Some Experiences of Lord Syfret
Date: 1896-06-01T05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: The Occult; Detective Stories; Crime and Mystery; Paranormal fiction
Description: Lord Syfret — a gentleman of independent means, with health, wealth, and position; he alleviates boredom by investigating strange matters. He is an amateur sleuth, occasional occult detective, and habitual nosy parker and busybody — he often receives strange “impressions” that may lead to encounters with interesting people and mundane human villainy, but also sometimes unveil true horror. Lord Syfret was one of the earlier occult detectives, and can be seen as a prototype for Flaxman Low and later occult detectives. Arabella Kenealy (1859 – 1938) was a noted novelist and author of “New Woman”
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: This book is in public domain where copyright is “Life+80” or less, and in the USA.

About This eBook

SOME EXPERIENCES
OF LORD SYFRET

BY:

ARABELLA KENEALY
(1859–1938)

Lord Syfret — a gentleman of independent means, with health, wealth, and position; he alleviates boredom by investigating strange matters.
He is an amateur sleuth, occasional occult detective, and habitual nosy parker and busybody — he often receives strange “impressions” that may lead to encounters with interesting people and mundane human villainy, but also sometimes unveil true horror.

Lord Syfret was one of the earlier occult detectives, and can be seen as a prototype for Flaxman Low and later occult detectives.

Be aware that Kenealy presents very demeaning stereotypes of Indian and Jewish characters.

This series of short stories appeared in “The Ludgate” magazine, June 1896~Apr 1897. This ebook is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+80” or less, and in the USA.

This ebook was created by ECM for MobileRead.com, August 2025, and may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes.

CONTENTS:

- The Haunted Child
- In a Terrible Grip
- The Villa of Simpkins
- The Wolf and the Stork
- Stronheim’s Extremity
- A Beautiful Vampire
- Honaria’s Hero

- Prince Ranjichatterjee’s
Vengeance

- The Metamorphosis
of Peter Humby

- The Beautiful Mrs Tompkyns

- An Ogre In Tweeds

THE HAUNTED CHILD

Jun. 1896

At forty I had exhausted all the resources of civilised life. I had health, wealth, and position, yet I knew that unless I could devise some new expedient for passing time suicide would be my last sensation. As to whether suicide were justifiable or not I did not concern myself. I was bored and I did not purpose to continue being bored. Exploring my mental reserves I lighted upon a vein which, suitably worked, might profit me. I set about working it. So far I have done so successfully. Once more life is tolerable, occasionally exhilarating.

The vein is an insatiable and absorbing interest — curiosity — call it what you will — in other people’s lives. Fiction has no charm for me. I am always conscious that its personages are but printer’s irk. And I like my pages of story wet with the ink of life. I meet a man or a woman whose appearance or conditions stir me. By the expenditure of a little ingenuity, some trouble, and more or less hard cash, that person’s story lies in my hand. Aided by a staff of well-drilled agents, whose duty I have made it to shadow in one capacity or another the fortunes of such persons as roused my curiosity — I am enabled to read their stories like a book. And, I tell you, few romances approach in interest some of the realities I have thus been able to trace. My right to peer into my fellows’ lives may be denied. I myself have never considered the question. To do so amuses me. That is sanction enough for my morality.

It has occurred to me to record a few of the stories I have chanced upon. That thus set down they will interest others as they interested me who watched them as they were wrought in the forge of life I do not pretend. Yet they may serve for entertainment. As already stated my concern is purely psychological, or, if you prefer a simpler term, impertinent curiosity. With the right or wrong of things I do not meddle. Only in exceptional cases do I even trouble to put the law on the track of murder, though, in the course of their activities on my behalf, my agents should witness the commission of such a crime. For my part I prefer the delinquent to escape, that I may find, as I do, penalty closing in on him as an indirect consequence of his action, rather than that it shall take the clumsy form we dignify by the title of justice. Far crueller, subtler, and a hundredfold more fitting to a particular crime are the methods whereby time, character and circumstance enmesh the criminal. Expedient it may be to rid ourselves of the confessedly vicious. But the Powers which are moulding us to ends our finite minds have so far failed to grasp are neither assisted in their ultimate objects nor appeased in their far-reaching wrath — so to put it — by our crude expedients.

The long arm of development which encompasses the human family and places effect in the unerring train of cause will find the murderer, many years it may be after we have done with him, but find him it will as inevitably as the impulse given to pool by pebble laps the shore.

How can it reach him after death? you ask. Death is but change of identity. Entities in the school of evolution pass through myriad lives in training for eternity, and the ill acts of one existence may not find expiation until a later one. A theory, you say. A theory, I admit. But I ask you for another that shall equally explain the inexplicabilities of human life. I have a story illustrative of my theory. Read into it any other interpretation that you will, and judge if it apply as mine does.

•   •   •   •   •

In a cottage on one of my estates a gamekeeper lived, some ten years since, with his young and pretty wife. He was middle-aged and morose, considering, as does many another, that the one cardinal virtue he practised — in his case that of honesty — absolved him from the obligation of practising any of the minor amenities and amiabilities of life. Nobody could imagine by what sorcery or fortuitous concomitance of accidents he had persuaded pretty Polly Penrose to mate with him.

He had saved a certain sum of money, for to other unlovable qualities he added that of screw. Polly had swains better circumstanced than he, however, so that this offered no solution of the problem. The village wondered, chattered, and finally decided that “you could nivver calculate on what gells do, for they’re chock full o’ whimsies;” and so they let the matter drop. Cooper was but one of Polly’s “whimsies.”

It is probable I should never have concerned myself with Polly’s affairs had I not one day come upon her crying her eyes out in a wood. On seeing me, she blushed and stole away. Matters just then were dull with me. I had no other case on hand; and, without anticipating much result, idly determined to trace the cause of Polly’s tears. I had, among my agents, a girl of about her age and temperament; and, putting her to lodge in the village, she soon made Polly’s acquaintance. It came out then that Polly had married for pique. There was a certain stalwart sweetheart of hers — another of my keepers — of whom she was fond, but he roused her jealousy by attention to a rival, in a fit of temper she accepted Cooper. To make a long story short — for this is but a preface — Polly and her lover made it up again too late, for Polly was then Mrs. Cooper.

Polly was a good girl, and I do not believe Cooper had any substantial reason for complaint, as she saw Dell but rarely. But she grew pallid and depressed. Occasionally she was seen with Dell. The circumstances reaching Cooper’s ears, with doubtless some embellishment, there was trouble in the cottage. Cooper even went so far as to strike her. In her fear and agitation — the poor girl was soon toe be a mother — she fled to Dell.

Cooper, following, found her in a shed near the latter’s cottage. From words the men passed to blows, and eventually Dell struck Cooper over the head with the butt-end of his gun. Whether he meant murder or not, who can say? but a long acquaintance with the poor fellow makes me confident the impulse was momentary and uncontrollable. But murder it turned out. Cooper’s skull was fractured and he died in a few hours,

Dell made no effort to escape. His one fear seems to have been for Polly. He remained with her in the cottage, soothing and reassuring her till he was handcuffed and taken to gaol. I did all I could on his behalf. I even had the gaol-lock tampered with. I had an instinct of what would happen should his case come to trial, and hanging was the last death for the fine young fellow he was.

I was a magistrate and could easily have contrived his escape. But the blockhead would not take his liberty. He could not now marry Polly he said, and he did not care for life.

A thick-skulled jury, directed by a judge who on the Bench was as keen a stickler for the proprieties as off the Bench he was obtuse about them, put the worst — and, I believe, the false — construction on Dell’s and Polly’s fondness.

He was convicted of murder, and sentenced to death. Under the circumstances, it was a monstrous sentence. There had been assuredly no premeditation, and his provocation was great. We petitioned the Home Secretary; we petitioned Parliament. We might have spared our signatures and ink. When Dell’s time came he was hanged. And now comes the gist of my story.

I filled up the places left vacant. by Dell and his victim, putting in two keepers from a distance. There was a strong local feeling against the occupation of either of the cottages. Presently it was rumoured that the shed wherein the murder had occurred was haunted. But the new keepers, unaffected by the tragedy which to them was merely hearsay, pooh-poohed the rumour.

Curiously enough, the wife of one turned out to be a distant cousin of Del!’s. She was a buxom person, strong-nerved and braced with common sense. She scoffed at ghost-talk.

“Depend on it, your lordship,” she said once to me, “there’s a deal more to be afeart on in the livin’ than the dead; and as long as it’s noboddy comin’ to meddle wi’ Johnson’s belongin’s, why, let the poor things, if things there be, come an’ go as it pleases ’em.”

I mention this to free my story from an implication to which it may presently seem open. Mrs. Johnson was as unimpressionable a woman as could be, and was as little affected by the talk of ghosts as she would Have been by their apparition.

Now the ghost which was said to walk and to have been seen by more than one person, was not, as I have gathered is the way of ghosts, the shade of the murdered man, but that of his murderer. All who had caught the fleeting glimpse — which is as much as the ghost-seer generally permits himself — agreed that the apparition haunting the wood-shed was Dell’s.

Round and round in a restricted circle, skirting the space whereon a ghastly form had stretched, the ghost was seen to pass. Its head was bent, its face leaned down. Its eyes stared, frozen with horror. Moans and sighs of the direst distress were heard to issue from the shed. But the man from whom I had a description, a tramp who, unwitting of its reputation, had stolen there one rainy evening for the purpose of a night’s lodging, described the thing he saw as mute and noiseless, making a dumb and ceaseless circuit of the floor. To him the circuit taken by the apparition was but a stretch of dusty boards, but the stark horror in the shadow’s eyes told of some ghastly visibility.

The man was green with fright. He had lain there staring nearly all the night, afraid to move, afraid almost to breathe, lest he should turn the horror of the eyes upon himself. He painted in the vivid speech of panic the curious effect of morning: how as the light grew, it left less and still less of the apparition visible, how from being something luminous against the darkness it passed into a thin translucent shade against the light, how the outlines slowly faded and the form was lost, yet he could see it whirling like a grey smoke round and round six feet of floor. When the sun came up it slipped away as mist slips into air. In the morning when the man was brought to me he was piebald. The hair and beard of one side had gone white in the night.

A time came when the ghost was seen no more. The sighs and moanings ceased. Still the shed lost no whit of its evil reputation.

A year after the Johnsons’ advent to the cottage, a child was born to them. They had already several children — buxom, cherry-cheeked youngsters, after the type of their mother. This child was different. The difference did not show at first. The infant was as other infants — a mere homogeneous mass of red-pink flesh, with the slate-grey eyes of its kind; eyes that deluded mothers call dark or light according to their fancy, for the rest of the world perceives that not until long after seeing the light do babies’ eyes take on the shade they eventually keep. But this infant, though like enough to others, differed from them in one particular — it had a large blood-red spot in the palm of its right hand.

The doctor pronounced the spot merely accidental and ephemeral; it would disappear before the week was out. Subsequently he modified his opinion. It was a variety of nevus, but he considered that it did not call for operation. The child would outgrow it. But the doctor was wrong. As the palm grew the blood-spot grew, and its colour did not wane. Presently, when the child assumed with age the waxen whiteness that afterwards characterised it, the spot had a curious effect of focussing all the blood in its body. As the baby slowly evolved an individuality out of its pink homogeneousness, it was seen to differ singularly from the rest of the Johnson children. In the place of their fair chubbiness, it was pallid and dark. Its brows were strongly and sombrely marked, and its eyes gathered slowly a look of weird horror. It cried rarely or never. Nor did it smile. It sat staring before it with a fixed expression and a blood-red palm upturned.

A child is born with its hands knotted into fists, fists which for months are opened with difficulty. It is an instinctive action of grasping the life before it. A man or woman dies with the palms extended. The life has been wrought and is rendered up. The Johnson baby never curled its fists as normal babies do. It held its palms limply open with the blood-red spot for all to see.

The villagers talked as villagers always talk of something out of the common. They drew conclusions — the short-sighted conclusions of their kind. They pronounced the child’s uncanniness a judgment on the mother for her scoffing.

“It don’t do to make light o’ they things,” they croaked. They predicted the baby’s early death.

The child attracted my attention from the first. I got a curious impression about it. Its face had a familiar look. The horror in its eyes reminded me of something. It was not until later that I knew of what.

I had a vacant cottage near. In it I installed an elderly woman of observant faculty. She made friends with the mother, and having leisure took the infant frequently off her hands. By her means I am able to relate what happened. So soon as it showed signs of intelligence — signs such as those used to children interpret, while to others they are still meaningless — the Johnson baby developed interest in the haunted shed — now, it must be remembered, no longer haunted.

The moment it was taken out of doors its eyes turned in the direction of the building, which stood but a short distance from the cottage. It was restless and wayward out of sight of it, and would weary and fret with inarticulate demands until carried whence it could see it. So soon as it was able, it would drag itself along the floor and out at the door to sit there with hands on tiny knees, staring with fascinated looks.

Before it was ten months old, it was found, having crept across the patch of ground between the house and shed, tired with its efforts, lying extended on the grass, its waxen face turned solemnly upon the building, its eyes fixed. Later it managed to escape attention long enough to reach the shed, shuffling along as infants do on hands and legs. It was discovered crouching at the open door, its head dropped till its chin rested almost in its lap, its pupils wide upon some portion of the floor. An illness followed, and for some weeks the child’s life was in danger. It had taken a chill, the doctor said. Even then, though weakened with fever, the poor little creature left for a moment, would struggle feebly to the foot of the bed, whence through the window a corner of the shed was visible. There it would be found staring with grave, frightened eyes.

When strong enough to be up again, it made always for the window, to stand there with its face pressed close against the glass. The doctor diagnosed the child as weak-minded, but I cannot say the term at all described the terrible intelligence that looked out of its eyes. The women shook their heads.

“It knows too much, poor little dear,” they said. “There isn’t nothing that’s said it don’t know. If anybody could find out what it’s always askin’ in its eyes per’aps it ’ud be able to die quiet, for anybody can see it ain’t long for this world.”

Mrs. Johnson paid but little heed to all the talk.

“I don’t see anything much different in the child from other children,” she said impatiently, “only it don’t thrive. I expect it’ll be stronger on its legs when it’s got its teeth and can take a bit o’ meat wi’ the rest of us.”

But the child grew no stronger on its legs, nor did it grow the least bit less unlike the chubby-cheeked Johnson brood. It seemed to have no wish to walk. It was a patient little thing, and when planted by a chair would stand there; but so soon as attention was drawn from it, it would drop to its hands and knees again, and creep to the door.

Johnson made a little fence, to keep it from straying; but it developed a weird sagacity for evading this, wriggling through or clambering over, or escaping by a back door. Then, if not intercepted, it would work its way across the patch of ground till it reached the doorway of the shed. There it would sit for hours together, straining its eyes upon some portion of the floor — always the same portion. Rain, snow, or wind it minded not. Frequently it was found squatted there in the entrance, wet to the skin, with a heavy rain beating on it, to all appearance unconscious of its wet and chilled condition — its gaze and powers magnetised. It took but little food, and was a puny, miserable morsel. Such food as it took, it took mechanically and in obedience to its mother. It never seemed hungry, or interested, as babies are interested, in the sweet and edible.

It did not play, nor did it seem to have a notion of the use of toys. A doll or painted ball it would turn seriously over in its fingers, then lay aside with a quaint solemnity as though it had weightier matters on hand.. Its only comfort was its thumb, which it sucked gravely, and with a thoughtful sobriety as of an old man smoking a pipe. It had no fear of darkness. It was found in the shed at dead of night, having scrambled stealthily from its cot, down the cottage stairs and out at the door. Sometimes it sat at a distance gazing spell-bound. Generally it spent its time shuffling round and round a certain area of floor dragging itself laboriously on hands and knees as one doing penance.

The villagers grew scared at it, and whispered that it had the evil eye. They would turn back to avoid passing it in the road. I have had boys thrashed for stoning it. Even its matter-of-fact mother came to have a horror of it, with its weird ways and terrible eyes. Yet it was patient and gave no trouble, so long as it were permitted to be in the shed. Its limbs, they told me, were raw and red, from the continuous rub of the boards against its baby skin. And the nails of toes and fingers were worn to to the quick with its ceaseless clambering.

