen glance at him. George looked back at her for a silent moment, obviously puzzled. Then with studied effort he shrugged his shoulders.

“Have it your way,” he agreed. “We’ll go into the living-room.” And before she could phrase a further refusal, Helen Halley came down the stairs for dinner.

AT ten o’clock George went home.

Grandmother Halley moved slowly about the lower floor, inspecting the locks on all of the windows. The wind was high. The old house rattled and wheezed. The moan of the lake was so loud that it seemed to come from the roadway in front of the door. The first flurries of the expected snow were beating softly against the panes from the north. s

“This will be a bad storm,” the old lady said. “I can feel the twinges of rheumatism in my right arm. I only wish that rheumatism was the only trouble I could look forward to tonight.”

“Not even a burglar would venture out on a night like this if the snow starts to blow in from the lake,” Miriam answered assuringly. “Anyway, I shall sit up awhile and read. Prowlers or no prowlers, it’s much too early to go to bed.”

“You’d better be in bed at eleven o’clock,” declared Grandma Halley. “But no matter. Read if you like. You'll be glad enough to come upstairs when the gale gets to shrieking through the trees. There’s a good book on the mantel. And there’s a pistol in the library table drawer. Look out how you go stirring around in there, or you'll shoot yourself in the foot.”

And then with a display of emotion as disconcerting as it was unexpected, she put her arms about Mimmie and kissed her tenderly..... The girl stood and watched her as she moved stiffly up the stairs to bed.

Once she was alone, Mimmie did a very unexplainable thing. She walked into the library, took the family Bible from its shelf in the cases alongside the fireplace and laid it in plain view on the table under the reading-lamp. Then she opened the table drawer, found the pistol, a heavy automatic, and laid it near the Bible. With these preparations completed, she switched out the lights and sank into the chair before the fire.

It was in the nature of things, where Mimmie was concerned, for events to develop quickly. And if she expected dramatics, she was not disappointed. Above the wailing of the wind she presently caught the sound of something scraping against the French windows. She arose silently. In a stray beam of light from the outer hallway she saw the glint of a knife-point moving cautiously up and down the sash. She picked up the pistol and backed toward the light-switch. The window opened, and a form only slightly less black than the dark of the storm-filled night was silhouetted momentarily in the square frame. The window closed again, and Miriam knew that a man was in the room with her.

The girl’s hand was on the switch, and she felt like a stage manager who could bring a melodrama to its climax at will. She did not feel afraid. But that was not remarkable in Miriam Halley. A meeting with a burglar could be no stranger experience than others she had survived. A touch of a button, a flood of light, and she would be in command of the situation before he could recover from his surprise. And yet, instinctively, she hesitated.

She peered without seeing into the blackness where she knew the window to be. Something was about to happen there. She felt a premonition that could not be discouraged. Her hand dropped away from the switch, as she half decided to wait and see what would happen. Then she heard a creaking of the stairs, and looked out past the shadows into the hallway. Grandmother Halley, still fully dressed, was just crossing the landing with a flickering candle in her hand.

The girl, angry at her untimely appearance, realized without thought that she must act before old Helen could inject herself more intimately into the scene. She raised her hand quickly and pressed the button.

With a thrill she watched the situation develop as she had foreseen it would. A man who had been edging along the wall from the window toward the fireplace swung about in obvious amazement.

“Put up your hands,” she ordered quietly. And he complied. From the stairs came the panic-stricken voice of Helen Halley:

“Miriam, Miriam, what’s the matter? Put down that gun, child! You'll kill yourself.”

Miriam did not heed her.

“Keep close to the wall,” she commanded. “Then step sideways into the light where I can get a look at you.” She waited expectantly with one eye on her prisoner, the other on the window.

THE advantage seemed all in Miriam’s favor. For once in her life she had not blundered, and her assurance was self-evident. However, the intruder was in twilight at the edge of the light from the dim shaded bracket-lamps on the wall, whereas Miriam was in the full glare.

The burglar, no less alert than his captor, noticed one point even before his attention was directed to it by the painful fright in the voice of Helen Halley, who could see part of the scene from the stairway:

“Mimmie, Mimmie! Don’t hold that istol that way. Put it down.: You can’t andle firearms. You'll kill yourself!”

Miriam’s trigger finger was not in a position to do any damage. It was wrapped around the outside of the guard.

With a quick intake of breath, the burglar leaped at her. But he took only one step before he brought up short again, glad that he had not thrown himself far enough to lose his balance. By some unexplainable accident the gun had gone off. By some miracle the bullet had sped from that wabbling muzzle so squarely that he marveled to find himself alive. It had struck the left side of his cap, and the draft of it seemed to have left a permanent iciness on his left cheek. Then— it seemed a long time afterward— he was conscious of the roar of the gun and the echoes it had stirred in that close room.

All of the critical action came in a few closely crowded seconds. Lapse of time was registered only by startled instincts. It was almost as the bullet flattened into the wall that the man judged the miracle for what it was, noted that Miriam’s finger was still outside the guard and decided that the impossible could not happen twice. He leaped again. And again he stopped in his tracks, this time for good. The pistol had discharged a second time, seemingly of its own volition, and there was another bullet-hole in his cap— just over the right ear, this time.

Through the house echoed the shrieks of Grandma Helen:

“Mimmie! Mimmie! Have you crazy, child?”

Accident, the patron deity of Miriam’s interesting life, seemed to be working this time in her favor. From the switching on of the lights until the boring of the second bullet-hole in the stranger’s cap, Helen Halley had come down only four steps, and in that time little blundering Mimmie had done quite as well with her dubious talents as any of her Indian-fighting forebears might have asked. But the action of the piece was not yet ended. Mimmie herself would not have asked for a curtain so early in the drama. She glanced at the French windows, warned by premonition or quick ears, and found her instincts vindicated.

The windows swung inward with an icy swirl of snow, and a new character appeared at the edge of the light. His face was hidden by the blanketing storm, but his right hand held a pistol that was raised and aimed squarely at her.

The weapon in Miriam’s hands seemed to be entirely out of her control. It was shaking perceptibly, and her forefinger was still curved about the guard—separated from the trigger by a ring of steel. But for the third time that night the gun discharged. The man at the window disappeared.

Grandma Halley had reached the hallway, and for the first time was able to see what was happening in the library. In sudden uncontrollable panic, she hobbled over the bare parquet toward the rear of the house, screaming for Cousin George. A moment later the back door opened and slammed behind her.

Miriam lowered her pistol. For one who had just been saved from disaster by accident, she seemed astonishingly calm.

“Step into the light, Davy,” she suggested. “Why didn’t you ring the bell?”

The burglar, with his hands still above his head, followed her direction.

“You may put your hands down,” she told him. “It is very tiring to hold them up that way.” He did as he was bidden, and stared at her uncomprehendingly.

“You know me,” he said in a surprised voice. “You knew I was coming?”

“I suspected you might be here when I saw you getting off the train. The other visitor was a bit of a surprise. I did not think he would be around quite so soon.”

There was a moment of silence.

“What are you going to do with me, Mimmie?” asked Branscombe tremulously after the pause.

“I don’t know— yet,” replied Miriam airily. “You're the first burglar I ever caught.” The man made a hopeless gesture.

“It’s just one mess after another with me,” he told her. “Once a thief, always a thief, I suppose.”

“Are you a thief, Davy?” she asked gently. He looked at her as a mother might look at a changeling.

“No,” he said very slowly. “I may have the same trouble convincing you that I shall have convincing a jury. But I am not a thief. .... I thought once— many years ago— that you knew I was not. You see, that night when only the three of us were near that cubbyhole where your father kept his money, I thought that you were the thief—” He hesitated, but his confession did not seem to startle her.

“And you took the blame, Davy,” she recalled with a trace of unsteadiness in her tone. “You took the blame for me, Davy, when you knew I had stolen the money.”

“I know who stole the money,” he interrupted. “That’s why I came here tonight. I ran into old Stockbridge the butler in New York, just before he cashed in the other night, and he told me how he had helped in it, and of the confession he had pasted in the cover of the Bible. Novel idea! Wanted it always close to your grandmother so that he could carry on enough blackmail to make up for his loss of the loot.”

She stopped him with a gesture.

“I know,” she said. “I found it there years ago, and ever since I have been trying to find you. I couldn’t tell Grandmother. It would have killed her. I knew that George would come to his reckoning sooner or later. Stockbridge must have written him some time ago. Somebody came looking for the Bible three times during the past month, and I just knew he would be back tonight.” David Branscombe was startled out of his dejection.

“Then it was George—” he whispered. “Your own cousin— and you may have killed him with your crazy pistol-shooting.”

Miriam smiled.

“It was George,” she said. “But I didn’t kill him with my crazy pistol-shooting. If you ever find him again, you'll see that I creased him along the top of the head just about where he parts his hair.” And strangely enough, he seemed to take her word for it.

“I thought that night when all the trouble happened that you were going to marry George,” he said. “Your father seemed to favor him, and you—”

She shook her head.

“It was never George,” she assured him in a voice that was almost a whisper. “There was only one, and there never has been another, Davy. And I’ve looked all over the world for you.”

“YOU’RE worth the risk, Miriam,” he told her as he drew her down to him in the chair before the fire. “But you are just as you always were, the daughter of trouble. You came near killing me tonight, girl.”

She laughed and moved closer to him.

“No, Davy,” she contradicted. “You were never farther from death than you were tonight. My shooting was ‘beside the mark.’ I had to handle the pistol like that. Grandma was watching me, andGrandma knows firearms. I was born with a short fourth finger that can be slipped under a trigger-guard very easily. Pistol shooting is a natural gift with me. A heritage from Grandma probably.

“Grandma must never know, but I had to put such base talents to use when Father’s estate turned out as it did.

“I am Mlle. Artheris, and I am also my own distant Uncle Henry, and ever so many other things I shouldn’t be.”