That the child suffered mentally, I cannot say. Possibly not. It seemed to gather satisfaction from its treadmill labours, though there was always that horror in its eyes.

“Perhaps your lordship would be pleased to come and see it,” my agent suggested one day, when I chanced to pass the Johnson cottage. “Mrs. Johnson has gone into the village. The baby was shut in, but it has got out somehow and crept to the shed.”

I followed her. We went quietly; but I doubt if the child would have heard in any case, so absorbed was it. We watched it through the window. Its frock and feet were stained with the soil over which it had dragged itself. The day was damp, and mud clung about its hands. But it minded nothing. In the half-sitting, half-kneeling posture of creeping children it dragged itself sideways round and round a circle encompassing some six feet of floor — six feet in length and from three to four in breadth. Dust lay thick on the boards, so that the circuit made by it was clearly traced. It went always over the same ground, marking a curious zigzagged shape. Round and round, now up, now down, tracing the same inexplicable course it plodded, a thick dust rising on either side to the infantile flop of its skirts.

Its face was bent towards the centre of the trail it followed, its eyes riveted. Sweat stood moist on its skin, and in the moisture dust clung, giving it a dark, unearthly look. It sighed and panted at its task. Every now and again it would cease from utter weariness and, sitting up, would lift its dusty frock and wipe its lips. After a minute it resumed its treadmill round. I went in. It lifted its awed and grimy countenance and looked at me with that terrible intelligence. Then it resumed its dusty way.

I took it up and sat it on a pile of wood. It whined and fretted, stretching its arms to the shape on the floor. I left it where it was, and, crossing the shed, stood looking down upon the figure it had traced. I could make nothing of it. It was an irregular oblong of indefinite form, wider to one end, narrowing to the other. A grim thought struck me that it resembled a coffin. I was interested. What was the meaning of it all? What, if anything, did those weird eyes see? I bade the woman bring some cake or sweets. She came back with an orange.

“He’ll do anything for an orange,” she said.

I made her take the child and set him on the floor to one side of the figure. I placed myself on the other. The oblong was between us at its widest part. I held the orange up, and beckoned him.

“Go get it!” the woman urged.

He gazed at me questioningly, as though probing my intention. His eyes rested on the orange; then something that in another child would have been a smile floated over his face. He set out, creeping toward me. I watched him intently. Would he cross that circle? He came on, shuffling slowly, raising a cloud of dust. But when he reached the further limit of the oblong, he stopped short. He turned his face down, and bent his looks on something that he seemed to see within the circle — something about the level of his eyes.

I stamped my foot and called to him. He looked up curiously but did not move. I held the orange toward him. He stretched his hand out, raising it carefully as though to prevent it coming into contact with the something that was there.

“Come,” I said.

His eyes again levelled. They travelled slowly over that I could not see, Then he looked up at me, dully reproachful.

“Come,” I called again, tossing the orange.

He shook his head with a grave, old-man solemnity. I stamped my foot once more.

“Come,” I insisted.

His lips quivered feebly. Tears came into his eyes. Suddenly his features quickened with a new sagacity. He swerved aside and came creeping to me round the outer edge of the figure he had traced, bending his looks with an awed avoidance upon that he saw there. I tried a dozen times. But he would not cross the line. He scanned me plaintively. Why did I so torment him?

I took him in my arms. I carried him toward the charmed circle. Looking back I can see that the act was a brutal one, such a brutal one as the curiosity we dignify by the terms intellectual or scientific is frequently guilty of. But the woman stopped me. She caught him out of my arms.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t, my lord,” she gasped, “I did it once. I thought he would have died.”

Thank goodness she was in time! I looked down into his face. Poor little wretch! There was all the dumb agony of a ripe intelligence frozen on it. He clung to me strenuously, turning his rigid looks from that over which we stood. I gave him to her.

“Take him away. Get the poor little wretch out into the air. Give him the orange. Give him anything — only drive that look from his face.” She took him out. He turned a shuddering head over her shoulder seeking that spot. It was the spot where Cooper had lain. I knew it now. He had lain there stretched full length, and over him Dell had stood with stricken eyes. Heavens! Why had the child those eyes? And why had it been cursed with this terrible vision? Had re-birth come so Were the retributive forces of thus expiating in a little child?

I stood looking down at the figure traced in dust. I thrust my stick into it. Did I really feel a dull resistance? I lowered my hand to within some inches of the floor. Was the air really chill? Pshaw! The babe had infected me. It was but a draught from the door. As I stood my stick slipped from my hold, and sliding, stopped between the curves composing the lower end of the oblong. A tree-branch, stirred by the wind, shot its shadow through the doorway immediately across the tracery. In a moment, as a few strokes put to outlines which had had no meaning gather the lines into life, so now the unmeaning tracery took shape. The stick formed a line of demarcation between extended legs, a limb of the shadow-tree lay like an outstretched arm and hand. Even for a moment convulsing features were given to a curve that might have been a face, as a flicker of twigs and fluttering leaves hurried like vanishing pencil marks across the outline. In that moment the murdered body of Cooper was reproduced as I had seen it.

I am sufficiently strong-nerved. Yet I admit I turned sick. I picked up my stick and went out.

I knew now that what had been momentarily visible to me was ever before the doomed baby, that to its eyes the murdered man was always there. I felt my hair lift as though an ice-wind swept under my hat.

I had the shed pulled down. I had the ground it covered sown with flowers. But the spot kept its old fascination for the poor little creature. He could not now drag round it, the way being barred. But he sat for hours tracing with waxen fingers something that for him lay there, something that to us was but space between flower-stalks.

I sent him to the sea, a hundred miles away. In three days his life was despaired of. His impulse in living was gone. He fell into a state of stupor. He revived when brought back. He dragged himself out to the flower-bed, and sat there crooning with a kind of plaintive content, tracing that outline with his pallid hands.

One morning they found him dead there. He had crept from his cot at some time during the night, and had scrambled in the darkness — he never learned to walk — to the old spot. Rain was falling, and he lay on his back with face upturned and wet, his fair hair limp about him. His brows were unbent and tranquil, through his half-unclosed lids at last peace looked. The flowers stood round him like gentle sentinels, their flower-cups full of rain as eyes with tears. For the first time in his life the smile of a child lay over his lips. And the blood-spot in his palm was white as wool.

IN A TERRIBLE GRIP

Jul. 1896

I had taken a house at Dover. I detest publicity, and a case I had been dipping into threatened to come to trial, in which event I should inevitably find my name figuring in the papers. Therefore I conveyed myself and my effects to the coast, and had my yacht in readiness so that a wire from my lawyer should give me some sea-miles start of the person charged with the serving of my subpoena.

I slept at Dover, going down most days by the five o’clock express. About half-an-hour out from town I observed a strange old tumble-down house standing a little distance from the railway, a house noticeable for being a curious graft of villa upon farmhouse. This house had impressed itself on the outer tablets of my consciousness for some days, perhaps, before it struck deep enough to focus my attention. I know this by the circumstance that one day it remained in my memory with the clear and sharp intensity of something I had been acquainted with for years. I even found that my outer consciousness had arrived at the conclusion that the house belonged to an artist. There was a long low room built out from it, a room with complicated blinds and a large skylight — a studio to all appearance. Then I asked myself why had the house impressed me and what was my impression? As I have said, I have an instinct for a house with a history; but, unfortunately, imagination and this instinct occasionally become confused. This was a house calculated by its quaint construction to excite the fancy. at work.

As I neared it next morning I examined it attentively. Certainly it was a charming old house, and the garden a tangle of perfume and colour. A hurried glance as we rushed past showed me the interior of the studio. There were no pictures nor sign of artistic properties. Not even an easel. Indeed, the only thing in the room was an immense chair, a chair that caught and held my attention. It stood on a platform raised from the ground. It was fitted with levers and flanges and screws of every conceivable form and shape. I put my head out of window, staring back at it. It looked like some horrible instrument of medieval! torture. Before it had passed from view I burst out laughing. Truly, my imagination was at ferment. The chair was an instrument of torture without question, but a modern one. It was a dentist’s chair! Not such a dentist’s chair as I had ever seen, but manifestly a dentist’s chair. The annex was, then, no artist’s studio, but a dentist’s surgery. I decided in the evening that the dentist had retired, and had preserved this relic of his stockin-trade possibly from some sentiment of professional pride, for the house stood a mile at least from any other houses, and these were a mere score of squalid cottages. Assuredly there was no scope for professional practice.

A man stood out on the lawn as we passed. If he were the dentist he was young to retire — young, and yet old. His hair was grey: he was thin to emaciation. He stood scanning the train with a wild gaze. He looked like a man who had sustained some mental shock. This impression was increased by the fact that a sudden shriek from the engine at the moment of passing set his face contorting. Then he clapped his hands spasmodically over his ears, and turning, shot into the house, his coat-tails flying.

“My good sir,” I reflected, “before you chose a dwelling within sixty yards of a railway you should have discovered that your nerves were not equal to the shriek of a locomotive.”

A day later I was interested to see that the dentist had a patient. The torture-chair was occupied. I could not make out much of the occupant, and strangely enough the dentist was not visible. Neither were there to be seen the table set with picks and files, nor the drill nor any of those other contrivances for anticipating the tortures of the lost, wherein the dental mind is so prolific.

As we glided opposite I got a better view. The man lay back in the chair motionless and gagged, with such a look of horror in his starting eyes as was absolutely appalling. His face was livid, his hands purple and patched with white about the knuckles, as though he were straining every effort for composure. It was evident he was undergoing mental torture of the extremest kind. Yet he lay back motionless — the convulsions of his features being the only evidence of muscular activity about him. I wondered, rather contemptuously — for after all, the tortures of dentistry are not more than a man may bear — I wondered, if he felt so mortally bad about it, why he did not get up and beat a retreat.

We passed so close that I learned his reason. A curious writhe and shiver of his limbs made it plain that to retreat was not in his power. He was locked in. The levers and flanges and screws had him immovable in their grip. Heavens! an ordinary dental chair were bad enough, but this one — this that locked the limbs and gagged the mouth, and held a man as in a vice — was altogether too fiendish. Again I was struck by the fact that the man was alone and that none of the paraphernalia of dentistry were about. The dentist was a cool hand indeed to leave his patient thus to his imagination.

“I say! man in a fit,” my opposite fellow-passenger broke in. He leaned out of window. “Poor wretch! and nobody with him!”

He resumed his seat. “I don’t think it was a fit after all,” he said, thoughtfully, “his eyes were conscious.”

The same man travelled with me in the evening. As we neared the house we instinctively strained our necks in its direction. Every blind was drawn. It was like a house that had dropped its lids on a secret. My companion made a gesture towards it.

“Dead, I suppose,” he said, with a little shudder. “Poor beggar! I hope they found him while he was alive.”

I had it on my tongue to tell him my view, but I refrained. After all, he might be right. For surely no man ever looked like that over a tooth.

•   •   •   •   •

Next day the blinds were up. The chair was empty. The dentist sat in the garden. I had searched the papers vainly for a case of sudden or mysterious death.

Two evenings later the chair was again occupied. Again a man alone, convulsed and livid, lay with his gagged face turned to the window, his eyeballs starting. I could make out but little of his face for the screw and flange of the gag. But I noticed he had the wild grey hair of the man I had seen in the garden — the man I had taken for the dentist. I reconstructed my views. It was no case of dentistry. The room, after all, was a studio, the man an artist’s model. The torture on his face was simulated — excellently well simulated. He was posing for some impressionist picture. Where then was the artist? And where the picture? There was neither easel, nor palette, nor even a mahl-stick. I could see every corner of the room. There was nothing in it but the chair — nobody in it but the man. I had come to the end of my imaginative patience. I would guess no longer.

The next morning, I got out at the nearest station. Inquiring my way to the house, I was aware of being an object of interest, if not of suspicion. I congratulated myself. There was something to sift after all.

“You mean Massey’s house,” a woman answered to my queries. “Ah! poor gentleman! Up the lane and past the Spotted Corcodill, and round by Meakin’s forge, and it’ll be the first house you come to.”

“Why do you say ‘poor gentleman’?”

She shut her lips and shook her head. She tapped her forehead. Then she reeled off a string of mild invective, and darting across the road, whipped a small son of hers out of the gutter, and applied a palm in forcible and rapid iteration to the side of his face.

I am sensitive to discordant sound. I hastened on, pondering how it came about that a woman could have in the same moment sympathy and to spare over a strange “poor gentleman,” and not a grain of commiseration for a lonesome little chap of her own with a taste for mud-pies. I gained the Spotted Crocodile and passed Meakin’s forge, where a man, who might have been Meakin, was shoeing a horse, and so to the house. Its front was pretentious but commonplace. One would not have looked twice at it. The rambling farmhouse forming the back was faced by the most ordinary of villas, a villa of a conventionality of aspect which to me is always nauseating.

Every blind was drawn to an equal depth down every window. Such windows as were open were lifted to an equal height. The muslin curtains were immaculate and stretched on burnished rods. The steps and flags before the door were chalked as though they had something to conceal. The knocker was polished till its lustre stabbed the eyes. Altogether I was unfavourably impressed. The house was like a man whose teeth are too white. I mentally rubbed my hands. I love a house with so smiling a front. It rarely fails me.

The door was opened by a sly-looking dapper housemaid. I had an impression of her levelling those blinds and polishing that knocker the while she laughed in her sleeve.

“Mr. Massey in?” I inquired.

“No sir, he’s just gone out,” she answered glibly; “if you was to walk up the road and turn to the right you’d be sure and catch him up,” she added pointing her hand.

I know a lie when it is told me. I knew it then. I stepped over the spotless threshold into the immaculate hall.

“I will wait,” I said.

Had I been less quick she would have shut the door on me. She stood watching me with eyes like knitting-needles.

“Master’s not very well, and doesn’t see anybody,” she said, a little abashed.

“He will see me,” I said confidently.

There is no situation in the world which cannot be carried by confidence. After a moment’s hesitation she crossed the hall and flung a door open. I entered an old-fashioned parlour. I gave her my card. She seemed impressed.

“I will tell Mr. Smithson, my lord.” she said, civilly.

“Now who the dickens is Smithson?” I wondered. He was by my elbow while I did so. I had not heard him come, but there he was, a smooth-faced restless-eyed fellow with a chronic smile, and a superfluity of teeth phenomenally white.

“Mr. Massey is not well this morning, my lord,” he said, obsequiously. “Can I take any message from your lordship?”

“He is not out then?”

Smithson shrugged his shoulders and displayed his teeth as if to acquit himself of all responsibility in that particular lie. “He will be sorry to miss you,” he said.

“I will call again.”

He made another deprecating gesture as if to imply that should I do so my trouble would possibly be unrewarded.

“Your master is a dentist?” I remarked, in the hall.

“Pardon me, my lord, I am not at liberty to talk of my master’s affairs,” he said, suavely.

Just then a voice shouted hoarsely: “Smithson, for God’s sake let me out. I can’t stand it any longer, I shall go mad.”

The cry was repeated with groans and panting breath. Smithson’s eyes met mine.

“My master requires me,” he said, obviously speeding my departure.

“He seems in pain or some extremity. Go to him. I will open the door myself.”

But he would not leave me.

“Oh! I am suffocating — suffocating!” the strangled voice expostulated.

Then the door was shut and locked.

I caught the next train back to town. I had walked rapidly to the station. Not more than half-an-hour elapsed between my leaving the house by the front door and passing its rear in the train. I looked into the large room. The dentist’s chair was occupied, and by the same grey-haired young man. His face was contorted, his eyeballs strained, his hands clutched the chair arms with the same lividity of spasm.

The solution of the problem suggested itself. Massey was a lunatic, Smithson his keeper. The chair was a contrivance for restraining him in violent moods. The cries I had heard were thus explicable enough. My interest was now engaged. I set inquiries afoot but could learn little of him. Only people shook ominous heads at the mention of Smithson. I sent him a line. I should be in the neighbourhood shortly, and hoped for the pleasure of making his acquaintance. He replied that he would be delighted to see me.