“You are the world’s most perfect accident,” declared David Branscombe with conviction as he drew her head down to his shoulder and enfolded her in his arms.

There, sitting silently in front of the firey the scandalized Helen Halley found them when she returned some time later with the constable.

__________________

14: A Colonial Banshee

Fergus Hume

1859-1932

From:  The Dancer in Red  1906

Ferguson Wright Hume

THE AVERAGE person does not credit the existence of ghosts. He prides himself on believing nothing but his own eyes, and if these deceive him into beholding a genuine ghost he excuses their so doing on the score of hallucination. You cannot convince the average person that there is anything beyond the actualities of this world. Certainly he professes a vague belief in immortality, but his conception is so shadowy, that he never faces it with any degree of confidence. He classes such credulity in the category of “things we are not meant to understand,” which hazy remark to his mind accounts for all matters in the way of religion. Take away this respectable theological view of the supernatural, and he scoffs at the idea of a phantom world.

I am an average person, a gross, fleshly, stolid, disbelieving St. Thomas of the present generation, and in accordance with the fitness of things, should subscribe to the comfortable creed above set forth. I don’t. Certainly I was once as materialistic as the average person could desire, but since I saw, and conversed with a bona-fide spectre, I have modified my views regarding psychology. She was so convincing that she left me no option, but to believe. There was no getting round her insistence.

It was a female ghost of the Banshee type, and I met her under the most prosaic circumstances. Priding herself on the verity of her ghostly being she needed neither moated grange, nor blue lights to compass her appearance, in fact she somewhat scornfully dispensed with such old-time accessories, and simply convinced me by a short conversation that she was what she pretended to be. The most sceptical would have attested her authenticity on oath, as I do now, and I was the most sceptical of persons— once.

Her name was Bridget. She was an Irish emigrant. I was always under the impression that ghosts, like fairies, could not cross running water save in an eggshell, but as I met Bridget in New Zealand she must have been an exception to this rule. She, however, made use of a ship in lieu of an eggshell, and complained bitterly of having been forced to take such a voyage in the interests of her profession. It had a good deal to do with hatred and revenge— she was Irish you see. As the interview was not without interest, I hereby set forth a careful report of the same for the benefit of the Psychical Society. Unless Bridget was a liar, her remarks may throw some light on the mysteries of the spiritual world, and those desiring further information had better apply to the nearest ghost-raiser. I don’t want to see her again. One such interview is enough for me.

Queenstown was the scene of this remarkable adventure. I am not referring to the Irish town of that name, but indicate thereby the pretty little sanatorium on Lake Wakitipu in New Zealand. It is amusing how very mixed one’s geographical ideas become in the colonies. Here for instance you sail up the Maori christened lake of Wakitipu, stay at Queenstown, the name whereof smacks of Cork, and see from the top of an Antipodean Ben Lomond, the range of the Southern Alps which have nothing to do with Switzerland. It is a trifle confusing at first, but when one gets used to the oddity of the thing it is handy to have spots so widely apart within hailing distance. It is only in Otago that you can go from Queenstown to Ben Lomond in ten minutes.

I was staying in Queenstown for the benefit of my health. Something to do with the lungs, I believe, but it is so long ago that I quite forget the exact disease from which I then suffered. Besides it is not material to this story. It must have been my lungs, however, because the doctor made me climb the lofty peak of Ben Lomond daily for the benefit of them. There I was accustomed to sit for hours among the ice and snow, watching the Earnslaw glacier flashing like a mirror in the sunlight, and the snowy range of the Southern Alps standing like fairy lacework against the clear blue of the sky.

When not climbing, I wandered about Queenstown, and employed my spare time in dodging the goats. There were a great many goats about the place as the unfinished condition of the town, rather favoured their existence. You walked down the main street and in two minutes found yourself among the hills— and goats. You surveyed a palatial hotel of the most approved “Grand” type and turned round to behold a goat-populated section gaping between a red brick chapel and a corrugated iron store. Or you could arrive in five minutes at the outskirts of the town, where the goats abounded among the white pebbles and sparse grass. Sometimes in such a place you met a man, more often a goat. I preferred the former myself as he sometimes invited me to have a drink, whereas the goats were all distinctly hostile. They are the most distrustful animals I know.

In common with other visitors, I put up at Farmer’s Hotel, where I was exceedingly comfortable. Every evening the steamer from Kingston arrived with fresh cargoes of tourists in search of health and scenery. They found both at Queenstown, which is the most romantic and salubrious place I am acquainted with. A trifle wild and lonely, but one must expect that sort of thing in a virgin solitude. I prefer it myself to an overcrowded play ground like Switzerland. At Queenstown there is no promenade, no band, no theatre, no casino, no bathing. For this latter the waters of the lake are too cold owing to its being fed by glaciers. When I was there, the principal amusements were riding, driving, climbing, and visiting the cemetery. I didn’t care about anticipating my funeral myself, but many people went there, and told me they enjoyed it greatly. It was so restful. I did not contradict that statement.

Sometimes we drove to Arrowtown and saw the pack horses in long lines climb the track leading to the Macetown reefs. The sight put me wonderfully in mind of Ali Baba and the forty thieves, for in the distance they looked exactly like mules laden with booty. Leaving Arrowtown there was some excitement in regaining Queenstown by the Shotover Bridge. It was a narrow structure with shallow sides which sprang across a tremendous abyss in the depths of which swirled a rapid stream. The approach was down an incline, and for the moment it seemed doubtful whether the horses would hit the bull’s eye of the bridge, or go over into the chasm. Our Jehu was a wonderful driver, and held his team well together, else I am afraid I would not now be writing this story. I never repeated the experiment. It is a mistake tempting Providence twice.

I conscientiously saw all there was to be seen in company with Nora and Michael. These two young scions of the Maguire family were staying at Farmers with their ancestral Banshee. I don’t think the landlord knew of this addition to his list of guests though Bridget did her best to let him know she was on the premises. She howled, whereon he called the innocent house dog bad names. I am afraid Bridget resented the mistake as a slur on her vocal abilities.

Nora told me all about herself and Michael. They had left Ireland some five years back and taken up their abode in Sydney on account of the brother’s health. He, poor fellow, was far gone in consumption, and even the tropical climate of Australia could do but little for his disease. Indeed so much worse did he become, that Nora was advised to try the curative effect of New Zealand air, and for this reason the young couple were staying at Queenstown. When I arrived on the scene they had already been there for some weeks, but Michael did not seem to benefit much by the change. On the contrary, he daily grew weaker and looked more like a shadow than a man.

One day I found her seated by his side in front of the hotel. He had fallen asleep in the warm sunshine, and Nora was dividing her attention between a book and the invalid. When she saw me, however, she softly arose from her seat and joined me in my walk.

“Do you think he looks better to-day, Mr. Durham,” she asked, anxiously.

“Oh, yes!” I replied trying to comfort the poor girl. “I see a decided improvement. If anything can cure him it will be this air.”

“I am afraid the disease has gone too far,” she answered with a sigh, “poor boy— to think of his coming all these miles only to find a grave.”

“Don’t think of such a thing, Miss Maguire.”

“I cannot help thinking, Mr. Durham. Since we have been here, twice have I heard the Banshee.”

“The what?”

“The Banshee! Did you not hear it wailing last night”

“I certainly heard a dog howling at the moon.”

“It was no dog,” said Nora mysteriously, “it was our Banshee.”

“My dear Miss Maguire how can you believe in such rubbish,” I remonstrated in a vexed tone. “there are no such things as ghosts.”

“So many people think, but I know there are ghosts.”

“Have you ever seen one?”

“No! But I have heard the Banshee cry.”

“Nonsense, my dear young lady. Your nerves are out of order with over anxiety. Consult a doctor at once.”

“My nerves are not out of order,” she replied, doggedly, “I am in perfect health, and thoroughly in earnest. Why you admit yourself that you heard the cry.”

“I heard a dog howling, Miss Maguire. How can you be so superstitious. This is the nineteenth century. Ghosts went out when gas came in.”

I took no end of trouble to convince that girl. I promised to lend her a copy of Abercrombie’s Intellectual Powers, where she would find that ghosts are all humbug. I narrated several instances which had come under my notice of supposititious spectres, which had been thoroughly explained away. A logical person would have been convinced by my arguments. But she was a woman, and therefore not logical. All my talk was on this account so much waste of breath.

“Every old woman in Ireland knows the Maguire Banshee,” she said, triumphantly, “for generations the death of one of our family has been predicted by its wailing. My father was killed in the hunting field, and I heard it myself crying round the house on the previous night. When my mother died the Banshee wailed three times, and—”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” I interrupted emphatically, “not one word. The Celtic nature is excitable and prone to superstition. The howling of a dog, the whistling of the wind, the skrieking of a hinge would account for your Banshee. I am a man of sense, Miss Maguire; I laugh at the idea of such folly. Nothing would convince me of the existence of—”

At that moment I swear I felt a cold breath blowing against my cheek. The afternoon was warm and sunny with little or no wind, but for the moment the unexpected chill struck me dumb.

“What is the matter, Mr. Durham?” asked Nora, alarmed at the expression of my face, “are you ill?”

“Ill! no!” I replied, nervously, “but really you know, ha! ha! I believe you are infecting me with your superstition. I felt a cold breath on my face.”

“Its—”

“Now don’t say the Banshee, Miss Maguire, because I can’t and won’t believe such nonsense. My liver is probably out of order, and our conversation about spectres is apt to tell on the nerves. Let us talk of other things. Your family for instance!”

“There is not much to talk about there,” said Nora, smiling at what she evidently considered a weak explanation, “my family at one time were rich and numerous. Now we are the only two left, and I don’t think Job was poorer than we are!”

“Your estates!”

“Were all sold long ago. My father ran through all that remained of the property, and when he was killed we had nothing but a tumbled down Castle, and a few acres of barren bog. We sold this and with the money came out to Sydney. There through the influence of an old friend Michael obtained a good Government appointment. Then his health gave way, and we were advised to come on here.”

“And what do you intend to do when you go back,” I asked, revolving several philanthropic schemes in my mind.

“I don’t know! It is questionable if we do go back. I feel certain that Michael will die here, and then I shall be left alone here with but a few shillings.”

“Tut! tut! you must not talk like this,” said I blowing my nose to conceal some natural emotion evoked by her story, “the colonial heart is kind! the colonial hand is open. As to your brother. Hope for the best!”

“Mr. Durham!” said the girl solemnly, “twice have I heard the Banshee cry— the third time will be fatal.”

It was no use arguing against such obstinacy, so I held my tongue merely remarking that I hoped the Banshee wouldn’t wail. Then as it was growing chilly Nora took her brother inside and left me to my own reflections. They were anything but pleasant, for I felt certain that his foolish belief in the Banshee would aid in killing Michael, as surely as would his disease.

To think of such superstition being prevalent nowadays. Here was a well educated young lady living among sensible people, yet she believed in such rubbish as ghosts. It has been proved over and over again that there are no such things. A heavy meal, a tired body, a fanciful mind, and lo a ghost is created. Dyspepsia and hallucination are the parents of all goblins, which exist but in the imagination of their victims. People who see ghosts should write novels and thus work off their superfluous imagination. No wonder we need school-boards, when sensible men can tolerate such humbug. Logic and Arithmetic will cure such morbidity. No student of the exact sciences ever saw a ghost.

The breath of cold air! Well I own that puzzled me, but it might be ascribed to the nerves. The cause I am convinced was internal not external. It was a still sunny day, yet I felt a sensation of cold air on my left cheek. Nerves or liver! only! I am inclined to put it down to the latter, knowing how I suffer from that organ. A liver will make a man believe anything. Perhaps my ghostly interview was the result of a disordered liver, but no— Bridget was too convincing. You can’t explain away actualities and though Bridget wasn’t exactly an actuality, I certainly can’t explain her away.

After that eminently unsatisfactory conversation with Miss Maguire I took a sharp walk to shake the cobwebs out of my brain. Ghost-talk does endanger cobwebs in a man’s brain, and if you leave them there nobody knows what will happen— but I think Colney Hatch has a good deal to do with the future. Not caring to tend in that direction I walked those ghostly figments out of my memory and sat on a hill top admiring the scenery. The sun was setting and the white peaks were very rosy with his light. It was very beautiful, but very chilly, so not anxious to trouble my lungs with inflammation I returned to the hotel and dinner.

After the meal I went up to my room to put on warmer clothes, and there took place that remarkable visitation of which I speak. The bedroom was quite dark when I entered, and in place of lighting the candle I stood at the window staring at the wonderful white world without. A stream of moonbeams lay across the floor, and beyond the distant peak flashed the moon herself glimmering like a ghost. The comparison put me in mind of Nora’s absurd Banshee story, and the memory made me laugh. To my surprise the laugh was repeated in a thin starved echo. I turned round at the sound and saw a woman standing near the door. I am a modest young man, and the intrusion annoyed me.

“Madame.” I said in a dignified tone, “you have mistaken the room. How did you enter?”

“By the kayhole!”

“Heavens! what a voice. It was as thin as a whistle. And then she alluded to an entrance by the keyhole. I began to feel alarmed and passed my hand across my eyes to vanish the hallucination.

“Liver!” said I seeing the figure still there.

“Divil a bit,” retorted the lady who seemed a cloudy sort of person. “I’m the Maguire Banshee.”

I don’t like practical jokes, and thinking Nora was playing one on me ventured to remonstrate. Before I could say a word the figure glided, or rather floated into the stream of moonlight which lay across the floor. Then I saw it was no joke— it was no liver—  it was a ghost!

A merciful baldness prevented my hair standing on end, but my flesh creeped, and I shook as though I had the ague. This apparition upset all my preconceived ideas, and reduced me to a sort of moral pulp. I felt a cowardly inclination to run away. The Banshee was between me and the door, and as the window was twenty feet from the ground I could hardly leave that way without becoming a ghost myself. I was therefore compelled to remain, and didn’t like the idea.

“Why don’t ye offer me a sate!” said the Banshee in an irritable tone, “is it insultin’ me ye’re afther doin’?”

I pushed forward a seat in great trepidation and she settled on it. I can’t say she sat down for she didn’t, but simply subsided thereon, like a cloud on a mountain-top. The cold beams of the moon shone full on her face, and the sight did not tend to steady my nerves. I don’t want to see another face like it.

It was a grey haggard countenance framed in wild elf locks of tangled red hair. Her mouth was all drawn to one side, and in her eyes dwelt a look of horror. Round her neck hung a fragment of rough rope, and from shoulders to heels streamed a cloudy white robe. The whole appearance of this being was vague and indistinct, the face being the only portion I could see with any degree of clearness. Sitting there in the chilly light, with her filmy dress undulating round her thin form, and her baleful eyes glaring from amid her tangled red hair she was a fearsome object to behold. I shivered and shook and turned away my eyes, but something I knew not what— ever compelled me to look at her again.

I don’t think she was a lady Banshee. Her language was too free, and her manners left much to be desired. Still she behaved in a very affable manner for her, and succeeded to a certain extent in dispelling my fear, though I was anything but comfortable during the interview. She spoke thoughout in a hoarse broken voice, alternating with a shrill whistling sound. Constant howling had evidently injured her vocal organs.

“So you don’t believe in my existence,” she said, eyeing me in a malevolent manner.

I began to protest, but she cut me short with a whistling sniff and shifted her mouth to the other side of her face.

“No deceit av ye plase. Didn’t ye say oi was an hallucination ye brutal Saxon.”

“You may be now for all I know,” I replied, resenting her rudeness.

She stretched out her arm which elongated itself like a marine telescope, and without moving from her seat clutched me by the wrist with chilly fingers. So cold was her touch that it burnt like fire, and I involuntarily shrieked with pain.

“Whist! ye spalpeen!” she said contracting her arm again. “Ye’ll athtracth attinshun and me reputashun ‘ull suffer if Oi’m discovered in a jintleman’s slapin’ room.”

“In that case you had better go away.” I suggested, anxious to rid myself of this nightmare.”

“Divil a bit,” she rejoined, composedly. “Oi’ve a mind to convarse wid ye about thim Maguires.”

“Why can’t you leave them alone. It’s impossible for a sick man to get sleep while you howl round the house like an insane hurricane.”

“Wud ye have me neglect me thrade,” said the Banshee, indignantly. “Tis me juty to wail worse luck. An’ as to slapin’ Mick Maguire ‘ull slape sound enough wan av’ these days, nivir fear.”

“Will he die!”

“Av’ coorse he’ll die. Haven’t oi criedth twice an’ ut-ll be the third toime this night. It’s not wastin’ me breath oi am.”

“Who are you?”

“Oi’m Bridget.*’

I laughed at the unsuitability of the name, whereupon the Banshee looked at me fiercely.

“Fwhat’s the matter wid the name!”

“It’s like a servant girl’s.”

“An’ why not. Wasn’t oi that same, sorr. Four hundher years ago oi sarved King Patsey Magireu av’ Ulster, the ancister av’ the prisint family no less.”

“But how did you become a Banshee!”

“Och whirra! whirra! willaloo!” she moaned, rocking herself too and fro, “wasn’t oi the pride av’ Ulster an’ didn’t King Maguire hang me bekaze oi’d nivir give up Taddy Donovan.”

“Did he want to marry you himself.”

“How shuld oi know! Maybe he didn’t care about Taddy liftin’ thim Kerry cows. An’ as Taddy wasn’t to be tuk, he hanged me, bad luck to him.”

“Did that hanging turn you into a Banshee.”

“D’y’ see this rope, sorr,” she said touching the fragment, “whin oi died oi tuk the bit wid me as a mimory an’ swore to haunt thim Maguires for ever-lastin’ till they all died. There’s only two now. Whin Mick goes there’ull only be wan. Whin she dies me juty ‘ull be ended for ivir.”

“But you can’t kill them.”

“Av’ coorse not, but I can warn thim of their sorrows. Oi’ve croied at their wakes for the last four hundher year in Ould Ireland.”

“Why did you come out here.”

“Bekaze thim two came. When a Banshee’s attached to wan family she has to hould on to thim like the divil. Where they go, she goes, so oi had to imigrate wid the Maguires bad cess to thim.”

“You don’t like the colonies!”

“Divil a bit. Oi’ve not met a single ghost of any consequence here. There’s no ruins to haunt an’ hathens like yoursilf don’t belave in us.”

“If you find things so unpleasant why don’t you go back to Ireland.”

“How shuld oi know. Whin Nora goes back oi’ll go back, but where she is I aim. Mick’s dying so me only reckinin’ on Nora. Maybe she’ll die too though,” added the Banshee, comfortably, “and thin I can return to me round tower.”

“What Round Tower?”

“County Down no less. Me family sate. Once ‘twas King Maguire’s, now ‘tis mine. Oi sit on it in the cove av’ the evenin’ an’ houl.”

“Pleasant for your neighbours.”

“Iviry wan to his juty,” replied the Banshee indifferently, “tis mine to howl an’ howl I do.”

“Yes! I’ve heard you!”

“An’ sid it was the dog. Oh oi heard your contimptuous spache.”

“Now look here!”

“Oi want nane av’ your bullyin’ av’ you plase. Respict age. Oi’m four hundher year ould.”

“Yes! you look it!”

“An’ so’d you if ye’d to pass nights howlin’ in the open air. It’s sorry oi am that I let ye see a rale live Banshee.”

“You’re hardly alive. However, I apologise for hurting your feelings. I’m not accustomed to entertain Banshees.”