Smithson eyed me with no favour.

“Are your master’s violent fits liable to come on at any moment?” I inquired, as he preceded me across the hall.

He turned and stared. “I think it must be some mistake,” he answered, “my master is not a lunatic.” He still stared at me.

“He said he had not your lordship’s acquaintance. You must be mistaking him for somebody else.”

“That I will settle with himself,” I said. He still hesitated as if doubtful about admitting me. I pushed on.

“Lord Syfret,” he announced to the old-fashioned parlour. The grey-haired young man came forward, stretching out both hands.

“You do me an honour,” he said, nervously. Smithson left us. We plunged into conversation. He was a friendly fellow, and seemed flattered by my visit. I apologised for the intrusion. I was a person burdened with leisure and a bit of a busybody. I had remarked his house from the railway. It’s quaint appearance had interested me. Had it any story? Might I go into the garden? Might I see his studio?

“My studio?” he questioned, fixing his prominent roving eyes on mine. “I take the large room with the skylight to be a studio?” He seemed sobered.

“I do not paint,” he said. He was a stockbroker, and had spent the greater part of his life in America. He had no friends in England.

“You shall see the room if you wish it,” he said, a shade reluctant.

I wished it. As I had gathered from passing glimpses, it was a great bare room with nothing in it but the chair. I observed it surreptitiously. I would not hurt his feelings by being seen to remark it.

It was the most complicated piece of mechanism I had ever chanced upon. It bristled with clamps and devices.

We stood staring about the room. Somehow our eyes turned always on the chair. I could scarcely keep it off my lips. “You have a pretty view,” I said, still staring at it.

At length he broke out, nervously:

“You are looking at the chair?” I scanned him closely. The mention of it was calculated to excite him. But he was quiet enough. Only his expression sobered, his lips twitched. “It looks like a dentist’s chair,” I said, tritely.

“It is a dentist’s chair.” He added under his breath: “Don’t ask me about it.”

“Certainly not, if you do not wish it. Let us go into the garden.” But he still stood there.

“You never before saw a chair like it,” he asserted, jealously.

A new idea struck me. “It is an invention of your own?”

He turned on me peevishly. “You said you would not ask!”

“Pardon; let us go into the garden.”

But he did not move. Suddenly he broke out. “I invent it! No, thank Heaven, it wasn’t so bad as that.” He was growing agitated.

“Let us go into the garden,” I said a third time.

He stood irresolute. He passed a thin hand over his brow. “No, it was bad enough,” he muttered. “Heaven knows it was bad enough, but it wasn’t as bad as that.” He looked furtively about the room. “I have never told anybody,” he began.

I waited.

After a pause. “That chair nearly cost me my life.” From under his faded hair a sweat-drop rolled and, gathering moisture as it travelled, trickled down over his forehead and fell on his hand. He took out his handkerchief and mopped his face. “It cost me my health and peace of mind,” he muttered.

Suddenly he looked me in the face with a wild appeal. “Do you think a man might go mad brooding over things?”

“I should think a a man who recognised the possibility would not be such a fool as to brood over things,” I said firmly.

“Oh, it’s so easy to talk,” he muttered, staring at the chair. He took a key from his pocket and slipping it into a triangular opening, turned it. With a whirring click a lever slid down slowly from its place, the seat tilted, the flanges revolved. Then the chair flung wide its arms with the suggestion of a steel embrace. I .thought of a certain metal “maiden” of Inquisition fame.

He motioned me toward it. “Will you try it?”

I declined with thanks — to his surprise. He stepped on to the platform with alacrity and seated himself. “Lock it,” he said, handing me the key.

I slipped it into the aperture and turned it.

Immediately the former process was reversed. The seat levelled, a series of plates jointed like armour closed down over his extended arms, a collar of iron gripped his throat, a steel thorax shut its two halves across his chest. He smiled me a pale smile from out of a vizor of iron. “Isn’t it marvellous?” he questioned.

“Devilish,” I replied.

“I cannot move hand nor foot. You might cut my throat and I couldn’t lift a finger.”

Suddenly his expression changed. His eyeballs started. His skin took on a greenish pallor. Though he could not stir, his hands purpled under the tension of his muscles. He was the man I had seen from the train.

“For Heaven’s sake let me out!” he gasped. “For Heaven’s sake!”

I turned the lock. The chair flung wide its iron chest and arms. With a bound he leapt out vaulting to the other end of the room. If ever joy painted itself on a poor wretch’s face, it painted itself on his. He shook me by the hand.

“Thank God!” he gasped, “It took me too soon. I must be losing my nerve.”

“To tell the truth,” I said bluntly, “you are a fool to play with your nerve in such a fashion.”

In the garden he explained.

•   •   •   •   •

The chair belonged to a friend of mine. Indeed, it was his invention. He spent years perfecting it. He was an American dentist, not very well off — an ingenious chap. He invented it so that he should not need an assistant in operating. The: patient was absolutely controlled, and the operator unhindered. It was in America it all happened. He found it a great assistance to him, and was doing well. Indeed, he was doing too well. He was doing the work of three men.

Having been awake all night with toothache I took my way to him one morning.

He had just moved into a new house. He was on the point of marrying a girl he had been fond of for years and was looking forward to happiness.

As I went up the steps that morning I was to meet him coming down. He had a travelling-bag in his hand.

“Hallo!” he said.

“Hallo!” I answered.

“I’m just off to Newport for a week. The heat has been so terrific I’m dead beat. Doctor says another few days without a rest might do for me.”

A man with a toothache is no Christian. “For goodness sake,” I begged him, “turn back and relieve me of this aching fiend.”

He was a good-hearted chap. “Why, certainly,” he agreed, “I can do it and yet catch my train. I’m well on time.”

He unlocked the door, and we went in.

“It’s homicidal weather,” he said, “and as I was going, I’ve given the servants a week off. There’s not a soul in the place.”

“Chair answering?” I asked, as I took my seat in it.

He flushed proudly. “I’ve taken out a patent. I showed it at the Dental Society’s meeting last night. Congratulate me on a fortune.”

He turned the key. For the first time I was locked in. It isn’t altogether a pleasant sensation.

•   •   •   •   •

“What do you want, Smithson? No, I did not call, but you can bring some wine.”

He waited for the wine with curious, absent eyes. Then he went on.

“Well, I was locked in. I lay back as if I had been in a vice, my mouth was gagged open. I could not move a muscle. Would you not like to test it?”

I shook my head.

“You will never altogether realise what I felt.

•   •   •   •   •

I heard him cross the room behind me. I heard him coming back. You know the sensation? I was aware he was trying to hide a demon of a forceps in the palm of his hand. I braced myself for the wrench. I wondered vindictively why teeth had not been otherwise planned.

Just as I thought he was on me I heard a stumble, a thud, a groan. I thought he had tripped.

“Hurt yourself, old boy?” I asked.

There was no answer. Only a deep, catchy breathing. “He must have hurt himself a good deal,” I thought.

The breathing grew quieter. I repeated the question. Instinctively I tried to turn — an impossibility, of course.

“I hope you are not badly hurt,” I said, “I can’t go to you.”

Still there was no answer. He must have seriously hurt himself. I mentally confounded the chair which held my head immovable. Then I spoke to him again. With no result. was nothing to believe but that he had fainted. The breathing was now so quiet as to be almost inaudible. The necessity of freeing myself, so that I might go to his assistance, wrestled so urgently with my inability to do so that I was on the verge of strangulation With an effort I controlled myself. There was nothing to be done. Of the two, though he were insensible, I was by far the more powerless, for I was dependent on his aid before I could lift a finger. There was nothing for me to do but to wait.

I waited. With how little patience you may guess. A clock in the room struck ten. It had “tinged” the half hour after nine as I entered. I fairly groaned with vexation. Poor Newby would lose his train. Why the deuce had I not let him take himself off? My tooth could have waited, or have found another extractor. Into what a business my impatience had plunged us! I grew serious as to how far he might have injured himself. Possibly even when he should recover consciousness he might not be in a condition to release me. He might in falling have broken, or at least have dislocated, a bone. A hundred harassing probabilities occurred to me. I fumed and fretted, straining my eyeballs vainly to this and that side trying to catch a glimpse of him. I could still hear him faintly breathing. The stretched muscles of my gagged jaws began to throb and ache. I tried to call, but the throat has little power when the mouth is stretched, and the gag choked my voice. Moreover, I remembered that the house was empty. He had sent his servants away for a week. There was nothing for it but to wait.

I waited. The clock on the table struck eleven. Half-a-dozen clocks outside reiterated the fact. It was eleven o’clock — eleven o’clock on a summer’s morning. The world on the other side of the window was astir and busy. I could hear men’s steps beat the pavement. They seemed to be leaving us behind. The rattle of cabs and clack of horse’s hoofs mocked the dull stillness of the room. I stretched my ears for sounds of my poor friend’s returning consciousness. I even dreaded that return lest it should prove him incapacitated. In that case what in the wide world were we to do? I put the thought away. Heaven knew I needed my wits to keep me from bruising myself against my iron bonds. I found myself cursing the evil genius of Newby’s ingenuity with more intensity than reason.

The clocks struck twelve. By this time the breath-sounds were scarcely perceptible. Heavens! Was he dying? Was he dying for the need of help? Dying with a strong, whole man, and that man his good friend, within a yard of him? For a whole half-hour I shouted at top of my voice; shouted, indeed, till my voice was a mere rough thread in my rasped throat. The sounds of life outside went on with a brisk indifference that seemed brutality. Was there no power, no telepathy of human sympathy, that should communicate to some of those outside that within the room whose window stared at them, a man lay, it might be dying, while another, gagged and bound, strove with unspeakable torment to go to his aid.

The hours wore on. The horrible dread of listening for them, and learning from their iron tongue that another sixty minutes had closed down like an inexorable door between the man I had been in the morning — the free man, with no worse trouble than an aching tooth — and the bound, helpless wretch I then was, became intolerable. Sound, thought, feeling, merged in confusion. My brain throbbed in my ears, my blood beat in my veins; I could hear it like waves on shingle. Out of the confusion I distinguished nothing. The steps outside, the faint breathing, the striking clocks — all were lost in a curious hustling dread. I must have fainted. I awoke to a sense of surprise. But the torture of my constrained position left me but shortly in doubt. My lips and cheeks seemed cracking under the stretch of the gag. Like some swollen horror my dry tongue filled my mouth, Behind me all was — silence.

•   •   •   •   •

He stopped and looked me wildly in the face. “Do you think I shall forget it if I live to be eighty? — the horror of that moment when I listened for his breathing, for his movement, and heard — nothing!”

He sat panting like one spent with running. I poured out and passed him a glass of wine.

•   •   •   •   •

The sun was levelling. It shot in presently beneath the blind and stabbed my starting eyes. Its hot glare turned me sick. . It seemed to be searching the room with a lurid inquisitiveness, Presently I thought it halted, resting stationary, with a dull astonishment, on something I could not see, something behind me that I could not see, but felt with a horrible intensity. Again I shouted as well as my stiff jaws and swollen tongue would let me. I sent cry after cry into space. My voice was strange and hoarse. It put me in a panic to hear another man’s voice shouting out of my throat. But nobody heard. There was nobody to hear. Each man tramped over. the pavement, bent on his own pursuits. Just while the sun illumined us, had anybody turned his head, he might have seen me through the wire blind — a man in torture.

But nobody turned his head. Night came, and with it a measure of coolness. The dusk was grateful to my nerves and eyes; and I had a hope that when the passers-by. had taken their clattering footsteps home, I might, by Heaven’s kindness, make myself heard. But by the time the silence came I had no voice to be heard. It was as much as I could do to draw my breath between my swollen lips. The night silence brought out that other silence into which I listened for his breathing. If I could only have caught a glimpse of him! I I could only have seen the reality rather than the horrible phantasies my mind began to conjure! I pictured him bruised and contorted, I pictured him weltering in blood; I pictured him lying, kneeling, sitting. I pictured him conscious and cunning, standing above me with a whetted knife. It came to me that he was not really dead, but had gone suddenly mad. I could feel him crouching close behind me waiting for the moment. I could hear him steal about the room. I strained my eyes to see his head come suddenly over my shoulder, his eyes glare into mine. I could feel his hot breath on my cheek. It was a trap. It was the devilry of one with homicidal mania. This was the motive of his horrible chair. This was the object of his years of planning. How many men before me had been his victims? The room seemed peopled with them.

They stared from every corner. They laughed with ghastly laughter at another dupe. I wondered if he would kill me outright, or leave me to die in the chair. I called to him to cut my throat and end it. I thought he chuckled. Again I was sure he was dead. And I was afraid of him — afraid of the grisly thing that lay so still behind me. I had rather he lived and stood by me with whetted knife. He was more fearsome dead and girt with the horrors of violent death than he was fearsome as an assassin, breathing, intelligible, and murderous.

He seemed to me to lie there lifting his clammy hands with the continuous impotent movement of corpse hands stirred by a tide. I could hear them beat the carpet, rising and falling with rhythmic thud. Then I went back to the beginning. He was not dead, but something had fallen on his face — something that his faintness prevented him from removing, yet left him conscious enough to know that he was suffocating. I pictured the long, full breath he would draw if I but turned and freed him. I drew that breath for him, instinctively. I suffocated. I struggled in my bonds to. turn and free him. I rasped my wrists and limbs till they were raw, trying to turn and free him. Then it was nose-bleeding — he had suffered sometimes from nose-bleeding. He was dying of that, dying for need of the simplest aid. The room swam red. It streamed before me in crimson jets. Could any man’s body hold so much blood? It rose and rose and lapped my face. Again I heard him lift his body dully in the dark. He came dragging himself round to look me in the face. His chill hands swept my forehead, importuning me. My hair lifted on my scalp. Why had I come between him and life? Why had I robbed him of happiness? His spirit moaned about the room. I prayed for his knife at my throat. Only let it end; let it end. A thousand times he crossed the room as I had heard him cross it, to return with feet that at first were light, then dragged, then halted and passed into that sickening thud. He seemed to try so hard to reach me, returning again and again and starting afresh for my chair. A thousand times I held my breath, hoping he had reached me, when he tripped and fell — fell with that sickening thud.

His children came, the children that might have been his, and looked at me with phantom eyes. I could not turn my face from them. Anything that liked to come might come and stare at me; I could not turn my face.”

•   •   •   •   •

I interrupted him. The man was possessed. The veil between him and madness was stretched to cracking point.

“How did it end?” I asked.

He started and stared.

“How did it end?” I insisted.

“Let me tell it,” he said peevishly. After some moments of childish petulance during which he weakly whimpered.

•   •   •   •   •

It went on three whole days and nights, he said, moistening his lips. In lucid moments I knew he was dead. The odour of death and dissolution in that hot terrible room became intolerable. I was without food or drink. I could not sleep. I could not call. I could only think and feel — such thoughts, such feelings! I only knew of that which lay and decomposed behind my chair. I am only thirty. But do you wonder my hair is grey? I had intervals of unconsciousness thank Heaven, prostration and delirium. Hunger and faintness do that for a man.

In the small hours of the fourth morning, while it was still dark, a noise at the window aroused me. I wonder I was still alive; but men take a good deal of killing. At first I thought it fancy. I had had so many fancies. But I heard a sound as of bitten glass, then the hasp of the window flew back, the sash was raised. Between my swollen lids there came a glare of light. Black things flitted on the ceiling. I heard whispering. I thought they had come to kill me. The scalding water of my tears ran down my face as I thanked God they had come to kill me. It seemed hours they were stealing about the room, with hoarse whispers. I could only see their shadows on the ceiling. How many there were I could not say, but a hundred heads at least passed blackly over the ceiling.

Then my tears ran cold. They were only shadows. It was only another phantasy. My imagination was at play again. I hurled wild imprecations at the shadow heads. “You are not, you are not!” I cried to them out of my voiceless throat. “You do not deceive me, I know you are not.” Then a horrible face — a face half black, half white, leaned over me. A hoarse cry broke in my ears. Soon two horrible piebald faces leaned over me. A second cry came, a third, and they stood panting there. One touched the thing beside me with his foot.

“Both dead,” he muttered, as one baulked of prey. I mustered all my strength and moaned. They made for the door. My despair and desolation nerved me. “For God’s sake, cut my throat!” I groaned. I heard them turn back. Then I knew nothing more till I found myself in hospital. I had been rescued by burglars, and three weeks mad.

•   •   •   •   •

“When I was well I knew the truth. Newby had died that morning of an apoplectic seizure. Nothing could have saved him, the doctors said.”

“Why did you not have the chair destroyed?”

He turned on me angrily. “It is my only comfort. I recompense myself for past misery by multiplying the joys of release. I have a man, a faithful fellow — the only other person besides yourself who knows my story. I get him to lock me in, leave me, and then, when I have worked myself to the limits of terror, believing myself deserted, he lets me out. The joy of release is the only joy left to me. I need and allow myself no other indulgence.”

I had been making up my mind.

“Are you a good sailor?”

He was. By superhuman eloquence I persuaded him to consent to a voyage in my yacht. I was starting next morning. I am no philanthropist, but a man’s sanity is worth saving. An hour after I had left the house I went back to it. There was a look on Smithson’s face when told to pack that had remained with me. I went by the side-door round into the garden. As the annex came into view Smithson appeared at the window. He was smiling unpleasantly. The room was lighted. Massey was in the chair. (Was the fool worth saving?) Smithson turned presently into the room. I made my way to the window, and stood in the shade of a shrub.

“I’ll have the gag,” I heard my king of idiots say. “I want to get up a real good sensation. It’s the last I’ll have for a time.”

I heard the click of metal.

“Now go,” Massey mumbled, “keep me a long time tonight.”

But Smithson went not. On the contrary, he turned and flicked his victim in the face.

“Not before we’ve arranged a bit of business,” he said, jauntily. “Now then, young man I’ve put up with you a good many months, and you’re a-going to send me adrift are you?”

Inarticulate dissent from Massey.

“Oh! yes you are. Syfret’s got hold of you. You’ve passed out of my hands. There’ll be no more chair and gags for you I can see plainly. But I am going to be paid for all my trouble. Fifty pound a year hasn’t paid me, I can tell you. I shall loose your right hand for you to sign this. If you don’t — well, you’ve been locked in here before, and you know how you like it. There’ll be no one in the house. Bess and me was married this morning, and we’re off to America by the night boat. If you was to refuse to sign, I should lock all the doors and windows and put up the shutters. I’ve told everybody we’re all going a voyage. And you need not look for burglars this time. There’s nothing in the house to take, Bess and me has seen to that. Now then, are you going to sign, you fool?”

Massey managed to query through the gag; “How much?”

“Only five thou’. You could spare ten easy. But I’ll do with five.”

Massey groaned. But, of course, he relented. What else could he have done? I went in behind Smithson while he was busy with the lock. I set my knee against his back and threw him. He fell heavily, striking his head. He was safe for some minutes. In those minutes I released Massey. Together we lifted the rascal into the chair and turned the key. It was a capital contrivance for extracting truth. We discovered the whereabouts of the plate and other things Mr. and Mrs. Smithson had appropriated. With some of them she was waiting in the kitchen. Then I let him out and bundled him into the road.

When I went back, I discovered Massey with a pitchfork falling manfully foul of the chair. He raised his weapon high. He brought it down with violent invective. He banged and battered till the clamps and flanges were a homogeneous mass; he ripped its velvet cushionings, and broke its arms and legs. With a fell and final swoop he hurled himself upon it and smote the gag with such a blow that it bounded across the room, and breaking a pane of glass, whirled into the garden. Anybody seeing him would have taken him for nothing less than a homicidal maniac. Yet this murderous attack of his was about the first symptom of sanity I had remarked in him.

THE VILLA OF SIMPKINS

Aug. 1896

There is an atmosphere about houses. They who live and joy and grieve in them invest them with a kind of aura. So some houses come to wear a face of gloom, of gaiety, of tragedy or terror. This circumstance, to me so manifest, escapes the notice of most persons.

One can see that tiles are broken on the roof; another that the window curtains are in need of washing; another that the masonry demands re-pointing or the woodwork re-painting; while a fourth condemns the sanitary arrangements. But the more intrinsic fact, the fact of desolation or disaster, that to my mind is most obvious, they miss; and even when perceived they refer to some detail of dilapidation or poverty. That my instinct is infallible I do not claim. On the contrary, it has more than once deceived me; but in cases where it has been rooted and tenacious, even though proofs have not substantiated it, I am satisfied my conviction of mystery or calamity has had its origin in fact; that the sense I have of violence and murder in the midst of a smiling family is an echo, a shadow, a stain on the fabric of life left by some former catastrophe. Sometimes I have been able to justify it by raking up the ashes of the past. Sometimes — and this is singular — the tragedy has happened long after I have sensed it. Of this what follows is an example.

Sauntering one day down a road in a suburban town, whither I had gone in search of adventure, I came upon a house a-building. It was a villa residence much after the style of other villa residences in the neighbourhood, a sixteen or eighteen-roomed house divided from its fellows by an acre of geometrically laid out garden wherein it stood with a pretentious and pharisaical air of being some Englishman’s castle. The structure was completed, and men were painting the woodwork, gravelling the walks and putting in the other finishing touches which would for a year or two make its ostentatious freshness a reproach to its less lately smartened neighbours. There was nothing to stir one’s interest. It was only another of the housings of opulent vulgarity with which the place abounded — housings that smacked of the shop and suggested sleek over-fed occupants, in whom wine and good living had produced a kind of mental adiposity to act as buffer between their natures and the higher issues of life, as the flesh of physical plethora obliterated the lines divine of their persons. I passed on unconcerned, At the further entrance to the drive a man was standing, overlooking the hinging of a gate. I took him to be owner or builder.

The man’s face struck me. I stopped short. He glanced up, scowling as though he would have despatched me about my business. Now I was interested. I had seldom seen a face of so much malignity. It struck me that I would not care to occupy a house planned by a fellow so evil. A shock of rough red hair and beard overgrew his face. His nose, slightly awry, was long and flattened at the nostrils with both cruelty and sensuality. His lips were thick and protrusive. The hand and wrist extended, directing the men, were shaggy with a coarse red thatch One eye had a sinister droop. No: I should not care to tenant a house of his building.

“Do you want anything?” he demanded roughly after a minute. He was well-dressed and apparently a person of some standing.

I returned his savage glance with a cool stare. “I want nothing,” I said curtly.

He had more than a mind to inquire why then (with qualifications) I filled up the path. But he thought better of it. There is no law to prohibit a man from staring, and my manner proclaimed my determination to stare just so long as it pleased me.

“Hang you, you’ll scrape the paint!” he shouted, as one of the workmen stumbled and jammed against the post the gate he was lifting.

The man grumbled something to the effect that the job was too much for two.

“Then go and be hanged to you,” the builder rasped. “Get your wage in the office and march!”

The man mumbled sullenly again, “I’m sick o’ being swore at from mornin’ to night.”

“Easy mate,” his comrade counselled. “Now then, stretch yer limbs and in she goes.”

With an effort they hoisted the gate and lowered it, dropping the bolts into the sockets with a rush.

“Hang you!” the builder shouted again; “it wasn’t your fault you didn’t snap the hinges.”

The labourers, panting, mopped their faces.

“You have a limited glossary, my friend,” I interposed, addressing the red-haired bully. “Take the advice of an older man, and curb your tongue. That ‘hang’ of yours is not calculated to bring the best work out of men.”

He swung his evil eye upon me like a lamp. Only the self-control of habit prevented him from striking me. All at once his manner changed. He scanned me closely; then he raised his hat.

“Pardon, my lord,” he said, obsequiously. “I did not recognise you. Your lordship does not know me, perhaps. I have the honour to be your new agent at Rossmore.”

“The deuce you have!” I answered. “From your credentials I should have supposed you a different man.”

I resolved on the spot that never again, no matter how excellent his testimonials, would I engage a man without an interview.

“Your lordship misjudges me,” he submitted plausibly. “I confess to being in bad humour. If you had much to do with this class you would find there is but one way of dealing with it.”

“It will not do at Rossmore,” I said sharply. “My people are not used to the treatment of dogs.”

“In dealing with your lordship’s concerns I shall follow your lordship’s wishes,” he responded, adding, with a spasm of independence: “Here, I am attending to my own affairs.”

I liked him the better for his independence. I laughed and nodded him good-morning. “Your temper is not pretty,” I said, as I walked off. “Indeed, I was thinking I should not care to occupy a house built by a person so profane as yourself.”

He made two steps after me. His face paled in its circle of red hair.

“Do you mean anything?” he submitted, hoarsely. There was an uneasy glitter in his eyes.

“Pooh!” I said. “I shall not cancel our agreement for a few ‘hangs.’”

His eyes still probed my face. My words had plainly relieved him. Yet I had a curious sense of something underlying all that appeared.

“When your six months are up, my friend,” I soliloquised. “I shall exchange you for a steward of more prepossessing looks.”

•   •   •   •   •

A month later I strolled down the same road. I stopped short at the gates of Simpkins’ house — the gates which had had so sulphurous a baptism. On one was painted the name Edenhome. It struck my sense of humour. Was it of Simpkins’s giving? Lurked there beneath that red thatch of his a corner for sentiment? I decided otherwise. Simpkins and sentiment were not compatible. The name was merely a lure for letting purposes.

I ran my eye over the house’s face. Was it the place? Surely not. This was no house of only some months standing. I walked up the road and came back to it. This was the place, assuredly. I stood staring at it. What in the name of amazement had come to it? Where was the freshness that was to put its neighbours to the blush? The place had an air of ruin, of a house unrepaired for half a century. It were as though a blight had fallen on it. The paint of the gates had dulled into a dirty drab, the hinge-end was discoloured by a rust-stain, which, like a blood-stain, had trickled from the iron sockets. Someone had made it his business to scratch out the initial letter, so that the name stood on one gate “Denhome.” The abridgement seemed to scowl.

I opened the gate and went in. The same blight that had fallen on the house had fallen on the garden. The greater number of the shrubs had shrivelled and died. The walks were set with brown ghosts. The grass of the lawn had fallen in patches, giving an uncanny piebald look. As I approached I perceived that blinds had been put to the windows — fresh gay-looking blinds of a pink pattern. They only served to accentuate the gloom. Apparently the house was about to be occupied. I wondered how anybody could have been induced to take it.

Coming closer, I found I had been betrayed into a singular error, for the paint was fresh and unpeeled, the structure in excellent condition. There was nothing to explain the impression I had had of ruin.

I started; for of a sudden at an upper window, from among a daintiness of pink blind, a sinister face showed out. It was gone as soon as seen. But I knew the evil eye; I knew the Iscariot hair and beard; I knew the malign glance. Irritation succeeded. What business had Simpkins here? His duty was with my affairs a hundred miles away. I strode up the steps. The door stood ajar — I entered. Inside, the house was as sombre as outside. Gloom and ill-omen possessed it like black-browed tenants. I mounted the stairs, my footsteps echoing hollowly and fleeing before me noisy and afraid, like sound running amok in the empty upper spaces. Suddenly they seemed to turn, and came hustling back upon me — leaping, stumbling down the stairs as if in panic. A rumbling echo roared like distant thunder. For a moment I thought the house was about my ears — its premature decay had culminated in the falling of the roof. Then there was silence, the echoes slipping into quietude.

I went straight on, making for the room in which I had seen him. My temper was up. I determined to give Mr. Simpkins a piece of my mind. At the top of the stairs I halted. Not a sound stirred. The landing was broad and well-lighted. Into it four doors opened. The construction was different from that I had expected. There was a broad blank passage wall where I had supposed the door of the front room — the principal bedroom — would be. It was a construction as singular as it was unsightly. It had been so obvious to place the door of that centre room in the centre of this wall.

Suddenly I felt faint. The passage was pervaded by a curious heavy odour, arising, I imagined, from the paint. My head throbbed.

I made for one of the rooms facing me. The air here was fresh. I threw up a window and leaned out. When I was quite myself I looked about the room. I was astonished to find it small. Holding my handkerchief to my nostrils I went down the passage and opened the other door, the only other door in the front wall. Another little room! And no Simpkins! Where could the fellow be? And where was the door of that room in which I had seen him? — a room which must take up at least half the house front.

I went all over the house. Not a sign of him; yet he could not have escaped without me seeing him. And why should he? My head throbbed heavily from the curious fumes. It did not smell like paint. Nor was its effect like paint. Probably an escape of gas.

I threw up another window. Doing so I looked out. I was in the second small front room. To the left of me was the big bay-window at which I had seen Simpkins. I went to the end of the corridor. From the window of the other room the bay showed to my right. I felt maddened. Where was the entrance to that room — where, doubtless, Simpkins still remained? Pacing the passage I heard a sound as though something dropped. I knocked angrily upon the wall.

“Simpkins,” I shouted, “what is the meaning of this fool’s play? Where and why are you hiding?”

The words came back to me like gibes out of the hollows of the house. I shouted again only to be answered in the same strain. I went downstairs, and out into the garden. I ran my eye over the house front. It was as though I were being mocked. For not only were the windows I had opened still thrown up, but the three sashes of the bay, which before had been closed, were now raised. Out there in the daylight I could not help suspecting myself of some stupidity. There must be a door leading from one of the smaller side-rooms to that centre room — a door I had missed. Yet I had carefully looked for such a door. Bah! my senses must have been fogged by that vapour. My head even now throbbed with it. A room without entrance was an absurdity!

I went back to the house. The door was shut fast. I rattled it. I threw my weight against it. It was fast locked. Yet I had left it ajar. Was I being fooled, or was I fooling myself? Had I indeed seen Simpkins? Was anything as it had seemed to me that morning? I strode to the nearest telegraph office and wired him at Rossmore. In an hour a reply came: “Am here, at your lordship’s service. — SiMPKINS.”

I took a course of Turkish baths and drank no wine for a week. If there be one thing I despise it is a man who cannot keep his head clear.

•   •   •   •   •

The villa of Simpkins faded from my mind, as did likewise, to some extent, my first impression of its builder. To say I ever liked him would mis-state the truth. But I could not help recognizing his exceptional business gifts and the zeal wherewith he prosecuted my affairs. I began to re-consider my intention of parting with him.

One morning I received the following letter from a girl dismissed a year before from my employ for bungling some business whereon she had been set:

HONOURED LORD, — Pardon my addressing you, for I know you think low of me since the Smithson case; but any girl would have been frightened when Smithson took the carving-knife to her. But even Smithson’s, honoured Jord, was not as bad as this place. Yet mistress and master is bride and bridegroom, and a nicer couple couldn’t be. “What is it?” you’d ask. It’s the house, honoured lord. Yet it’s a nice house, and the kitchen and pantries everything you could want for. But there’s something about it. What that is time, if I ever have the nerve to stop long enough, will show. It’s called “Denhome” on the gate — here I pricked up my ears — but young mistress calls it “Edenhome,” which we lay to soft-heartedness.

Honoured lord, the Lovells are not gentry; which, when I found out, I never thought I could stop. But Mrs. Lovell’s an angel, and there’s no stint, them having come into a fortune. I don’t rightly know the facts, but as they taught us at the Institute not to leave out anything, I mention that the Lovells got their money curious. Someone else had it, an uncle of theirs — Mr. Sinkin his name is—

“My dear young woman,” I here interjected, “you are disregarding one of my most stringent rules — that of getting names correctly.”

Well, he’d had the money — two thousand a year it is — for nearly ten years, when it was proved it wasn’t his, but Lovell’s. He’d kept back a will or something, they say; but it couldn’t be proved. Se he had to turn out. He must be a kind man, because he’s built them this house, and won’t take any rent for it. He says it eases his conscience. And, of course, he can’t help there being something horrible about the house. It’s a nice view, and polished floors, but the strangest noises and feel about it. Mr. Sinkin comes sometimes. He isn’t a nice-looking gentleman, being cross-eyed and carroty, but he’s wonderful kind and keeps telling master to look after his health, being delicate; and as Sinkin would get the money if master was to die, I call it kind. He’s that careful of them nobody would expect — considering. The first time he came he was quite taken up because they didn’t sleep in the best bedroom. “It’s a south aspic,” he said, quite angry, “and a big atmosphery room. It was built special for you.” He quite stamped up and down the carpet, and mistress put her pretty white hand on his shoulder — though she’s afraid of him — and she says, “Uncle, we keep it for visitors. We keep it for you when you come. You’ve been so good to us.” He stared and looked quite queer. He was terribly vexed they didn’t use the room he made for them.