“Maybe that’s true. No Saxon has a Banshee.”

“And no colony either.”

“Wait a few hundred years, sorr. Ye want ruins an’ family sacrats first. Thin the ghosts ‘ull come, but not in your toime.”

“I’m not sorry! I don’t like ghosts!”

“Maybe ye don’t belave in thim,” said the Banshee, tauntingly, “to-morrow ye’ll say ‘oive bin dramin’.”

“It’s not unlikely!”

“Oi’d like to lave some token av’ me visit,” she went on in a meditative tone, “couldn’t I lave five black finger marks on your wrist.”

“No, thank you,” I replied, shrinking back.

“Or turn your hair white,” she added, persuasively.

“Even you couldn’t do that. I’m bald!”

“Ah thin! I’ll lave the mark of a gory hand on your cranium.”

“I’m sure you wont. What’s the matter?”

For the Banshee had suddenly shot up as high as the roof.

“Whist!” she said shrilly. “Oi hear his breath failin’.”

“Whose breath!”

“Michael’s. The cowld sweat is on his brow an’ the rattle is in his throat— it’s not long he’ll live anyhow. I must wail —  an’ wail ‘Whirro!’ ”

“Let the man die in peace,” I urged, anxiously.

“Fwhat! wan av’ thim Maguires. Sorra a bit. Ye’ll hear me wailin’ soon.”

“But—”

“Whist oi tell ye! whist. Oi’s goin’. ‘Tis not Banshees ye’ll scoff at agin oi’m thinkm’.’’

She spread herself through the room in a cold white mist, and I shrank terrified against the wall. In the white shadow I could see the glare of her fiery eyes like two danger signals. The fog gradually floated out through the open window and the eyes vanished. Then I heard a whistle outside, which I presume was Bridget’s way of saying good-bye. After that I went for some brandy.

The Banshee certainly succeeded in curing my scepticism regarding ghosts. I don’t want any further proof that they exist after seeing her. She impressed herself too strongly on my memory. Next time I see an Irish ghost, I would like a dozen or so of my friends to be present at the interview. Now when I hear the average person scoffing at the idea of spectres, as I used to do, I tell him my experience. As a rule he doesn’t believe me. Perhaps you who read this story don’t believe it either. But it’s true for all that.

When I had succeeded in pulling myself together—  no easy task— I hurried at once to Michael’s bedroom, but was met at the door by Nora, who told me he was asleep. Unwilling to alarm her by a description of the Banshee’s visit, I held my peace and went out into the open air. Lighting a cigar, for I thought a smoke would soothe my nerves, I strolled up and down in front of the hotel. In a few minutes a young American who was staying there joined me, and though as a rule I found him a nuisance, yet on this occasion I was not ill-pleased with his company.

It was a bright moonlight night, and far in the distance arose the serrated peaks of the mountains. The iron roofs of the houses around glittered like frosted silver in the light, and here and there on the sullen lake glinted a flake of moonfire. All was wonderfully beautiful and absolutely still. Suddenly there sounded a long low wail which shivered pitifully through the air, and died away among the mountains. Then a second, closely followed by a third. I knew what that triple cry meant and stopped short in my walk.

“Dog howling, I guess,” said the young American! carelessly.

I heard a whistling sniff near me and turned to see the Banshee glaring at the young man. To him she was invisible and her speech inaudible.

“A dog howlin,” she said, angrily, “ an’ I nivir wailed so iligantly before.”

“Is he dead?” I asked, breathlessly.

“As a door nail,” replied the Banshee and vanished.

“Is who dead?”“ asked the American thinking I had spoken to him, “that young Irish fellow I— Hark, what is that?”

Another cry, but this time the utterance of a human throat. I hastened towards the hotel, and arrived at the door to meet Nora on the threshold.

“Did you hear it?” she gasped, throwing herself into my arms.

“Yes I heard it!”

“I told you the third time. Michael is dead.”

After that she fainted clean away, which action caused me but little surprise. I was pretty near collapsing myself.

POOR MICHAEL was duly buried in the little cemetery under the shadow of the mighty hill. I attended the funeral, did my best to comfort Nora, and in the end supplied her with money to return to her Sydney friends. I presume the Banshee went with her, but of this I am not certain. Sometimes I heard from Nora in the months which followed her brother’s death. When I was at Te Aroha in the North Island last Christmas she wrote and told me she was married and had settled for good in Sydney.

This letter set me thinking about the Banshee. By her own showing she could not leave Nora, until she died, so as Nora had decided to stay in Australia, I presume, Bridget would also have to remain. From what I heard, Nora is not likely to die for some time so I am afraid Bridget must be very discontented. Here she has no ghostly friends, no Round Tower, and as yet no reason for wailing, so altogether she must be in a bad way.

One consolation she must have. She is the only Banshee in the colonies. None other is genuine.

___________________

15: The Lost Suburb

J. D. Beresford

1873-1947

From: Nineteen Impressions, London, 1918

John Davys Beresford

SO BRILLIANT a memory must surely be that of a thing seen, and seen in a moment of tense emotion. Other memories of childhood are almost equally dear; little, bright pictures that present themselves without mental effort and awaken curious happiness for which I cannot account. In all these memories there is a sense of unreal reality that has a quality of ecstasy; I do so very truly live in those scenes, yet my body is apart from them; I am there unhampered by any weight of flesh. I can experience, but I am free. This past is new to me as no common sight or feeling of hitherto unknown life is ever new; unless it comes strangely, as a thing remembered.

The great difference between this and other memories is that this one I cannot place. The others, I know, are certainly of scenes and acts in which I played long ago. In the most unbroken monotony of the long reasoning hours, when the dull machinery of the mind works with its usual recognition of faint or laboured effort, I can recall tho plain, stupid facts. I know what took place before and after those scenes; I could write their history. The kind of history that is written: what people said or did, what they wore or how they looked. There is no ecstasy in that, only the repulsiveness of facts, and again factsa, and of a landscape or a human being reasonably analysed.

To such commonplaces I, too, must descend in order to set out the story of my unplaced memory— that story which I cherish as a record of my soul's experience. however banal. Not that this is apparent, superficial banality is of the least account. The glorious truth for me is in the knowledge that I have trespassed among the mysteries of the outer world, that I have crept through the interstices of matter and walked in the spaceless, timeless present of the universe. My soul has returned to me and said, "I am thyself."

All this is proof to me and will be proof to none but me, but I put forward my three phases in order, ranging them in succession, at once chronological and logically sequential. So I come by way of memory and dream to the hard evidence of what we call reality.

1. Memory

IT IS SO SLIGHT a thing, and yet to me so full of an inexplicable joy. I must have been absurdly young, so young that only this one emotional picture impressed me, and all the business of movement, purpose, and sequence of life that should circumscribe the vision is forgotten.

I was looking out from a moving window, and reason tells me that it was probably the window of a four-wheeled cab. My mother was frightened to death of hansoms.

I think it must have been my first visit to London, though no record of such a visit remains, and doubtless my childish mind was thrilled with the joy of adventure into the untraversed mysteries of the suburbs about the great city. Yet one wonders why the things that must have appeared so bizarre to me have been forgotten; the first impression of streets and traffic, of great shop windows, or the vastness of titanic buildings, while this one scene, less unfamiliar, should be so vividly remembered.

It may be that my exhilaration had reached some climax, and that for a moment I was one with life; or it may be that that spot held some definite relation to myself, a relation imperfectly traced, which cannot be explained.

I hesitated on the verge of attempted description, knowing the inner joy to be indescribable. To me the old magic returns, but the place to all others must appear as a hundred other places.

I saw the right side of the road more clearly, but I must have danced across the floor of the cab and seen a little of the left side, for I know something of that also, though less definitely. We were on the slope of a hill, and the houses on the right side stood above the level of the road. I could see little of the houses, however, for at the foot of their gardens was planted a thick row of balsam poplars— strong, healthy trees that were just come to full leaf and filled the air with their heavy-sweet perfume. The dusk was falling, and under the trees the shadows were so heavy that I could see nothing but the flicker of some white gate here and there. Then there was a break in the poplars. For ten yards, perhaps, came a low brick wall, coped with thin stone, and crowned with a poor iron rail carried on low cast-iron standards set far apart. The standards were cast in an ornamental shape, capped by a fleur-de-Iys or some other misconception of the Early Victorian founders. A broken shrubbery of variegated laurel pushed discoloured leaves over and through the iron-work. The house I hardly saw; only one fact remains, it was chocolate-coloured. Perhaps I conceived that it was certainly built of chocolate. Then we were passing the poplars again, the heavily fragrant poplars that threw such deep shadows.

On the other side was a great wood, shut away from all discovery by a cliff of black fence incredibly high— higher than the roof of our monumental cab— and defended at the top by a row of vicious little crooked spikes, like capital T's with one arm broken away. In one place a pearshaped bench of lilac overhung the fence. And all my memory of the picture goes to the sound of the crunch of new gravel and the rattling of a loose window.

That is all; little enough, and filled with no more romance than can be found in any other new suburb, spreading out to encroach later on the old estate which fronted and repelled it on the left side of my road. But to me it has some special quality that mountain, cliff, or sea can never hold: and when, probably twenty years later, I came to live in London, I set myself to find that spot which had left so deep an impression on me.

I was tireless in those days, and I explored the suburbs from Catford to Barnet, from Leytonstone to Putney. Innumerable summer evenings I have spent to wandering happily through the wilderness of streets, bright and dull, that encircle the gloom of the essential London. And always as I went I was on the verge of the great discovery; the great hope was ever present with me that at the next turning I might find again my wonderland.

2. Dream

IN ANOTHER twenty years I had failed to find it, and then for the first time my soul went there in a dream.