“Oh, you keep it for me, do you,” he says. Then he burst out laughing. He laughs rather hoarse, and young mistress, she got nearer to master and put her hand to her throat. I was setting the table for dinner and I wasn’t hurrying. Mr. Sinkin isn’t good-looking, but he’s nice spoken, and though I only hung his great coat up for him he gave me five shillings and says, “you look after my nephew and niece. I’m fond of ’em.”

It came up again at dinner. I had just handed him his pudding — mistress made it with her own hands — when he says again, shaking his fist playful at her, “and don’t let me hear any more of your not sleeping in the front bedroom — the room I built special, so sunny and healthy for poor Ned. Ned’s lungs want a south aspic.” Master laughs and says, “Why, uncle, all the front rooms are south.” Sinkin looked vexed. And I thought myself it was all they could do to please him and not argue. He says, frowning, “It’s the atmospheriness you want, Ned,” and he turned to mistress and says something about cuba feet, and ends, “so I look to you to see Ned sleeps there. His mother died consumptive.” Mistress turned pale and caught the master’s hand. “Oh, Ned dear,” she says. “I’ve no cough,” he answers, “it’s only uncle’s over-kindness.”

“Ought he to go abroad?” she says to Sinkin, almost sobbing.

“He’s best where he is,” he says short. “The drains abroad are shocking.”

“Uncle,” she says, shivering, “there’s noises in the room — the strangest noises. Could it be rats?”

He looked hard at her and says slowly: “Rats in a new house — and a well-built house like this. Nonsense.” After a minute: “There aren’t noises every night?” he asks.

“No,” she says, “only sometimes — horrid rumbling noises, and I think the gas escapes. That’s why I thought it must be rats. They say rats eat the pipes.”

I don’t wonder he looked cross. It wasn’t like mistress to argue so. Master broke out laughing. “Uncle will think we’re very ungrateful, Milly”, he says. “And you can’t be so silly as to think rats eat gas pipes.”

“Will you sleep there tonight, uncle,” she says. “I should feel comfortable if somebody had slept there.”

He finished picking out a walnut. Then, “There’s nothing I’d like better,” he says. But after all he fell asleep in the library. I found him there when I went to do it next morning. His boots and coat was off, and he was on the couch covered with rugs almost as if he’d meant to sleep there. He gave me half-a-crown. “You needn’t say anything,” he says, “but I was that tired I dropped asleep.” And he took his coat and boots and slipped up to the spare room.

Honoured lord, it wasn’t a week after when a young gent stopping here went to bed in the spare room — mistress couldn’t bring herself to sleep there — as cheerful as might be, and in the morning he was dead — poisoned, the doctor said, with prussic acid. There he was, stretched out with his eyes staring horrible and his face blue, and the room like an essence-of-almonds bottle. Mr. Sinkin came down in an awful state. He got the papers to leave out the name of the house and paid us servants to keep it quiet.

“And, for Heaven’s sake, don’t leave the house,” he says to master, “or I shall never let it again!”

Master promised faithful. He had to settle it after with mistress. She begged him to take her away. She’d heard the noises that very night. “I’ve promised uncle,” he says. So you see, honoured lord, I’m right in calling it an awful house. You don’t know what a feel there is about it.

I wrote her one question. She replied,

The middle front room door opens in the passage just opposite the stairs. There’s a little room at each end of the passage.

“Simpkins,” I said, “I shall be in Suburbia this week. Can I leave a message for you at Edenhome?”

He finished the few lines of a letter he was writing. Then he looked up. What eyes he had!

“Pardon,” he said, “I am anxious to catch this post. Now I am at your lordship’s service.”

“Well, you heard what I said.”

He scanned me narrowly. “My lord,” he returned, “I fancied I could not have heard aright.”

“Imagine you did.”

“I have let Edenhome,” he said, evasively.

“To a nephew, I know. Can I leave a message for you?”

“Your lordship is pleased to jest. My nephew is not likely to be so favoured.”

“So so. I must introduce myself.”

“There is not likely,” he said, sneeringly, “to be anything in common between Ted Lovell, the draper’s son — I do not pretend to be a person of family — and your lordship.”

“I am interested in people,” I returned, observing him. “I have heard of the suicide. I am interested in that haunted front room.”

I saw the watch-chain on his waistcoat lift high. Then he spread his hands with a deprecatory gesture.

“I regret that somebody has been playing on your lordship’s — I will not say credulity.”

“You have no message, then?”

He followed me across the room with a curious cat-like tread. The air about him bristled with violence.

“You are pleased to be interested in my affairs,” he said, with a suspicion of menace.

“I am interested in the construction of a certain room in a house I saw you building. You remember I went over it once,” I added, quickly. But I was not quick enough. His eyebrows lifted.

“I was not aware it had been so honoured.” His manner changed. “As you are so kind,” he said, smoothly, “I will take the liberty of asking you to talk with Lovell. Since Rudderford’s case, he has spoken morbidly of suicide. It is idiocy in a man so well placed.”

“I will advise him to sleep in the large front room,” I said.

He turned as if I had struck him, and went back to his work.

•   •   •   •   •

Hopkins opened the door. Her lids dropped on a gleam of recognition. It was the first rule of my institution that wheresoever or whensoever I should appear I was not to be identified. A pretty, fragile little creature in a tea-gown tripped into the drawing-room.

“I am pleased to know you,” I said, taking her hand. “I am Lord Syfret. You will perhaps have heard of me: Mr. Simpkins is my agent.”

She blushed and fluttered, smiling up at me.

“Uncle was good to speak of us, and your lordship is kinder to come and see us,” she said, prettily.

Lovell was a pale-faced, ill-grown Cockney, proud of his lately-acquired money, proud of all he had exchanged it for, and genuinely proud of his little wife.

“She’s a jewel I wouldn’t change for the ’ighest lady in the land,” he confided to me. His watery eyes were full of tears. The statement was not likely to be put to the test; but I believe he honestly meant it.

“If you can put me up for the night I shall be infinitely obliged,” I said. They would be greatly honoured. I hinted to be allowed to occupy the front large room.

“Why, I’d just persuaded Milly we’d sleep there tonight,” he blurted.

Milly broke in — “I will have a fire put there for you, Lord Syfret,” and tripped away.

We had finished dinner, and Milly had sung me her songs — sweet little ballads she sang in a sweet little unaffected way — when there came a knocking at the front door. After an interval Simpkins entered. His eyes were bloodshot, his air restless. As he came in he shot a look at Lovell. That look said plainly, “I got your wire.” I received him coolly. I regarded his intrusion as an impertinence. With his entry a reserve fell upon us. Poor Mrs. Lovell lost all her confidence and smiling gaiety. She watched him with a fascinated terror. She stole nearer to me as if for protection. Presently she made her apologies. She was not well and might she be excused? She was faint and trembling. I gave her my arm to the door. She sent one long shuddering look back at him. Then she drew a little agitated hand across her brow.

“Oh, my lord,” she moaned through her white lips, “I am so afraid of him.”

I steadied her to a chair. Lovell came out. I went back to the drawing-room. Simpkins sat scowling there.

“Your lordship’s and my visits were ill-timed,” he said, with a coarse laugh. “This night, even, may make me a great uncle.”

After a few moments, professing anxiety about his niece, he left. Out in the hall an altercation sounded. I could hear his rough voice raised. I could hear the sob and pleading of a woman’s voice and Lovell’s cockney drawl. Once she cried out: “Oh, Ned, I cannot, cannot sleep there.”

I went out.

“Is Mrs. Lovell better?” I questioned.

She came to me with pleading hands. “Oh, Lord Syfret,” she began.

Simpkins caught her by the arm. “You are hysterical,” he said, roughly. “You must not bother his lordship.”

I took her hand. “Remember, my dear, that I am to have the haunted. room.”

“Do you say it is haunted?” she asked, with wild eyes.

“You frighten her,” Simpkins interposed, adding ceremoniously, “I regret the room has not been prepared for you. It is Mr. and Mrs. Lovell’s own room.” She turned on him helplessly. She caught her breath with a sob. Lovell put his arm about her and persuaded her upstairs. At the top of the staircase she turned and swept one last terrified look down at us. Then she was gone. That look has never left me. To my death I shall regret that I did not act upon it and save her. I turned on Simpkins, who also stood looking up. There was in his face a singular malignant exultation.

“Why the deuce did you interfere?” He looked me insolently in the eyes. “Your lordship does not act with his accustomed breeding when he forces himself on an employee’s affairs, and even dictates the room his host shall put him in.”

He followed me into the drawing-room, There was an aggressive triumph about him.

“I sleep in town,” he said. “Goodnight.” I bowed. At the door he turned back.

“My agreement with you ends next week,” he intimated, airily.

•   •   •   •   •

In the middle of the night I was roused by a curious sound. It seemed to be a muffled rumbling close at hand. I threw on some clothes and slipped into the passage. In the dim light I could see a thin line of shadow sliding down the wall — almost as if the wall had been moving. From somewhere sounded a hollow ticking, like that of an immense clock. Strange how the night develops sound! I had not seen nor previously heard a clock.

I was returning to my room, all noise but the sonorous tick having ceased, when I thought I heard a cry — a faint cry — in the same little voice that had sung me her ballads. It was followed by two deep groans. Heavens! what had happened? I stood listening, with strained ears. But no other sound came, nothing but that ghostly ticking. I groped my way along the passage, feeling fora door. I missed it, but coming to the centre, where I had seen it some hours earlier, I laid my ear against the wall. I was struck by its curious chillness. The wall was of iron! I did not stop to wonder, for now I could plainly detect a deep drawn breathing. It kept time intermittently with the clock. I knocked on the wall. It might be merely Lovell snoring. But I did not like the sound of it.

Suddenly I became aware of the same heavy odour I had before detected. It was no escape of gas. I remembered Hopkins’ words about the bitter almonds. This was a smell of bitter almonds. Then I laughed at myself. I should be seeing Rudderford’s ghost next! Yet so strongly were my senses worked upon that I grew presently faint with the overpowering odour. And it was unmistakably a smell of bitter almonds.

Again I groped for the door handle. I drew my hands along and up and down the wall, going over the whole expanse between the rooms at either end. I could find neither handle nor panel nor jamb. The whole extent was one smooth, iron-cold surface. The clock clacked tick! tick! tick! with sonorous beat. By this the stertorous breathing had ceased. On the other side was silence.

Groping once more and finding no door, I became alarmed. I ran back to my room — my head throbbing till I reeled — and lighted a candle. I dipped my handkerchief into water and bound it loosely across my mouth and nostrils. Then I carried my candle into the passage. It was as I had suspected. There was no door. As on that morning, so now the space between the rooms at either end of the corridor was one plain surface. Trapping and testing brought out the chill feel and hollow note of metal. An iron plate had been dropped over the door — barring egress and ingress. The horrible clock ticked on. For what purpose? I was now convinced of some catastrophe. I knocked and called. I pounded with my fists upon the iron plate. It sounded thunderously, reproducing in exaggeration the noise that had awakened me. But no other sound answered. I rushed upstairs and stood in the upper passage calling for help. I beat one or two doors. Soon a man appeared — the single manservant of the establishment. He thrust his head out sleepily.

“Come,” I insisted, “something has happened.”

As we descended the same low, rumbling sound was audible. In the flickering light the wall was crossed again by a rapid line of shadow — a line that now ascended. Then all was silent. Even the clock stopped. By this the almond smell was overpowering. I made the man protect his mouth and nostrils. The first thing my light flashed on was the door of Lovell’s room, the door of which a minute earlier there had been no trace. Gracious, what devilry was this? And what the calamity. I knocked loudly on the panels. An ominous stillness reigned. I knocked again. Then I turned the handle and went in.

They were dead. They lay quiet as in sleep, only a curious blueness of skin and glassiness of the widely-staring eyeballs showed the sleep final. Her hand was in his; her head lay on his shoulder. So they stared straight into eternity, a smile on their faces.

But this was not all. The pitifulness of it — the pitifulness! For at her side, curled up as if in slumber, lay a newborn babe — a tiny premature thing that nestled a darkly-curling head against her arm.

•   •   •   •   •

Before it was day I had interviewed the magistrate and police. They pooh-poohed my version of the case, rejecting it as melodrama; such things were not out of romances. The case was manifestly one of concerted suicide. The sliding-wall excited smiles. In the middle of the night, they said, one can be pardoned some fogginess of sense. They did not consider there was so far a tittle of evidence on which to arrest Simpkins.

I sent for a London detective. I set an expert to explore the wall. It were impossible, he said, to explain a singular construction without some preliminary and considerable damage, which pending the inquest was not advisable. There were grooves in the door-jambs of the small rooms off the passage — there was space to contain such a sliding-wall as I had indicated.

That night I secreted in the house my detective, two police-officers and a friend. I knew Simpkins would come, and he came, as I likewise expected, with materials for a conflagration. Hopkins admitted him. He would remain the night, he said. He professed an overwhelming grief. He had already supped. He would go straight to that room where the dead lay. Through a peep-hole punctured in the wall we watched him from one of the adjoining rooms. No sooner was the door shut than he dragged chairs, cushions, towel-rack, all else combustible toward the door. He even tore the curtains from the bed. Then he saturated the whole with oil he had with him. He had lighted a fuse and was making for the door when suddenly he stopped.

Tick! tick! began the clock. Tick! tick! It startled us with its suddenness and nearness. In a panic he flung his fuse. It fell short and lay smouldering on the floor. But he heeded nothing. He was beating frenziedly upon the door. However, we had seen into that. Tick! tick! went the clock. He thundered with his fists and feet and shouted desperately.

A rumbling began. He flung himself upon the panels. But they held out bravely. Tick! tick! went the clock; rumble, rumble, rolled the descending wall. He sprang to the windows; but we had seen to those. Suddenly I realised what was about to happen. The devilry planned by himself was on his track, hastened, it might be, by the explorations of my expert.

“Quick, quick!” I urged. “Unlock the door; we must not take the law into our hands.”

But we were too late. Outside, in the corridor, the sliding wall came down — the door was sealed. The rumble ceased; but the clock ticked on, counting his moments. The almond smell rose strong. “Where do the fumes come from?” I questioned. The detective, with an impassive face, stepped aside from a peep-hole. I looked long enough to see that a soft spraying like tiny rain was falling in the room.

Already he lay on the floor with gasping breath and distended eyes. I left the peep-hole to more interested watchers. Tick! tick! went the clock, counting his moments. Tick! tick! tick! “He’s dead,” they said. Tick! tick! went the clock. We passed into the corridor. The wall slid presently up with its curious rumble. Then the clock stopped. We opened the door and went in.

He was dead, truly. And death in his guise was not dignified. He had been caught in the trap of his own ingenuity — for the mechanism showed a devilish ingenuity. The clockwork regulating it — clockwork set by his own hand — had with a fine unerring justice timed away his life. I will wager clockwork has rarely done the world greater service,

THE WOLF
AND THE STORK

Sep. 1896

CHAPTER I

I detest hotels. I have in them always a sense of being in a menagerie. Whether it be that persons in a crowd revert to primitive conditions, or that their collective atmosphere somehow betrays the lower origin, I cannot say. I only know that individuals who at home would be refined enough and decent members of society, suggest a zoo when massed together in hotel. As will doubtless have long since become apparent, I am no amiable person,.nor do I think I can be suspected of loving, no matter what scientific interest it pleases me to take in my fellow-man. Therefore I avoid a crowd: therefore I am no frequenter of hotels. Chance took me, however, one summer to a holiday resort in Scotland, a place where men pursue the sport of golf and women prosecute the sport of man. It was but a moderate-sized hotel, and, having been fortunate enough to secure a pleasant suite of rooms, I could retreat into my lair whensoever the gambollings or growlings of my fellow-brutes threatened to disturb my composure.

Saturday being the day of my arrival, the next day was Sunday and unconscionably dull. To relieve the tedium somewhat I dined with the menagerie. At the table next to mine there sat a girl who reminded me of nothing so much as a little white rabbit — she was so blonde of colouring, so mentally and physically fluffy. With her was her mother — a person of sagacious stork-like aspect whose bland eye and beaky profile surveyed the scene from the height of a neck characteristically long and adroit of movement. That eye detecting me seated lonely at my bachelor table, she by a deft manoeuvre changed places with her daughter, so that Miss Bunny of the dimpling cheek and downy hair faced me in all her charm.

“Why am I to sit this side, mother?” I heard her whisper. She glanced sidelong from beneath her lashes toward a neighbouring table.

“There is such a draught, my darling,” Mrs. Stork returned, responding to her daughter’s question. Then answering her glance, “Sir Alfred left this morning.”

Mistress Bunny sent one little sigh in the train of the departed Alfred, then apparently dismissed him. A moment later she had lifted a demure engaging glance at me from out of the folds of her serviette,

My vanity was little flattered to discover this inspection followed by a disappointed droop at the corners of her mouth. Plainly I was no welcome substitute for the absent Alfred. Possibly I was twice as old.

Two evenings later Miss Bunny sat again in the draught. For Sir Alfred’s table was once more occupied. A young, good-looking man sat there — a stranger, apparently, for the Storks made no show of recognising him. I had thought the evening chilly, but Mrs. Stork to all appearance thought otherwise, for she leaned forward and loosened a pink lace scarf the girl wore round her shoulders — loosened it till it left her soft little throat and shoulders bared.

“You look so heated, dear Dolly,” she exclaimed, tenderly. “Yes, mother darling,” the girl responded with a shiver.

The eye of Mrs. Stork, suffused by the gentlest solicitude, sought mine. I noticed then that my long-necked neighbour was exceptionally smart. And she wore a new and very fine cap. It occurred to me that Mr. Stork had in all probability been gathered to his feathered fathers.

At times, as you know, I am subject to strange impressions. The aura I have mentioned as surrounding houses reveals itself to me as surrounding persons. Dinner was over, and I was engaged on my filberts when suddenly my surface chilled as though a wind passed over it. My hair lifted. The phenomenon known as goose-skin shivered through me At the same time I was conscious of an eerie high-pitched wailing. I looked round quickly. All the doors were closed. There was no opened window whence draught or sound might enter. All that had happened was that the young man at the next table had left his place and was just about to make his exit by the swinging door. He must have passed behind me at the moment I had heard that wailing.

I observed him later in the smoke-room. There was nothing about him to warrant the uncanny or unwonted. He was a well-grown, fresh-faced youngster of about twenty-four. He had the manner and bearing of a youth of breeding. He sat apart with a somewhat reserved air, smoking and watching a game of billiards. It was a close game, and most of the men in the room were following it with interest. A few bets were exchanged.

Once I noticed the young man, at a moment when all eyes were bent on a crucial stroke, suddenly flash a swift glance round the room, and discovering no eye upon him, fling up his head and break into a short, rough laugh. I was sitting near, and it struck on my ear with a jar of savagery. An instant later his face was composed, his looks were on the game, his lips were set about his cigarette. One or two persons turned round sharply in his direction, as though they also had heard and wondered. He met their eyes quietly, and with his air of reserve. But I was not deceived.

“That young man, for all his fresh-facedness, is meditating a mischief,” I decided. The recollection of my impression came back. I felt uncomfortable, for if ever a laugh threatened murder that laugh of his did.

In the course of the evening I addressed some commonplace to him. Was he a golfer? He answered pleasantly. He had an agreeable voice; his eyes were of an engaging blue; his well-cut features lightened as he talked. I thought his adversary, whosoever he might be, must have treated him badly indeed to rouse such rancour in a youth so well favoured. Some love affair, possibly.

Yet was he not inconsolable, for by ten o’clock next day he had succumbed to the charms of Miss Bunny. I met him with his case of clubs as I went up the hotel steps. “Bitten with the fever?” I interrogated. “Not badly, sir,” he answered. “Only lady sitting at table next me — lady with long neck dropped her knitting. Awfully civil when I picked it up. Asked me to show her girl how to make a tee.”

A soft little voice at my side insinuated sibilantly.

“I’m ready now, Mr. Carvill. Mother has bought me a new driver. Don’t you think it sweetly pretty with that band of blue leather on it.”

He turned and looked down at the narrow little face with its prominent pink lips and white teeth. He ran a cool eye over her features and smartly-clad form, His slight moustache lifted as though he smiled. He turned and went down the steps. At the foot he dropped a pace behind, his eyes appraising her the while he adjusted a strap of his clubs. Then he glanced round with that same look I had seen the previous evening Nobody being at hand he lifted up his head — and laughed. The jar of it came grating on the air. My skin rose in pin points. I heard a muffled wailing.

Then they disappeared round the corner, a couple of comely young persons chattering in the sunlight.

I passed into the house and into the drawing-room. At a window half concealed behind a curtain Mrs. Stork craned her long neck. Every line of her betokened exultation. Complacent satisfaction played about her beak. Hearing me she turned. She made two steps in my direction. I fled precipitately.

CHAPTER II

That night young Carvill sat at the Stork table. Little Miss Bunny dimpled and frisked, lifting shy silly glances to him from beneath her pale lashes. She wore no scarf at all that evening, and she shivered in her sleeveless frock. Mrs. Stork’s cap was wondrous fine.

Carvill accepted their attentions with a kind of absent nonchalance. He seemed out of sorts, being pale and self-absorbed. But I noticed his glances linger with a curious stare on the undulant curve of the girl’s white throat. Once meeting his look she blushed and fluttered, shielding her eyes with her pale-fringed lids. I thought the youth forgetful of his breeding. Mrs. Stork’s blandishments were not improving — as they were not calculated to improve — his manners. I noticed that he drank a good deal of wine.

In the smoke-room later he was hilarious, not to say uproarious. I thought if little Miss Bunny could have heard him talk, his fresh, young, handsome face would have lost some of its charm for her. I wondered whether, had she heard certain views of his, Mrs. Stork would have trusted poor little Bunny of the brain of thistledown so much in his company. But nobody made it his business to acquaint either mother or daughter with the opinions of this avowed young prodigal.

Miss Bunny started off next morning to complete her education in that matter of a tee. Mrs. Stork stood in the hotel portico, her be-ribboned. and rosetted cranium bobbing with a fatuous contentment on her long neck.

“Such a very nice young man,” I heard her remark to an acquaintance.

The acquaintance nodded. “Who is he?” she asked.

I caught complacent whisperings.

“Very good connections — wealthy squire — eldest son.” The lady nodded again, interested. Then she glanced somewhat wistfully in the direction of a daughter of her own — a person hopelessly plain of face, who stood brandishing her clubs and talking loudly of some marvellous stroke she had made.

“Do you think so much golf-playing improves girls’ looks?” she questioned anxiously.

“My girl Dolly doesn’t play much,” Mrs. Stork returned, with that air of condescension adopted by the mother of beauty to the mother whose ducklings are but plain. “In fact she hasn’t got further than learning to make a tee — whatever a tee may be.”

“I think it’s that waggly way they swing their sticks before they knock the ball. That’s either a tee or a bunker. They do give such queer names in golf. But really I don’t fancy modern girls have the complexions girls had when they worked samplers.”

I was on the point of rising. It was impossible to appreciate Chamberlain’s discomfiture at the hands of wily old Kruger during this sort of thing. But at that moment Mrs. Stork extended her wings and swooped upon me.

“Pardon, my lord,” she began, with the lofty air inseparable from her long neck, “but may I borrow your Times a moment? I am. solicitous about my friend Sir Alfred Baxendale, who is yachting in the Mediterranean. I will return it to you immediately.”

I delivered it to her. “Pray do not trouble to return it, madam,” I said; “I provide myself with it solely for the pleasure of presenting it to the first person who does me the honour of asking for it.”

I bowed and rose. Then I repaired to my room and raged. I had read two lines of an exciting despatch, and these were merely prefatory.. It would be hours before a paper would be available in the reading-room. Not twenty minutes later a note on scented crocodile paper, my Times and a popular novel were brought to me. The note ran thus: “Mrs. (I forget the name, but I fancy it was not Stork) presents her compliments to Lord Syfret, and thanks him extremely for the Times. She begs at the same time to lend him a copy of East Lynne, which he may not have read, and which may serve to amuse him in this very dull hotel.”

I returned the volume with thanks, assuring Mrs. Stork that I never read novels. I gave orders that should any lady under whatsoever pretext attempt to make her way into my rooms she was to be inexorably repulsed. Then I breathed once more and dined that evening by myself. Later I strolled in the gardens. There was a bench whence I could hear the sea break while I smoked. The night was dark, and I had sat some minutes before I perceived the red glow of another cigar a few yards from me. In the dark I distinguished an undefined mass. Then a silly little voice exclaimed:

“I like a man to be awfully good-looking, Mr. Carvill.”

Mr. Carvill took two puffs at his cigar. Then he said, indifferently: “Ah!”

After a pause the silly voice remarked again: “Don’t you like good-looking girls, Mr. Carvill?”

“I prefer ’em decent-looking,” Carvill admitted without enthusiasm.

“I suppose you like dark girls best?”

“Oh, I like ’em all colours. It’s a change, you know.”

There was a longer pause. Then the voice, this time depressed, was heard again:

“That’s a good-looking girl who sits at the table in the left hand window, don’t you think — the girl with rather a red nose?”

“Is her nose red? Good figure. Wears white hats.”

“Well, they were once white. But the sea does spoil things so dreadfully. You would never think I’ve only worn that blue hat I wore this morning once before, now would you?”

Perhaps Mr. Carvill was not listening. Anyhow he answered “No,” which was certainly not the answer poor little Bunny was seeking. She was silent for quite an appreciable time.

Then she started again bravely: “I did so like that heather coat you wore this morning, Mr. Carvill.”

Mr. Carvill took out his cigar and yawned. Then he lifted up his head — and laughed. The bench gave a sudden lurch. There was a flutter of skirts as though she had started up, and a smothered little cry.

“Oh, you said you’d never do it again,” she panted. “You know — Oh, you know how it frightens me. Let me go. Oh, let me go.”

He smothered an imprecation. Apparently he took her by the shoulders and forced her down on to the bench again.

“I told you,” he protested savagely, “it’s only a habit. For Heaven’s sake don’t keep on about it so. I did theatricals once and had to laugh like that and caught the trick.”

“Let me go. Let me go,” she insisted. “Mr. Carvill, you are hurting my arm.”

His voice changed. A red glow made a hissing curve in the darkness, as he threw his cigar away.

“I’m awfully sorry,” he apologised. “Horribly rude of me. I forgot. I get savage when it’s noticed.”

Plainly Miss Bunny was frightened. “I want to go in,” she whimpered.

“You won’t mention it. Promise you won’t mention it.”

“I promise. No, don’t you come. Goodnight.” “Goodnight. I say, mayn’t I, though — just one? I did last night, you know.”

But Bunny’s white skirts had rustled away in the darkness.

He resumed his seat and lighted another cigar. He puffed it slowly into condition. Then he lifted up his head — and laughed.

CHAPTER III

From the hotel steps next morning Mrs. Stork watched them start. Little Bunny wore a new frock and a serious air that suited its pink frills and flounces ill. She glanced once with beseeching eyes into her mother’s face, and then, with a curious sidelong apprehension, at the fresh-coloured profile above her.

The storcine visage smiled with a smile that granite might have envied for its obduracy. Poor little Bunny, seeing it, shuddered, and shouldered her club with the band of blue leather about it. She tripped along beside him, stealing frightened glances up at him so long as they were visible. Then Mrs. Stork turned and ascended the steps, still smiling.

She had gained the doorway when her glance caught me. She coughed, and retraced her way as though seeking something. Finally, with an absent air, she sidled across and sat down at the opposite end of the verandah. I had made up my mind the previous evening. The opportunity presented. I am not wholly devoid of heroism, as my conduct on this occasion shows. I walked over to where she sat. I bowed and extended my Times.

“Your friend Sir Alfred Baxendale arrived at Nice last evening,” I began. “Perhaps you would like to see for yourself.”

She fairly blushed. She lifted and flapped her wings and hopped to her long legs.

“How excessively good of you,” she simpered. “Really, how can I thank you.”

I sat down as far from her as my powers of vocalisation and the subject at my tongue’s end made advisable.

“Your daughter seems fond of golf,” I said.

“Devoted,” she answered.

“She is a pretty little girl.” Her own and her maternal instincts struggled. Her own had the victory.

“She is not seventeen,” she murmured, adding in low tones, “I was myself but a child when I married my late husband.”

“Ah!” I answered, abstractedly.

There was a pause, during which the stork’s eyes fathomed mine, seeking avidly an answer to the question as to whether my interest in Dolly were conjugal or merely step-fatherly.

To keep to the subject of Dolly, for though my intentions were neither the one nor the other, it was of Dolly I desired to speak. “An only child?” I suggested.

Mrs. Stork nodded. That my interest should extend to other members of the family pointed rather in a step-paternal direction.

“An only daughter,” she assented, evasively.

I concluded that Dolly had possibly some half-dozen brothers. But I concealed my suspicion, while Mistress Stork stole a plump, complacent hand to her head and settled her cap ribbons. Then she cast down her eyes and waited.

“You know Mr. Carvill?”

It was not a question she expected. She re-arranged her views. An interest in Carvill suggested jealousy on my part, in which case — Mrs. Stork raised her lids and looked directly into my eyes. Once more she was merely maternal.

“Oh, yes,” she said, less sweetly. “He has been here for nearly a week. We have seen a great deal of him. Such a very nice young man we think him.”

“Ah!” I said.

She stole a sharp glance toward me. Plainly this was jealousy. I thought the storcine vanity ruffled. But if not mother, why not daughter?

“My Dolly has quite taken to him,” she insinuated tentatively.

“You will pardon me,” I answered. “He who does not confine himself to his own affairs generally makes a fool of himself; but I should like to say a word about this same young Carvill. Ladies” — here I bowed with my best air — “ladies are proverbially single-minded. But is it altogether wise to allow Miss Dolly to spend so much time in the company of a stranger?”

“It is so good of you to advise me,” she murmured. “I need always somebody to advise me,” she added in a flutter. The step-paternal theory was working uppermost again.

“I am interested in young people,” I asserted, distantly.

“It is so good of you,” she murmured a second time. “But Mr. Carvill has been so well brought up, Lord Syfret.”

“I haven’t a doubt of it,” I agreed

“I am speaking on general principles. To tell the truth, the boy has a rough way.” I was recalling the previous evening. “He is a little strange.”

“If there were anybody else,” she said, “Dolly feels so lonely. She is such a loving child. She must attach herself to somebody. Now if an older man — someone more responsible — someone I could trust implicitly—”

“The girls here are good golfers and seem friendly with one another,” I interrupted. Mrs. Stork bridled her long neck. She stared at me somewhat coldly. But she still maintained her smiling front.

“Dolly is timid with girls,” she said. “and the girls here are mere hoydens. To tell the truth, Lord Syfret, Dolly — little puss — prefers masculine society. She is so fond of intellectual and progressive thought.”

I mentally reviewed poor little Bunny’s cranial development. I remembered her loose little lips and prominent teeth.

“Indeed,” I responded, without a smile.

“Yet she is nothing of a blue,” she added, in a hurry.

“I am sure of it,” I said.

“Perhaps you play golf, Lord Syfret?” Mrs. Stork suggested, with a sudden change of front.

“Heaven forbid!”

“Or croquet? Dolly said, yesterday—”

“Nor croquet, madam.”

Mrs. Stork became all at once dignified. It began possibly to dawn upon her that my interest was without intention. But she made one more effort.

“You are like me,” she said, insinuatingly. “You are above the trivialities of life. All that you need to complete your happiness is quiet and congenial companionship—”

“You are right, madam,” I assented, “the most quiet and congenial of all companionships — the company of books.”