The dream began with confusion and foolishness. I was making my way, absurdly, through houses and enclosed places, passing through rooms full of people, down passages, across yards and over walls, seeking some plain, open street where I might walk unharassed by fears of intrusion and trespass. Quite suddenly I found myself flying; and then, the confusion vanished, the dream steadied, I came into reality.

I was walking in a familiar place, under the shadow of balsam poplars— the bright new flags of the pavement were sticky in places with the varnish of spilled gum from the trees, and daintily littered with shed catkins. The road was spotlessly neat as a toy road, its red gravel freshly rolled and unmarked by a single wheel-track. Across the way a high tarred fence ran unbroken up the hill, and behind the fence were tall forest trees, elm, oak, and beech, their little newly-green leaves in brilliant contrast with the blackness of an occasional fir.

A familiar place indeed to me; but in my dream I had no recollection of my childish visit. My associations were older than that.

Thus I came by unrealised steps to the break in the poplars.

The house that lay back behind the waist-high wall, with its useless iron railing, was grotesquely out of place. On either side of it were detached surburban villas, big, high-shouldered houses of red brick with stone dressings and plain stone string courses— "blood bandages" we used to call the style in my architectural days.

The house behind the dwarf wall was an anachronism, a square box, flat-roofed and stumpy; and some fool had painted its stuccoed straightness a dark chocolate. The plainness of its dingy front was relieved only by the projection of a porch, equally dour and squat, wilh two dumpy, bulging columns supporting a weak entablature; some horrible Georgian conception of the Doric order. All the face of that stucco box was leprous as the trunk of a plane-tree, the little bow-legged columns were nearly bare.

The scrubby patch of grass and dandelions— hardly distinguishable from the weed-covered path— that lay between me and the house, contrasted no less sharply with the smooth lawns and bright flower-beds of its neighbours.  The road ran in a curve, the gardens tapered back from the pavement, the face of every house was set parallel with the tangent; and it seemed as if those ambitious villas on either hand turned a contemptuous shoulder to this squarebrowed little anachronism.

Square-browed and sulky it was, ashamed yet obstinately defiant, staring a resolute-eyed challenge at the prim ostentation of that smooth road of red gravel.

I was glad for the little house.

The road was deserted, the whole place silent as if one looked at the pictured thing rather than walked among the substance. But I was expecting some one, and presently he came, slinking furtive and apologetic from under the shadow of the scented poplars.

He wore a top-hat that showed in its weakest places a foundation of cardboard. His rusty frock-coat fitted him like a jersey, and the thick-soled boots below the fringe of his too-short grey trousers were the boots of a workman.

He nodded to me with a jerk of his head as he came out into the daylight, and fumbled with one dirty hand at his untidy beard.

"Still 'ere," he remarked. "We're clean forgot, that's what we are."

"No one comes along this road!" I said.

"Not with all the big 'ouses frontin' the other way," he added.

It was true. I had not noticed that, or I had forgotten it. One only saw the backs of those high-shouldered villas, ornamented though they were to turn some kind of a face to either road. Only my little house showed a front to this bright new gravel and the tall trees of the boarded estate.

And as the shabby man spoke to me, I heard for the first time a sound, very thin and far away, that came from the other side of the houses, the delicate, distant ring of voices and the tinkle of tiny laughter— but so remote, so infimtely removed from us.

" 'E's still alive," continued the shabby man, pointing to the chocolate house. "I seen 'im a few days since— lookin' out o' window 'e was...."

Again my mind took up the idea submitted. I could recover nothing for myself, but every least suggestion enabled me to gather up again some lost thread.

He was still alive, the figure of mystery and terror, fit occupant for that strange house. Yet I had never been afraid of that apparition which appeared sometimes at the window, the man who wore some repulsive, disfiguring mask across his face. I had had confidence in him. But if I felt thus, why did I call him a figure of terror? I listened again to the shabby man. He had been rambling on while my thoughts were building.

He said something about the "children always peerin' and pryin' up the lane..."

I smiled, and turned slightly away from him. I saw them coming now. The road was waking slowly to life. I saw a little huddled group, the familiar group of children coming slowly towards us, keeping dose under the shadow of the poplars. A little girl of nine or ten was playing mother to them, keeping them back, spreading out her skirts, like a little hen to guard her inquisitive, peeping chickens. She wore sandals, and little frilled white trousers that came down to her ankles. As they drew timorously nearer, creeping along the palings inch by inch, I could hear their sibilant whisperings, little duckings and chirps of laughter, and half-smothered cries of affected terror.

Ah! to them he had been a figure of terror, though they could not restrain their curiosity, and, after all, they were safe. No one had ever known him to come out of the house.

As I watched the children, now drawing so near to us, I was on the verge of apprehension. Surely I knew that tall, thin child. I stared, and as I stared she and the others faded, and slipped from my comprehension. I knew they were still there, but I could no longer see or hear them. The whole scene about me had grown suddenly stiff and artificial, frozen and soundless; I had a sense of unreality and doubt. For one moment I fancied that I was flying again, and then I heard the thin, whining voice of the little shabby man, and came back to intensest realisation of my surroundings. The children had gone, but I could hear once more the tinkle of voices and little laughter beyond the houses.

"Over fifteen year, now, since he first come..." the little man was saying.

I had heard some one say that before. The memory of it was associated quite distinctly with the smell of the balsam poplars. But I dared not attempt to recall the drcumstances. The shock I had just received had left me with the knowledge of my double consciousness. I must remain placed in the sense of my happiness; any effort of mind or conscious stimulation of idea would drag me back to my other life. I looked down at the pavement and gently rolled a green catkin to and fro under my foot I listened attentively once more to the garrulous little man. I understood that he was glad to have some one to talk to. This was a lonely, unused road.

"...'Aven't seen the little chap for the past day or two," he rambled on; "laid up again very like...."

My heart leapt, and I repeated to myself, "calm, tranquil happiness." I rolled the catkin backwards and forwards under my foot. I knew of whom he was speaking now, and for an instant I had the sense of looking up to the face of the little man before me— I, who was nearly a foot taller than he.

"Very delicate," I suggested.

The little man shook his head sadly. "Can't live," he said, paused, and then repeated with morbid enjoyment, "Can't live. 'E's got the look."

I could not compose myself. The struggle had begun again, the effort to recall the past. I looked down at the catkin I had released, and saw that my leg was bare and that I had on my foot a white sock and a black round-toed slipper; across the instep was a strap that fastened with a little round black button. I looked up quickly, and the shabby man had vanished. I was not afraid, but I was desperately eager to stay where I was. I reached up and grasped the iron rail on the low wall. I had to stand on tiptoe to reach the rail, and even as I grasped it, it rose high in the air, carrying me with it. I swung at giddy heights, and once looking down, I saw that the whole sky was ablaze with sunset. I could not bear to look down into that hot flame, and swung over on my back, still holding tight to the rail. Something was remorselessly calling me out of the depths of time, and I began to fall through enormous spaces. Gradually I lost all sense of movement. I was lying on my back staring at some huge white expanse. My arms were still above my head, gripping the iron rail that crowned the wall of the chocolate house. I was, in fact, in bed staring at the ceiling, and the rail was the rail of my bed, I knew that I had been lying intensely still. Even now I could not move.

The door opened, and an untidy head was pushed in.

"I've called yer three times a'ready," said the lodging house servant. "It's past nine o'clock,"

3. Reality.

I DID NOT go to the office that morning. I was too excited and too contemptuous of the meanness of life. I had had transcendental experience. I was exalted, superbly stirred and proud.

The glamour of that wonderful vision was still upon me, and I went out to find my lost suburb. I knew that I should find it that morning.

And to me, as I have said, the evidence is convincing, despite certain aggravating discrepancies which must, inevitably, I am afraid, induce doubt in other minds.

It was in southwest London, but I shall not indicate the precise locality. What use is it for people to go and stare at the outside of commonplace houses, as if some murder had been committed or some ghost seen there?

Even I had no thrill when I found the place; it was all so changed. The estate behind the tall black fence has all been cut up into trim streets of villas, of meaner pretension than that one crescent of comparatively large houses, which, by the way, are not letting well, although they are not nearly so large and imposing as I had imagined. The chocolate house has disappeared, but I can mark the place where it stood, because there is one house in the crescent which is narrower and smaller than the others. It matches the others in style and faces the same way, turning its white-streaked back to the meaner villas on the estate, but it has no poplars in its garden. The other poplars, however, were disappointing. They were thinner, many of them have died, no doubt; and those that remain have been pollarded and formalised. Moreover, it was late summer when I went, and they had lost their fragrance.

I shall not go there again; my suburb is lost, now, forever.

If this were all, I should have a poor case, I admit; but I have better evidence than this, although there is some confusion of time which I cannot explain.

I had little difficulty in finding the house-agents, their boards leaned disreputably over many of the palings, thrusting their statements of eligibility at the road.

The young man in the spruce, bare office, however, was no use to me directly. His memory carried him back no further than a paltry three years, and his firm had only been established for seven.

He offered me keys and orders to view, and plainly regarded me with suspicion when I told him that I wanted to find out when one of the houses in the crescent was built.

"All modern requirements," he said, "bath, hot water..."

"But surely," I interrupted him, "the houses in the crescent are not quite modern. They must have been there," I hesitated and then plunged, "at least seventy years." I thought of the little girl in the Early Victorian trousers and sandals.

The clerk pursed his mouth and shook his head. "Well, I can't say for certain," he said, "but I shouldn't think they'd been up as long as that. Anyway, they're all fitted with bath-rooms now, hot water upstairs, and every..."

"I don't want to take a house," I protested. "I'm sorry if I'm wasting your time, but I have a particular interest in one house, 'The Limes,' I think you called it. I— I— knew some one who lived there once."

"Sorry I can't be of any assistance," returned the deifc' coldly. He had plainly lost any interest in me, and he had never had much.