She rose. “Lord Syfret,” she said with dignity, and not without acrimony, “I thank you extremely for your kind consideration. My belief in human nature would be greatly strengthened, could I but think you had spoken from some other than mere personal motives. However, despite your evident hostility — quite unfounded — against dear Mr. Carvill, I shall be careful not to breathe a word to the poor young man of your unwarranted — may I say unworthy — suspicions. The boy is so sensitive, so generous — he would be cut to the heart, indeed, if he knew what an implacable secret enemy he has. Your Times, Lord Syfret, and Good-morning!” I dined that evening in my room alone.

CHAPTER IV

“Mr. Carble says, ‘Damn you!’ and why didn’t you get his knife properly ground?” the waiter inquired of the porter as I crossed the hall the next morning.

“Tell Mr. Carble damn him, and his knife can’t be ground not any sharper than it is,” the porter rejoined, in a tone of suppressed exasperation. “The fuss he’s made about that knife of his nobody wouldn’t believe. It’s been at the cutler’s three times. already. If he wants it done any better, he’d best set to and do it himself.”

“That’s what he seems to think. He was sharpening away at it on his strop like mad when I come down. He says he’ll put a hedge on it to raise Cain.”

At this juncture they perceived me. The conversation ceased abruptly.

Carvill some minutes later with his clubs. From a glance of his I had met the previous evening, I was aware that Mrs. Stork had faithfully reported my remarks. I reflected that again before I died I had rendered myself ridiculous. For Miss Bunny and Carvill had spent the whole evening together, and had risen early in order to go round the links before breakfast.

This morning he was all smiles. Seeing his fresh young face beaming friendly upon me, I experienced some discomfiture. I never regret, or I might have regretted my lack of discretion.

“Golfing again,” I exclaimed, returning his salute.

“Golfing again,” he assented, cheerily. He was a youth of contradictions. The night before the smoke-room had fairly resounded with his uproarious and iniquitous doctrine. This morning he was boyish and fresh-skinned.

Mrs. Stork came out as usual to see them off. She bowed to me with an air of majestic forbearance.

“Everybody has gone over to North Berwick to see Balfour play, they tell me,” she gurgled, “so you two will have the golf course to yourselves.”

“Mother,” I heard little Bunny whisper, agitatedly, “what has he got a big knife in his pocket for?”

Mrs. Stork laughed and frowned together. She patted the girl’s pale cheek. “Little, little mammy’s silly,” she exclaimed. “Why, the knife of course is to — to cut the tee with.”

“Oh, but how stupid. You can’t cut tees, mother. Oh! I don’t want to go with him. I don’t want to go with him.”

There was no smile now on Mrs. Stork’s face. Granite again might have envied her.

“I shall take you home tomorrow, then,” she said, in tones that whipped. The girl put a faltering face up. “No, no,” she whispered, with a little cob, “not that, mother dear. I’ll — I’ll go with him.”

She went.

At the corner where the path turned out of sight I saw him pat his pocket. Then he lifted up his head — and laughed.

CHAPTER V

At lunch the coffee-room was empty. There had been an exodus, indeed, to see Mr. Balfour play.

I had just sat down to my table and was grumbling about something or another — in hotels the man who grumbles loudest is the man best served — when Mrs. Stork entered alone. The triumph in the eye she cast on me was complacent to fatuity. Had she belonged to a different class she would have set her elbows on her hips and hurled a “yah!” at me.

Instead of this, she beckoned a waiter and asked him loudly, “Have you seen Miss ——— (the name scarcely sounded like ‘Stork’) — and Mr. Carvill?”

“No, ma’am,” the answer was, “not since they went out after breakfast.”

“Not since they went out after breakfast,” Mrs. Stork reiterated for my benefit.

She ordered champagne. Then she set the full-stop of her eye upon me with an eloquence denied to speech. “If this don’t mean business, my lord,” said that eye of hers, “I’ll just thank you to tell me what it does mean.”

At the moment I should have been thankful if I could. The conviction that I could not, spoilt the flavour of my lobster. My appetite was gone. I thought I would try a stroll across the golf-links.

“Heavens! sir, where are you going in such a hurry?” a rasping voice demanded. I had run full tilt into somebody entering as I left.

I did not waste breath in answering. I picked up the two heaviest-looking sticks the hat-stand held: One I kept for myself, the other I put into the hands of the hall-porter.

“You are to come with me,” I said.

“Your lordship,” he protested, “it’s as much as my place is worth.”

“Leave that to me. I have something for you.”

Perhaps my manner impressed him, for without: further ado he grasped the stick and strode after me. He was a powerful fellow ,I was pleased to note.

“Is it Mr. Carble, your lordship?” he puffed. He was scarcely in condition for the pace we were making.

“I am anxious about a lady who went out with him this morning.”

“Not been back since?”

“No.”

The man whistled apprehensively. “Looks bad,” he said. “His man was saying only last night he didn’t like the looks of him. He’s got a brother in an asylum. Can’t really get on any faster,? my lord.”

The links were a desert of sand, with here and there bunkers, and furze clumps, and artificial water-courses, which did duty for “burns.” The ground was of the roughest, up hills and down dales of miniature size, with here and there smooth stretches of grass for “putting greens.” There was not a soul in sight. But with that irregular formation we might at any moment come upon them in some dip of ground, or behind some sand-hill. e kept our eyes about us, and our weapons in the background.

Our sudden appearance might by some horrible mischance precipitate matters. If indeed — We hurried on.

If luck had not been on our side that mischance would have happened.

We were striding up a furze bank when I heard him laugh. There was no restraint or repression in it now. It rasped out terrible and long. It gashed the silent air. He had flung off the mask. God grant we were not too late!

I turned and caught the man behind me by the shoulder. I forced him to his knees. We crept up silently amid the furze. Arrived at the top we came in sight of them. They were some distance below us on a ledge in the sandy side of the slope. It would be impossible for us to approach without being seen. It would be impossible to reach them without giving him some minutes’ start, for the ground was rugged and soft, and there was a hollow we must dip into and scale again before we could get to them.

Poor little Bunny sat huddled together facing the point where we crouched and the situation with distended eyes. Carvill stood over her, his profile to us, but keeping a furtive and continuous watch about him. One end of a razor strop was between his teeth, the other was in his left hand.

Along its stretched surface he slipped the sharp blade of a murderous-looking knife. I cursed the fate of circumstance. We could not advance a foot without discovering ourselves. And the slightest thing might set his knife at her throat.

“You’ll never have a chance now of telling about my laugh,” he said. His speech was hindered by the ring of the strop between his teeth, but the words came clearly up the bank.

“No,” she assented helplessly, her eyes fixed fascinated on him.

“It’s you women who do all the mischief in the world,” he went on, argumentatively. “You’ve got to be got rid of—”

She made no answer other than an inarticulate moan.

He turned on her savagely, brandishing his knife. “What did you say?” he demanded.

“I said yes,” she cried meekly.

“So, as I said, I’m going to cut your throat the moment I get this damned knife sharp enough.” Then, “What did you say?” he demanded again, brandishing the blade.

I measured the distance between us, I rose on my knees; but I feared. The slightest thing might set him on her.

“I said yes,” she said meekly again. Then, whether from sheer silliness or instinctive design, the poor little creature added feebly, “It will spoil my new frock, you know, Mr. Carvill.”

I heard the big man beside me draw breath into his chest with a sob like a child’s. I put my hand in warning on his shoulder. Carvill stopped sharpening his knife.

“Confound it! I never thought of that,” he said.

Little Bunny had some sense after all. She saw her advantage, and made capital. “It’s so very light,” she continued, looking guilelessly into his face; “it will show every stain.”

“Confound it,” he broke out violently, “I never thought of that. Why didn’t you put on a darker one?”

“I will tomorrow,” she assented, eagerly. “We can come again tomorrow. I will wear my old blue serge. That will not matter a bit.”

Her voice broke. I could see by her terrible pallor the horror she was striving with.

“No,” he objected. “It’s going to be done now. You’re not to be trusted. And by tomorrow there have got to be a thousand women less in the world. It’s they do all the mischief.”

But there was an air of discomfiture about him. In the ill-balance of his unhinged mind the thought of the spoiled frock affected him unpleasantly.

He sharpened his knife with an air which, though dogged, had an element of irresolution about it. He muttered to himself. Once he clenched his fist and shook it toward high heaven, the while the pupils of her eyes distended on him till their china blueness was a blackened horror.

Then he proceeded to strengthen his position by argument.

“You tell lies — all you women do,” he blustered. “You deserve anything. You do nothing but deceive and cheat a man.”

“But I don’t,” she pleaded, “I never tell big lies, Mr. Carvill, only little fibs sometimes that don’t hurt anybody. Really I never do, Mr. Carvill.” Her voice half broke again.

“It’s a lie, it’s a lie, it’s a lie,” he shouted frenziedly. “I’m not going to be talked out of it. If you don’t, other women do, and you’ve got to die with the rest. You take a chap’s money and you want diamonds and anything you can get. You’re so confounded greedy.”

She stretched two trembling palms to him, palms as pink and impotent as flower-petals. “I am not really greedy,” she protested. “Really, Mr. Carvill, I am not. I only thought you might not mind me having that golf ball. You have so many. And I didn’t really expect you to give me the gloves — not if you don’t want to. You’re wrong if you think I am greedy.”

He stuffed his fingers into his ears.

“I’m not listening. I can’t hear a word you say,” he said. He shuffled with his feet and hummed. “I’m not going to be talked out of it. I only wish there was edge enough on this confounded blade, and you’d see how little effect your talking has.”

“Eve was the first of you,” he began again. “She was a woman, and brought all the trouble into the world. You can’t deny that.”

“No,” she said hopelessly, “I can’t deny that, because it’s in the Bible.”

“Well then,” he shouted, “that clinches it, and you’ve got to be killed for it.”

She took refuge in her former plea. “It will spoil my new frock,” she cried out, piteously.

“Well, hang it, why didn’t you put on some other,” he vociferated.

Suddenly he broke out laughing.

“Why,” he cried, “you can take it off. What a little fool you are. Of course you can take it off.”

Her face fell dismally. The loose lips twitched with a grievous helplessness. And all the while we lay there afraid almost of breathing, lest we should set him on her.

“Yes, I could take it off,” she faltered.

He passed his nail across the knife-edge. He flung the strop away.

“Then hang it, why don’t you?” he shouted. “I’m ready now, and a precious lot I’ve got to do before morning.”

The poor little thing made one heroic effort. She cast her eyes down shyly. I believe she actually blushed, though how her bloodless cheeks accomplished it Heaven only knows.

“Oh, Mr. Carvill, I should be ashamed to take my frock off with you here,” she stammered modestly.

Again he was taken aback. “I never thought of that,” he said, nonplussed. “Curse it, why do you make such a fuss. I shall never have done tonight.”

Her hand, resting on the sand beside her, flung up a feathery spray to the tremble of her fingers.

“If you were to go up the bank—” she faltered, with a pretty timidity, pointing directly were we lay. (“I thought, from the first, she’d caught sight of us,” the porter gulped in my ear, “bless her plucky little heart and spare er.”)

“If you were to go up the bank,” she repeated. tremulously, “I could — I could—” She could say no more. Now Heaven grant she not break down. It must have been fear rather than courage that sustained her, for breath and strength were spent.

I gathered myself for a rush. In any case there could be but one ending. He strode in front of her and stood there glaring. If she had cried out or shown the slightest fear he would have killed her then. But she showed no fear. Her large eyes rested on him vacantly.

“Swear you won’t run away?”

Poor little creature. She had not breath enough to swear. But she nodded.

“And you won’t call anyone?”

Her lips motioned “No.”

He turned with an impatient oath and came clambering up the bank. “A chap can’t be a beastly cad,” he muttered.

A minute later he cried out and fell. The porter’s stick and muscles had effected that. We took his knife from him and secured him as well as we were able.

Then I leapt down the slope. Poor little girl! She was sitting wan and pallid, her trembling fingers fumbling at the buttons of her half-unfastened bodice.

“I saw you all the time,” she whispered, “but I didn’t think it would be any use.”

She caught my hand clingingly. “Lord Syfret,” she entreated with a little sob, “don’t ever tell mother I hadn’t time to fasten up my frock.”

Then she slipped down from her sitting posture, and lay in a faint amid the sand.

STRONHEIM’S EXTREMITY

Oct. 1896

I had called on my friend the Keeper of Coins and Medals at the Museum. We had been College chums and did not stand on ceremony.

“I shall be busy for an hour,” he said, as we shook hands. He pointed to a batch of medals, marred and defaced to bewildering extent. “I am getting to the end of them. If you can come back again I shall be delighted. We will lunch together. Or if you care to remain here till I have finished, I can give you a rare old folio to dip into.”

“I will remain,” I replied. “I enjoy this musty odour of antiquity.”

The Keeper smiled. “If you were fated to endure as much of it as I do,” he returned, “you would probably prefer oxygen.”

Five minutes later an attendant entered. “A gentleman to see you, sir.”

The Keeper glanced up through his spectacles displeased. He read the card before him.

“Did you tell him I am busy?”

“I told him, sir. He says it is urgent. It has to do with the Hierator coin.”

“Ah!” The keeper laid down his magnifying glasses. If there were a tender spot in his heart the Hierator coin had found it. It was a superb specimen recently added to the collection under his charge. Its history was sufficiently recondite to have taxed without baffling his skill in the matter of classification, yet was it so well-preserved, the classic obverse so exquisite and clear, that even a tyro in the numismatic art like myself could not have failed to admire it. Apart from its beautiful workmanship, its value was determined by the fact that it belonged to a period whereof but few evidences remained. Moreover, it was an unique specimen, no other of its kind being known to exist. It had had a whole column of the Times devoted to it, a column that was a very monument of lore. Its value in specie was variously estimated at from £50 to $2,000. It was probably worth £1,000, but the authorities of the Museum into whose possession it had come entertained not the remotest intention of parting with it. To them it was priceless, for it completed a series long incomplete.

The Keeper looked anxious. The source of the coin had not been altogether satisfactory, and he had suffered, he told me, not a few waking nightmares lest someone should turn up to establish a claim upon it.

“I will see the gentleman,” he said. He swept the mouldering bronze and silver heap before him into a drawer, which he carefully locked. Then he changed his glasses, and leaned back in his chair, his eyes on the door, an anxious fold between his brows.

“I wish I could feel secure about that Hierator,” he remarked.

The attendant appeared presently ushering in a tall, thin, shabbily-dressed man. The man bowed squarely, and ceremoniously. He was obviously a foreigner.

“Herr Stronheim,” the Keeper read, consulting the card and returning the bow, “what can I do for you?”

It may have been prejudice in the interests of the Hierator, but I thought he did not like the look of the man. His face was sharp and thin and his glances travelled nervously — almost furtively about the room. “Sir, I am obliged to you,” the stranger rejoined, with only a slight German accent, and in a pleasant enough voice. “I have a letter to you from Professor Von Brau, of Berlin. I take the liberty of presenting it in person.”

“Von Brau, Von Brau?” the Keeper echoed dubiously, “do I know him?”

Stronheim seemed taken aback.

“I understood him to be a friend — a friend of many years. Is it Doctor Keith Bernard I have the honour of addressing?”

“Yes, I am Dr. Bernard. With your permission I will read the letter. Please sit down.”

The visitor sat down. His face was agitated. His glance still travelled furtively about the room. The Keeper reading the note observed him from time to time above his spectacles. It was briefly, I learned later, a letter of introduction. Professor Von Brau, dating from a medical college in Berlin, recalled himself to the recollection of Dr. Keith Bernard, whom he had met some years earlier at an Antiquarian Congress. He begged to be allowed to present to Dr. Keith Bernard, Herr Stronheim, a gentleman with whom he himself was but slightly acquainted, though he came to him warmly commended by friends. There was some small matter wherein he should regard it as an honour to himself and a personal kindness if Dr. Keith Bernard would assist Herr Stronheim.

“You now remember the Professor?” Stronheim queried.

The Keeper shook his head. “One meets so many gentlemen at conferences, and I fear I cannot for the moment recall your friend.”