But as I turned to go out of the office he became human for a moment. "You're sure you don't want to take a house in the crescent?" he asked. "The Limes," it seemed, was not to be let.

"Quite sure," I said, convincingly.

He hesitated, and then said: "Because if it's only information you want, there's old Hankin in the High Street, No. 69, a rival firm, of course, and if you were thinking of taking a house, you'd better come to us, but..."

I thanked him, and hurried away to find old Hankin.

His office was a small and dingy place, and old Hankin was a man of fifty-five or so; he wore a grey beard and spectacles. He was evidently not busy, but he regarded me with the professional distrust of the house-agent. I had some difficulty in breaking through his suspicion of the potential leaseholder.

" 'The Limes,' " he said at last, looking at me over his spectacles, "was built about thirty years ago, just before I came into the business."

"You don't remember the house that stood there before?" I asked.

He pinched up his under lip between his finger and thumb, and continued to regard me very earnestly above his spectacles. ''Making inquiries?" he asked, and his tone gave the phrase a technical savour.

"Only on my own behalf," I said. "I have heard rather a curious story of the place." I wished I could tell him the truth, but it was impossible. He, most assuredly, would I never have believed me; so unreal is the world of fact.

He dropped quite unexpectedly into the confidential. "You see," he said, "I left 'ome when I was fifteen— ran away to sea." The ghost of a smile came into his eyes at the amazing thought that once he, old Hankin, the house agent, had run avway to sea.

I curbed my impatience— it was the only way. I allowed him to ramble on, pricking him with assumed interest and an occasional question, till I brought him home at the age of twenty-seven, to a forgiving father in the house and estate agency business.

"And I suppose your father would remember the old house that stood in the crescent before 'The Limes' was built?" I prompted him.

He nodded. "He had some story about that 'ouse, if I remember right," said old Hankin.

I waited, breathless.

"It was an old 'ouse as was burnt down," he went on, "but the story was about some queer customer as used to live there, back in the 'forties— before I was born, that was." He took off his spectacles and made a business of wiping them and peering at the glasses.

I looked my interest.

"I dunno whether the old man dreamt it or not, but he used to tell as the occupier was a hermit or a miser or what not, and was wanted for some old debt. Shut hisself up in the 'ouse, so the old man used to say, and never put his 'ead out o' doors by daylight for fear of distraint. Free'old, the 'ouse was. There wasn't no road at the back then— what's now the front, of course— and only the lane, Granger's Lane, on the other side. The 'ouses in the crescent was built in 'seventy-nine."

"You're sure of that?" I asked.

He nodded. "We got the plans in the office somewhere," he said, and looked round at the muddle about him a littte helplessly.

"Never mind about the plans," I soothed him. "Was there any more about that miser in the old house?"

He wrinkled his forehead. "There was something amusin' about him," he answered, "but I forget the rights of it. To the best o' my recollection, the old debt as I was referring to had been given up long ago by the creditors, but there was some old bailiff or debt collector who'd been offered a commission on recovery, and he was the only one who remembered it. Used to hang about the place in the evenin's sometimes after his ordinary work. Something o' that kind. The old man used to make a story of it, I know, but 'e's been dead this twenty year."

That was all I could get out of old Hankin, and so far I have not been able to corroborate a smgle other detail.

NOW THAT all the essential facts have been put on paper, I am moved by a sense of impatience. I lived for a time on such a high plane of emotion, I was so sure that inspiration had been given to me; but now, as I examine the evidence, coldly and reasonably, a doubt insinuates itself, some reflex of the doubt that I anticipated in other minds before I began to write.

There was certainly some confusion of time in my dream. Those large villas were not built, nor the ground cleared when that odd little speculating bailiff used to take his evening patrol in the hope of one day being able to serve the writ he doubtless carried in the breast-pocket of that tightly-fitting frock-coat. They were not built when those children crept, giggling and half-scared, under the shadow of the poplars, nor when that one little boy, who was not afraid and who was so sure to die, walked— who knows?— into the very garden, perhaps even into the house itself. That thought sets me trembling with wonder and eagerness again. If I could but dream once more, and remember if I was ever inside the house....

I grant the confusion, but on that plane of being, after all, time is not, and my own childish vision of the place in this life— the houses were newly-built then— may have created on that other plane a setting which, according to our measure, was an anachronism.

One further point I am very loth to cede: the question of my fragrant poplars. According to Alton, P. balsamifera was introduced into England at the end of the seventeenth century, and it is now commonly grown in suburbs; but is it likely to have been found on waste ground in 1840? I can only say that it is not impossible. I do not know that there may not have been older houses fronting Granger's Lane, before the villas came.

I end where I began by saying that the memory, the dream, and my subsequent investigations are evidence to me, if they carry no weight with others. The vision has come to me and left me changed. I have touched a higher plane of being, and all my old materialistic doubts are gone, never to return. This one thing I have learned, and to that I shall always be able to hold: Reality lies within ourselves, not in the things about us.

_______________

16: At the Pitch of the Scrap

Sumner Locke

1881-1917

Weekly Times (Vic), 31 March 1917

Sumner Locke

A LONG SEA was rolling in from the ocean, breaking its back against the reef, and entering the mouth of the lagoon with a heavy boom that resounded from the hills. A dull-tempered night was closing in on the island, bringing with it a hopelessness of earth-blackness forbidding to the British man-o'-wars men who had been searching the shores all day, and undoubtedly favorable to any of the enemy who might be hiding in the mangrove swamps.

Lieutenant Walker stepped hurriedly alongside one of the white islanders and talked quickly. He wore uniform, but had substituted a Panama hat for his service cap.

Both men were engrossed discussing the business that they had been engaged in, the rounding-up of the German population of the island, and the Lieutenant had not finished with it by a long way.

"There is only this one beggar to catch, and we can pull up and clear out," he said to his companion. "Funny thing how he escaped just at the pitch of the scrap.  When he broke away and we cornered Shultz and his crowd, I was never more surprised in my life. He can't escape. This island isn't big enough to hold him a week, and he's sure of capture unless he swims and chances the sharks, or somebody helps him."

"Helps him?" The second white man looked round quickly. "There isn't a man, woman or child, not even a dog in this group, that would put out a finger to help Schonholtz escape. Besides, how could they? All the boats held up nothing allowed to pass the reef except under escort?"

"He's clever enough to do it, all the same."

Walker cursed beneath his breath.

"Don't you believe it," the islander assured him. "Schonholtz will meet his deserts on this island. I've always had an idea he had something to do with that insurrection among the natives we had here a while ago, though he was never marked for it. Then, when war broke out, he mobilised the Germans, dragged in a couple of dozen natives— though they don't love him. Take my word for it. They're scared of him. He could always put more of the fear of God into a nigger with his tongue than I could with a yard of raw hide. He's the man we want all right, sir and we're going to get him, by—"

Walking as they talked, the two men reached the high land that rose above the lagoon. Lieutenant Walker signified that he was going east to join the men on "outpost" duty at a little distance from the settlement. He raised his hand to his hat, as he turned away, but stopped a pace or two forward.

"Please remember me to your wife, and tell her I am coming along to tiffin again before we go," he said "By the way, Hartly, what a plucky woman she is!"

He smiled deliberately. It was well known in the group that Mrs Hartly and her husband did not go hand in hand through the mazes of their isolated existence. Nobody would have described the marriage as being "hopelessly out of gear," but it was known to be an uncomfortable settlement, although for some reason or other Mrs Hartly stuck to her part of the contract and managed a fairly pleasing appearance.

Hartly stared.

"Why plucky?" he asked, resenting the other's tone.

"Why? Oh well, it was plucky of her to stay when all the other women went to Suva, or west to some place less risky," Lieutenant Walker ventured "We knew there'd be trouble here— but Mrs Hartly stayed."

"Of course she stayed," Hartly exclaimed scarcely irritable, but rather showing fire.

Walker saluted gravely.

"Just what I said— she stayed."

Before Hartly could reply, his companion had wheeled sharply and was walking across the shadowy country.

"She stayed," Hartly repeated to himself. " Of course— but I never thought of that."

SOMETHING sinuous and scurvy-looking crawled to the piles of the house where the woman waited alone. It swarmed up the first support of the verandah and climbed over the wooden rail to gain an entrance by any other way than by the steps, for they were glowing in the full light of the house lamp, and showed distinctly everything near and around.

At first the woman, seeing the shadow lengthening along the hemp-matting of the room, thought that a native, perhaps a sick one, was seeking her comfort and medicines for an ailment. This often occurred. A man would come creeping to her on all fours, roll over on his back, and groan until she gave him the dose which he said was "plenty feller-good man, make debbil debbil— go longa way lie down— no get— up again, boy."

She did not rise from her chair, but wondered why the sick one did not show his head round the door. Then she called out.

"That you, Billy-boy? You sick, lie down— no get up. Plenty feller black pill in medicine chest, eh?"

Round the frame work of the door, a dirty, scaly hand came, then the forehead and nose of a brown man out the profile was too well-cut to be that of a black Islander. She started forward in her chair.

"Oscar," she gasped.

"Sh—" The man, whose face was weed-stained the color of a native's, stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

"How quickly you knew me." he said whimperingly. "Do you think that— that those navy pigs of yours would spot me so quickly?"

She could not speak. She had had time to realise what in all probability this visit would mean. Her sense of duty, and the realisation that to a certain extent she owed this man who had been her friend some consideration, were already in conflict.

He stepped closer.

"You wouldn't give me up, Mona?" he said.

She knew that he was trying her. Behind his anxious eyes, his smiling, evil face, she read an assurance of power; recognised a craft and cruelty that she would not have believed him capable of a few months ago.

"Why not?" she asked, quietly. "This is war. When my country is fighting another for an indignity, an injustice... I am at war with it's people."

"Even with me for instance?"

The woman threw out her hand. "How can you stand there? How can you come to me at all? At the best we were only... companions in adversity. You had no real friends on the island, and I... well ... I used you to pass the time, I suppose."

(Plucky, the Lieutenant had called her. She was showing her metal now in the face of the enemy.)

Schonholtz moved nearer, his weed-reeking body bent as if to spring. For the first time since she had dealt with other races, Mona Hartly saw the animal behind the man. She met Oscar Schonholtz half way across the room with as cold a nerve as his; they stood a little apart looking each other in the face. The German would have touched her but there was something of an advantage on her side. He was afraid to; he was afraid she might scream, or call, and bring some of the house boys into the room. He held her by his peculiar quiet assurance.

"To pass the time, Mona? Yes, it was to pass the time then... but now I've got you as I never hoped to have you."

Her eyes flashed. "Have you?"

The query was as eerie and derisive as the cry of a bird In the distance. The blinds were beating gently against the verandah posts, the evening breeze swishing the foliage of a hibiscus near the house.

"Once or twice, my dear Mona," Schonholtz said, "you managed to turn on enough sentiment as regards my— my friendship... to give me a complete idea that you might... might, I said, help me at a time like this."

"Really? We play a good deal, in life, I'm afraid. Perhaps as the minutes of sentiment were purely play, so— so the promises of assistance..."

He met her eyes, his own narrowing. "You won't play with me, Mona! again, as long as we both remain on this Island."

"What do you mean?" There was a sudden fear at the back of her mind, but she stayed it.

"I mean that if you allow me to be taken prisoner I shall immediately make some serious business of your so called play, confide particulars of it to your husband, and the authorities. You would not like that, no?"

The impression that this threat made seemed to satisfy him.

"You have not forgotten the time your husband beat a native to death for, well, a matter hardly worthy of death? You were indignant enough about it. You said at the time that Hartly had been guilty of cruelty deserving the most severe censure. You had notions regarding the treatment of blacks in these parts, and you started to write articles containing them, didn't you? You were good enough to ask me to read through a few pages of your manuscripts— just a few pages. After they had appeared in print, there was that little rising down there. Oh, I got no credit for it, although I worked quite hard really, translating those articles to every nigger I came in contact with, for reasons of my own. Oh, you didn't intend to incite to revolt, I'll admit, but every trader and planter in the Pacific blamed those articles, and would have given his hat to know who wrote them. I still have copies— one or two leaflets of them in a very charming and elegant handwriting— also a letter that you wrote to me as your friend, of course, though you tell me now that was all part of the game. But we will play no more, Mona."

Mona Hartly shrank away from him with a gesture of anger and impatience.

"You said just now that this was war," Schonholtz continued. "Well, choose. Help me to remain in hiding here, and see chat I get food, until there is a chance of escaping, and you can have those papers and your letter, though I should prefer to keep the latter as a memento of the time when I— I was bold enough to kiss your hand."

He laughed, but the hard, cracking, little sound was smothered almost the moment it escaped him.

"Where are the papers?"

"Not in my pocket; and where you could not touch them unless I handed them to you. If I am taken by surprise at any moment, dear woman, and you don't help me out somehow, I can speak and say where they can be found at half an hour's notice. You see.... you will be glad to help me, Mona."

The woman was gazing at him thoughtfully, and with apparent indifference.

"To obviate that necessity, perhaps it would be as well if I went to my husband now and told him the story."

"Do so. He will be the wiser when he leads that letter and puts the date back to the time of the rising—"

A sound out of doors disturbed him; he bent forward, listening anxiously.

"The wind!" he muttered. "But I must go. Your fool is with the other fools drilling on the beach, but he will be coming home presently, and— and I should prefer that we did not meet this evening. I shall be quite comfortable in the corner I have found myself near the belt of mangroves by the peninsula. You may bring me food there tomorrow, because I dare not show my face again until there is a chance of escaping— by your tactful advice. In the meantime I am quite safe where I am. Your friends will not wade through the filth of the crab holes for me. Food! Don't forget that a man must be fed— even in war time, Mona. In return, your papers!"

He slipped through the window, and crawled snake-like from the verandah down the pile to the shadow of the house.

Her mind relieved of the oppression of his presence, began to move swiftly and clearly. The impulse that had prompted her to act in the righteous cause of others was as strong now as when she had written the articles Schonholtz had referred to. Then, she had considered Oscar Schonholtz a friend worth having. Life on the islands was very lonely. He was better educated than her husband or the men who traded the Islands, and visited and drank at her house. Schonholtz had been sympathetic towards her idealistic theories of life. At least she thought he had been sympathetic towards them. Now she realised that he had been playing on them— that he, not she, had been playing, as she had said.

In a moment of intense feeling, she hated the man as much, or more, than she had ever known she could hate. That she, Mona Hartly, in this remote Pacific island could have been Involved in a situation of national importance, she could not have believed. The flame of her anger blazed passionately. She hated this man, who ungenerously, dead to every Instinct of chivalry, had sought to use an impulsive, an innocent, folly against her at a time when he knew that knowledge of it would wreck her life and destroy it utterly. She saw in him the representative of a country that had outraged the laws of humanity and cynically disregarded the rights of the weak. She recognised In him the characteristics of the people who had made these things possible.

She knew that he would have no mercy if his opportunity came, yet, whatever the consequences to herself, she had resolved that she would not go to the swamp. She realised that it was probably her duty to give Information as to Schonholtz's hiding place, but her spirit quailed at the thought of doing so. To do so would antagonise him she knew; she had a hundred brain pictures of the consequences; she was not sure that In the end she would not give information, but Just for the moment, she must wait.... and think a little more, she told herself miserably.

In the days that followed she watched her husband's set face. At meals he was morose, inclined to talk widely and harshly to her and to watch her. She wondered, anxiously, why he discussed subjects that he had never discussed before with her. It was certainly flattering, although she would have preferred him to be a little more moderate in his expression of opinions, and not so particularly polite in asking for an Indication of her views. She did not realise that she had developed a new manner. Her mind was busy with her perplexities— with Schonholtz, his visit, his threats, her duty, the wide spreading results of that old impulsive action of hers. She could not decide what to do. Sometimes while she sat silent, and preoccupied she found her husband's sombre eyes on her face and the train of her thought snapped. She talked nervously, gaily, to distract him. She began to have a scarcely formulated fear that he was watching her.

IT WAS four days after the German's visit to the house that they sat together in the inner room, and for the first time since then a restful silence lay between them. Reading in a low chair with her feet on a little rush stool, Mona Hartly could see her man directly opposite her. He was fidgeting with a newspaper which was neither new nor interesting. Outside the sea breaking on the reef boomed like the great guns taking a turn at the enemy. The wind rushed screamingly round the frail weatherboard dwelling. All the windows had been barred, but shook in their sockets, rattling and creaking ceaselessly. The rain started. Heavy pieces of wood, branches and shells and stones rattled on the corrugated iron roof. Once looking up from her book, Mona found her husband's eyes on her. She did not speak then, but later when their eyes met again she said something about the storm

"A bad night for anybody hiding in the swamps or on the hills," said Hartly.

She took it calmly.

"You mean Oscar Schonholtz?"

"Yes. He must be better in with the natives than we thought, Mona, if he's getting anything to eat... while he lies low. But I can't think he is— I've been keeping a pretty good look out, and I don't thing anybody is taking tucker to him— I don't think so."

She nodded, and went on with her book. Four days had passed since Schonholtz had placed on her the responsibility of taking food to him, and she had not moved a foot to do so. The knowledge that he was starving moved her to compassion in spite of herself. Realisation of his suffering was intensified with every hour that passed. The thought that he had ever been her companion for long mellow evenings, and that she had gone so far as to write him words that might be mistaken for something more than expressions of gay friendliness, infuriated her now-but could she let him starve? He had behaved detestably but— after all, he was a man fighting for his life, and— if she took him the food she would not have the idea of his death among the crab holes of the swamp, to haunt her— she would save herself also. He had promised to give her the papers....

She almost decided that she would go down to the swamps at low tide next day, take a second pair of boots, and hide those that she waded the black mud in. She put down her book. The wind was blowing so. She wondered whether it would burst in some of the windows, scatter the glass and shatter woodwork in every direction, as it sometimes did. She listened, listlessly, to its rushing breath. In it came something from a human throat voicing an uncontrollable agony.

"Food," the wind seemed to shriek. "Food— f-o-o-d. M-o-n-a— f-o-o-d."

It was unendurable, that sound. Rising quickly, she went to her husband. He put down his paper and looked at her, a cynical smile in his eyes.

"I'm frightened," she said, putting her hand out to him. There was a breathless sob in her voice. "It's childish, but I'd like to sit on your knee as I used to put— feel your arms round me— I'm so frightened tonight— it's the wind, I think."

Hartly flamed to the roots of his hair.

"Almost sounds as if someone were calling you from the sea," he said.

She sat on his knee, but he did not attempt to put his arms around her or hold her there.

"That is what startled me, Bertram," she said. "You see, I am the only woman left on the island, and that man at large— used to come here frequently."

She caught his hands, on the brink of confession.

Out of the beating confusion of the storm came that wail again.

"Food! F-o-o-d M-o-n-a— f-o-o-d!"

Hartly broke into rapid speech.

"You were friendly enough to be of use now," he said. "We can't find this man, and there must be a leakage of help from somewhere. The natives are under the strictest military discipline— they can't help him much and he'll want help presently— want it badly! You were rather friendly once upon a time with Schonholtz."

"Once," she murmured, holding his hand tighter.

"You used to have all sorts of arguments about— oh, stuff I didn't cotton to." Hartly smiled. "You are smart enough to trap him yourself, Mona. Suppose you try?"

"Try? How could I— the only woman on the place?"

"The only reason I ask."

The woman stared into her husband's face. Their eyes were close, but she could not hold his—

"You, my husband, ask me to trap a man because I am a woman— because we were friends before all this trouble started. You ask me to put myself in the position of— of—"

"Of nothing that would do you a minute's harm. You could go about openly— perhaps carry food and drink with you. I should, of course, make arrangements with the authorities— tell them that you were rendering valuable service. And so you would be if you capture Schonholtz. You know that he was found signalling a German cruiser beyond the reef a few days ago."

"But Schonholtz might shoot me on sight."

"No, he wouldn't— not if he saw the food you were taking him "

"And you wish me to search him out and... betray him?"

His piercing eyes were almost black; she realised by a fleeting glitter that she had made a mistake.

"I beg your pardon, Mona," he said, "but there ought to be no such word between you and Schonholtz.  I want you to find him... then I will deal with him."

"I see. And how... do you propose that I am to find him?"

Hartly smiled. She got off his knee.

Oh, I don't suppose you'll have much difficulty," he said. "You might use some of those airs and graces you used to be so keen on, to keep him where he is, until—"

Mona flushed and turned from him You are insulting," she said. "I'm sorry that I came near you... just now. I'm no longer afraid of Schonholtz.... or of you."

She dropped into her seat by the window again.

"I will do what is necessary, only under the circumstances..." She picked up her book, spread it on her knees, and with hands pressed to her ears  tried to suppress the tumult of emotion that sent the blood rushing past her ears; shut out the moan and roar of the wind; and that terrible call of "food, f-o-o-d... f-o-o-d," which still came through the night.

WHEN Mona Hartly passed out of the house the next morning and went slowly down the steep path to the beach, she looked back to see if her husband had gone on to the verandah. She was sure that he knew she was going, and what the grass-bag, she carried in one hand, contained. She could imagine his slow, cynical, smile as he followed her passage down hill. But he was not on the verandah.

When she reached the beach, he would not be able to see her from the verandah, or the windows beyond it. She wondered whether he would follow her. She did not think so. Once, perhaps, he would have thought of the danger to her in such a task as he had set her, but not now. It was a long time since there had been any sentiment between them, and to judge from the failure of her overture the night before, it would be a still longer time before she attempted to bridge the gulf of their estrangement.

It was probable that Schonholtz had a revolver— if he had... perhaps he would shoot her, when she had given him bread and meat. No... she realised quickly, he would not shoot. That would make a noise... but there were other ways by which he might make an end of her.

She did not think she would greatly object. There was even some comfort in the idea. She was taking food to him; but when she returned she would tell Hartly where she had found Schonholtz, and then the German would be sure to have his revenge.

This, of course, would mean disgrace and misery. There would be nothing to live for. It might be just as well if Schonholtz settled the matter at once. A little, weary, bitter smile played about her mouth.

Some distance along the beach, out of sight of the house, she sat down. A man-o'-war lay on the green waters of the lagoon within the reef; her engines quiet. The evil spirit that had disturbed the island a few days before seemed dead. There was peace in the lisping, dreamy murmur of the waves on the beach, peace in the whisper of the wind that breathed through the palms and the tangled jungle of bushes and trees that climbed the steep cliffs, peace in the haze of sunshine that overhung the island. Mona got up with a sigh, her glance flying back along the beach. She wondered if by chance her husband had followed her; but there was no sign of anyone on the beach or along the cliff edge, against the dark tangle of the trees.

She went on taking a path which led inland; she skirted the mangrove swamps, working her way through the net-worked foliage, and wading through the mud and filth of the thousands of crab-holes which sea-vermin had grooved on the edge of the swamps. She came again to the coast and the high uncertain cliffs of the peninsula at the end of the island. She had to climb those cliffs, find her way somehow down their steep, perilous slopes on the further side, and there, somewhere, she expected to find the man she was seeking.

She staggered on wearily; the bag in her hand seemed heavier every moment. She slipped on the wet weed-grown rocks of the cliffs. They were worn into a thousand cuttings; worn by the fierce seas that were lashed in on them from the reef, and had edges like the teeth of a saw. Her hands were cut and bleeding. There were curious caves and hollows among the rocks, and into these she peered anxiously, dreading, and yet eager, to meet Schonholtz face to face.

Once or twice she called him; but the wind and the echoing hollows brought back her cry "Oscar!" But word echoed among the rocks but there was no reply. When she reached the top of the cliffs she lay there breathlessly for a while. Then she threw away the basket she was carrying the food in, for fear, when he saw her, Schonholtz might not realise that she was bringing it to him. Slowly, carefully, she began the descent of the cliff again. Hearing a faint, scarcely human, cry when she had gone but a few yards she hesitated. It seemed to come to her again, and from a break in the cliff, a little to her left; leaning over the edge of it, she peered down. Something prostrate and with unkempt hair and tattered clothing, was tearing the slime and sand at the bottom of a cave-like hollow in the rocks.

The smell of putrid fish rose to her nostrils as she looked down. Her hand with the food in it hung just over the edge of the rocks. The man, scenting something different in his atmosphere, looked up. With a snarl, almost canine he sprang towards her, and began to ascend the wall of his hiding-place. She saw the blood drip from his feet as they were cut on the rocks, caught one glimpse of his wild eyes, and then fear, a primitive, unreasoning passion of fear, possessed her, and she fled.

She climbed the cliff, scarcely realising that she was doing so, and ran across the open land on the back of the peninsula in a frenzy of terror. She did not realise that she was clutching the bread and meat that she had meant to throw Into that hole among the rocks. Looking over her shoulder, she saw the man beating away behind her, his hair blown, back in the wind, his dirty, weed-stained body, half-clothed only, breaking through the bushes and crashing over the stones.

She was taking to the cover of the scrub that reached away inland, when the crack of a rifle ripped the quiet air.

Mona stopped running. She looked back. Her husband on the far side of the peninsula was lowering his rifle. The man who had been following her lay a few yards away, on the grass, beating the air with his arms, and shrieking all manner of incoherencies.

"Give it to me... something to eat... God! God!" she heard him cry, and with that yell were mingled a thousand imprecations.

Looking down on the food in her hands, she realised that this was probably what he had so fiercely followed her for. He was hunger-mad. And now he thought she had lured him into the open with food in order that Hartly might shoot him. There would be no preventing him telling her husband the story of those articles and the letters unless— On a swift thought she threw the food to him. That would perhaps stop his mouth for a moment, give her time to think.

The writhing creature on the grass grabbed the meat and bread. He tore at it and crammed it into his mouth in large ugly lumps. Mona scarcely looked at him; her eyes went to her husband, who was advancing towards her. The sinister smile on his face seemed to have deepened when she threw that food to the man in the grass. Husband and wife stood staring at each other, a little distance apart. The German watched them out of blood-rimmed eyes, wolfing his meal. He choked and muttered Incoherently.

Mona's eyes did not leave her husband's face; in them was a pitiful pride, fear, and appeal for mercy. She expected Schonholtz to speak. She waited for the words with which he would break the silence. She wondered why he did not speak. Hartly, realising a suspense of her attitude, glanced towards the man in the grass. He muttered an exclamation of impatience, and went over to him.

Mona turned. Bertram Hartly was kneeling beside the other man, whose face was horribly distorted. He seemed to be struggling for breath. In his haste, and after days of hunger, his throat had refused to give to the largeness of the lumps of meat; the muscles had lost control. He seemed to. be choking. Bertram dropped the gun, and leaning over the German rendered what services he could...  The man seemed to be trying to speak.

"She— she," he muttered.

It was coming at last, the story she dreaded.

Mona rushed forward.

"Don't believe him, Bertram," she sobbed. "He is delirious; he doesn't know what he is saying. He has some papers of mine— perfectly harmless they were when I wrote them: but they would be hurtful if he used them against me at this. You remember about that house-boy— you know I was indignant—"

She was trembling uncontrollably, the tears streaming down her face.

"I— I talked things over with him. I trusted him with my ideas. We were friends. I even wrote him a rather foolish letter."

Hartly turned his eyes on her, and his smile was not one of relenting.

"Ah— there were possibly plans in that letter?"

"Yes; but I should never have dreamed of trying to carry them out."

Hartly bent over the man on the grass. His breath was easier, his strength seemed to be failing.

"Tell me," he said, casually, "You would have left the island, probably with Schonholtz?"

"Perh-a-ps." She was wondering what game he was playing now.

"More than likely, and—" he stood and looked her in the eyes. "I should never have known but for this—" He indicated the German with his loot, "it is what I have been stacking for— to know."

Taking the direct glance of her eyes, went on coolly.

"You made one fatal error. Oscar Schonholtz was taken prisoner early yesterday and shot. This man— I think he is dead now— is an escaped prisoner from the man o' war— but as you see he has helped me wonderfully to a knowledge of my wife's interests— and associations."

"Wonderfully," she repeated, with slow contempt, and turning away from him went back by the track on the edge of the swamp to the beaches near the township, where Lieutenant Walker was marshalling his men and preparing to leave the island in lifeboats for the man-o'-war.

_______________

Table of Contents

- 1: Ebony And Amber / Achmed Abdullah

- 2: Skull Manor / J. Allan Dunn

- 3: The Crowing Hens of Totulu / J. Allan Dunn

- 4: A Ghost of the Sea / Francis Prevost
- 5: Suffocated / May Wynne
- 6: Thumbs Down / Ethel Lina White
- 7: Ella the Ambitious / Guy Thorne
- 8: The Intruder / Chris Sewell

- 9: The Lady With the Hatchet / Maurice Leblanc

- 10: They Dine in Darkness / Arthur Leo Zagat (novella)

- 11: A Yarn of a Pub / Ernest Favenc

- 12: The Man Who was Not on the Passenger List / Grant Allen

- 13: The Gun Girl / Rathburne Case
- 14: A Colonial Banshee / Fergus Hume
- 15: The Lost Suburb / J. D. Beresford

- 16: At the Pitch of the Scrap / Sumner Locke