The German leaned forward in his chair. “May I nevertheless hope—” he began, hurriedly.

He stopped short. The Keeper noticed that his hand on the rail of his chair was trembling. It occurred to him, as it did to me, that the man had had no breakfast.

“I made the journey on purpose—” Stronheim began again. His pinched face suggested at what cost

“I shall be glad,” my friend responded, kindly, “if I can help you in any way. I am afraid if it should be a position you are seeking—”

Stronheim shook his head. “It is not that,” he said “You are very good. It is not that, but the matter is of much moment to me.”

The Keeper implied by a gesture that he awaited Herr Stronheim’s pleasure.

“You have here a coin—”

“The Hierator,” Bernard interjected

“The Hierator. May I be permitted to see it?” The Keeper kept his eyes fixed on the other. Plainly this was a claimant.

“The Hierator is on public view in Coin Room No. III, in the centre case, facing the window,” he said briefly, adding, “If you wish it I will send a man to point it out to you.”

“Sir, you are good; but I wish more. I ask for the privilege to examine it closely — to take it in my hands.”

The request was unusual. Bernard scanned him. Certainly, his credentials did not warrant the placing of much trust in him. He was shabby and ill-at-ease, and his boots, though decently blacked, were broken. In Britain we are apt to think lightly of men with broken boots, especially if we have reason for doubting that they have breakfasted. Moreover, I could see my friend was jealous for his Hierator.

“The request is unusual,” he objected. “May I inquire the object?”

Stronheim evaded the question. “I but wish to take it in my hands one moment.”

“You will surely explain your purpose.”

“Pardon me, I must beg of you to permit me to reserve that.”

Bernard hardened. Obviously no good was intended to his treasure. “I fear, sir,” he said, civilly, but firmly, “I fear, then, I cannot comply with your request.”

The German made a gesture of protest. “Sir,” he exclaimed, “you surely do not suspect me of — of what can you suspect me?”

“The request is unusual, and you give me no reason.”

Stronheim put a hand to his throat and turned away. The fingers of the other hand grappled convulsively with the chair rail. After a minute he faced round.

“I cannot tell you the importance of this matter to me,” he faltered. “My future — the future of others — depends upon it.”

My friend had warm spots in his heart beside that occupied by the Hierator. I saw him weaken. “Bless me,” he said cordially, “if you are so anxious you shall see it.”

“I too?” I motioned with my lips. He assented, smiling.

He took up his velvet skull cap, and cutting short the Teuton’s effusive and guttural gratitude, with a British and kindly “Not at all, not at all,” he preceded us across a lobby and up sundry steps to Room No. III. of Coins and Medals.

The great room, its walls lined with shelved glass cases, its space pervaded by them, only narrow intersections being left for the passage of visitors, was apparently empty; but a moment later a custodian, bearing his wand of office, respectfully joined us.

We went quickly down the narrow a. the cases filled with green and mouldy-looking treasures seeming to engulf us in a tomb-like silence. Nobody was there, since only the few take interest in coins.

The Keeper stopped before a case — he could have found his way there in the dark, I believe — and in the centre rested the Hierator, on the velvet bosom of a handsome casket. An inscription beneath recorded its date, and briefly a portion of its history.

Bernard, for the moment mindless of the stranger’s possible designs upon his treasure, pointed it out with pride.

“There he is,” he said, smiling, “there he is — the finest coin in our collection.”

The German gazed with greedy eyes. He pressed his features close against the glass, examining it absorbedly. There was a strange light on his face.

The Keeper watched him, as did I. What was his motive? His eyes fastened on it as upon some long-loved prize. He thrust a pale long-fingered hand toward it.

“Let me examine it,” he broke out hoarsely.

I thought Bernard regretted his concession. But he was a man of his word. He fitted a key to the door. The custodian, wand in hand, stood by. He maintained a vigilant scrutiny of the stranger. Obviously he did not like his looks. Possibly he, too, suspected that the shabby foreigner had had no breakfast.

Bernard took the leather casket from the case, and held it a moment in his hand. He looked with pleasure and affection on its occupant. Then he passed it over to the German.

Stronheim bowed as he stretched his, trembling fingers for it. His eyes devoured its every curve and marking. He bent above it with an ashen face. Soon he lost consciousness of everything beside. He did not see the respectful half-questioning glance of the custodian upon the Keeper, nor the Keeper’s fixed scrutiny upon himself. He put a finger on the coin with a suggestion of lifting it from its casket.

“May I be permitted?” he inquired. Bernard nodded. His face was grave. Certainly one might have suspected that this was the Hierator’s lawful owner. Only one in whose possession it had been could love it as this man plainly did. The German removed it, setting the empty casket on a neighbouring case.

At that moment a man entering the room by a door at the further end suddenly stumbled, and, with three clattering steps to recover his balance, and a loud guttural cry, measured his length on the floor. We all instinctively turned. There was a sound as of metal striking wood and ringing sharply, a muttered exclamation, and the German was down on hands and knees feeling and searching with his long blanched fingers.

“I started and dropped it,” he explained tremulously.

We had turned our heads but for a second. As my glance swung back from the prostrate man at the end of the room, I though I saw something fall and disappear. In a moment Bernard was on his knees. A few swift looks and sweeps of his hand sufficed to show him that the coin had vanished. if it were there at all it would take time to find. He turned his eyes from Stronheim’s face, bent white and anxious on the floor, instinctively towards the figure of the man, who now erect, was leaving the room.

Something in the latter’s threadbare aspect, linked with the recollection of his guttural cry, seemed to impress him. He whispered to the custodian. A moment later the custodian’s steps were echoing loud and hollow down the room. He followed the stranger out through the lower doorway.

Bernard furtively turned up a coat sleeve, mentally measuring his strength against that of his adversary. He glanced at me with a grim expression.

“Sir, how can I express my regret,” the German apologised, still searching with agitated eye and hand. “It was unpardonably awkward. But I am not well today. The man falling unnerved me. I let the Hierator drop. It must have rolled far.”

There was a strange exultation in his voice. Under cover of his stooping posture he smiled secretly. He searched with care, but the anxiety of some minutes earlier had died out of his face.

“You can laugh as you like, my man,” the Keeper muttered in a savage aside, “but your troubles are only beginning. Britons are not so easily fooled.”

The custodian now came back. He nodded to his superior’s questioning eye. Then he too went on hands and knees, apparently searching, but his gaze made significantly for one after another of the shabby German’s pockets, as though he were speculating as to which at that moment concealed the Hierator.

Stronheim grew anxious. He began to search feverishly, and with a degree of wild aimlessness. He swept his glances near and far. His features worked. Then he put a curb on himself and fell to more methodically. He took a knife from pocket. We kept our eyes on him. He opened a blade and proceeded to slip it carefully some six or eight feet’s length along the cracks between the boards. He probed thus every crack of the passage in which we stood. This failing, “Mein Gott!” he said, in hollow tones, straightening himself for a moment to get the ache out of his back. With a haggard face he started further down and worked slowly up the floor, dragging the knife-blade vigilantly in the crevices, his ear inclined, his fingers a-search for the clink of metal as though his life depended on it. He carried this manoeuvre several yards further in either direction up the room.

As one after another the cracks failed him, his hands trembled visibly. The Keeper and custodian had risen to their feet. They viewed him with disapproving faces, faces that spoke of rising exasperation at this which seemed to them a farce.

The German, absorbed in his efforts, paid them no heed. Bernard turned, closed the door of the case whence the Hierator had been taken, and locked it. A party of children entering and detecting the group — one man on hands and knees — clattered hurriedly up the room, the small feet of the younger members of the party multiplying the footsteps of those bigger by hollow two-to-ones as they scrambled along, keeping pace with their elders. The custodian motioned them. They remained at a distance disappointed, but breathlessly whispering and watching with widely-opened eyes.

“Mein Gott!” the German exclaimed again. as he came to the end of the longer span of cracks without finding anything. The sweat stood thick on his face. He looked up to where we stood regarding him.

“I have never seen such a thing,” he cried. “It dropped. I saw it strike the floor and roll, and then it disappeared. I could swear it rolled no farther than this.”

He indicated a spot with a broken boot.

The Keeper and custodian regarded the boot.

A clock clanged twelve. Stronheim started up.

“If you permit it,” he addressed Bernard, “I will return in an hour, and search till it is found. Lock up the room and I will go carefully over every inch. I have at a quarter past twelve an appointment with the Consul. But I will return at once.”

The custodian laughed outright.

The Keeper regarded him sternly.

“Monstrous!” he said. “Do you suppose I shall allow you to leave this place until the coin is found? Is it of any use to continue this farce?” Stronheim stood staring at him. Then “Himmel!” he protested, “do you suspect me of stealing it?”

Bernard made a movement of impatience. “The coin must be found before you leave,” he rejoined shortly.

“Must I lose my appointment with the Consul, sir!”

“Undoubtedly.”

The German wiped his brow helplessly. “What an unfortunate I am,” he muttered, “and just as I hoped everything. Sir, I swear to you — sir, I am a man of birth and education. I assure you—”

Bernard cut him short. “I have made no accusation, I only demand the coin. A few minutes since it was in your possession, where is it now?”

“On the floor, sir, assuredly, somewhere on the floor. It must be, to be found.”

“Assuredly,” my friend returned, “it must be to be found.”

The German went again on hands and knees.

The children from their distance watched him breathlessly. They also ran their sharp eyes over the floor. To them the scene was absorbingly interesting. What was the man on the floor so anxiously hunting? And would he find it? And if he did not find it what would happen? It was a thousand times more diverting than old pennies and mouldy things in glass cases. The German rose to his feet again.

“I have failed,” he admitted, spreading his hands out with a fatalistic gesture. He glanced towards the fog-darkened windows. “The light is little,” he deprecated.

“It will be my unpleasant duty to have you searched,” the Keeper said, “unless the coin be at once produced. I have wasted time enough.”

Yet he seemed sorry for the man, as I was. He was obviously a person of cultivation, despite his poor condition.

Stronheim started as though he had been struck.

“Searched?” he echoed, in a hollow voice. “Searched!” he repeated, terror-stricken. He steadied himself against the corner of a cabinet. He panted as if he had run a race. The Keeper observed him. Why should he dread being searched if he had not the coin? If he were innocent he would surely court inquiry. There was but one inference to be drawn.

“It is our routine practice,” he said shortly.

The German was taken with convulsive shuddering. The custodian eyed him contemptuously. He glanced impatiently at his superior. What was the good of this fuss? Why did he not straightway hand him over to the police? He attracted Bernard’s attention. His lips formed a voiceless word. Bernard shook his head. Give the poor devil a chance, he indicated compassionately, only — his face hardened — the Hierator must be found.

The German composed himself. “I refuse to be searched,” he cried. He wiped the sweat-drops from his brow. “I refuse to be searched,” he repeated.

“Why should you mind if you are innocent?”

“Why should I mind? I mind much. It is — it is—” he was manifestly seeking excuse — “it is an insult. You suspect me of theft. I come to you as one gentleman to another, sir. I bring a letter of introduction from Professor Von Brau—”

“I have no alternative,” the Keeper answered. He had now not a doubt as to the other’s guilt. His dread of being searched convicted him out of hand.

“I will look again,” Stronheim said desperately, sweeping a swift instinctive glance toward the door. But the custodian forestalled him, moving a few paces between it and the suspect. Stronheim understood and glared upon him. He made a gesture of despair. Then he took out a pencil, and marking off an area still larger than that he had already gone over, and using his handkerchief dusterwise, he swept every inch of the floor. He found nothing.

He shook his head and muttered: “I will never be searched.”

He took a box of matches from a pocket, and striking half a dozen at a time, he scanned the boards minutely.

Still he found nothing.

“Gott im Himmel,” he muttered again, “they shall never search me.” He started slipping his knife along the cracks again, taking the wider area. But nothing came of it. He went over the ground once more: with no result. He sat up, and covering his face with his hands moaned under his breath.

“I give it up,” he wailed brokenly. “Fate is against me. Some devil is in it.”

“You will submit to be searched.”

He threw out his palms. His eyes seemed to start out of his head.

“Then I am a lost man,” he exclaimed.

“You had better give the coin up,” Bernard remarked quietly.

“I have it not.” Yet his hand went instinctively to an inner pocket.

“If you do not give it up I must send for the police.”

Stronheim stared stupidly before him. “I am a lost man,” he mumbled. Then he suddenly swayed, and fell forward on his face. In the excitement ensuing the children drew nearer. They thought he was dead. It was a rare morning’s entertainment indeed — to see a man die.

“Shall I take it from him, sir?” the custodian queried, his hand on the German’s coat.

The Keeper shook his head.

“It’s here in his breast pocket,” the man urged. “I can feel it through the cloth.”

“Let it be,” the other said. “Undo his collar, and open the window.”

Stronheim had just unclosed his lids and was blinking the misery awaiting him into his consciousness, when suddenly a commotion rose among the children. “It’s mine.” “No ’taint, I seed it furst.”. “Oh! you little liar, I seed it.” “I picked it up anyways.” “Give it me!” “Give it me!” “Yes giv’ it ’im, he’s my bruvver.”

The cries waxed to a hubbub. The custodian bore down upon them. Two boys were on the point of blows. The man rapped their heads with his wand. “Now then, clear out, you youngsters. Make yourselves scarce, I say.”

The boys sobered. They eyed one another muttering fiercely. One whimpered.

“Now then, clear out, or the police will have you,” the custodian threatened.

“He’s got my penny,” the whimpering boy protested.

“’Taint yours, and ’taint a penny,” the other retorted

The chorus began again. “You’re a liar, I seed it first.” “Giv’ it him, he’s my bruvver.”

The custodian rapped knuckles indiscriminately. “Police!” he called, in a loud whisper.

As the boys scuffled, something fell to the ground. A girl darted toward it. But the custodian was before her. He had it in his hand. He examined it amazedly. It was the Hierator!

“Where did you find it?” he demanded.

“I picked it up,” the boy exclaimed. “I seed it lying be’ind the leg of a table, and I picked it up. It’s mine, not Bill’s.”

“It isn’t either of yours,” the custodian said. “It belongs here. Now then, be off with you.”

He was considerably crestfallen. He had been so confident of the German’s guilt.

Bernard strode towards him.

“God bless me,” he said, taking the Hierator tenderly. “Who would have thought it? Here children,” he called to the departing and depressed youngsters, “here’s a shilling between you. Twopence a-piece, big and little.”

The German smiled faintly when they laid it before him. “I told you,” he murmured, “I am no thief But, mein Gott, what a fright I have had!”

“Why in the name of all that is inexplicable did you refuse to be searched,” the Keeper asked some minutes later, when the still faint Stronheim reclined in his room, imbibing strength from brandy and water. The other German, whom they had taken for an accomplice, and placed under detention, had been and the Hierator had been safely locked into its case again.

The German smiled. Then he sat up and looked at us one after the other. He put a hand into his. breast pocket, and, with an air of mystery, drew out a small object. Still smiling he held it toward Bernard. “Good Heavens! — the Hierator. I thought I had—”

“So you did, sir. This is not your Hierator, though a Hierator. I picked it up in an old iron shop in Vienna. Then I chanced upon the article in your Times. I had no notion that the coin was worth money. I brought it over to compare with yours. I had been unfortunate. An illness robbed me of a good position. My money was gone. My family starving. Just then a good opening offered, but it needed some £500 capital. I read your Times. I spent my remaining funds in coming to England. You kindly permitted me to examine the coin. I found it identical with mine. It was my last hope. If I had failed, Heaven knows what would have become of us!”

There was a moment’s silence. He resumed,

“You ask me why I refused to be searched. I ask you and this gentleman” — he bowed towards me — “what chance should I have had with a Hierator, a coin understood to be unique, in my pocket. Would anybody have troubled to look further? I should have been convicted of theft — ruined. Now—”

He spread out his hands with his former fatalistic gesture. But this time he expressed that destiny left nothing to be desired. My friend looked gloomy for the space of a minute. The uniqueness of the Hierator had been such a feather in the cap of his collection. Then the man got the better of the numismatist.

He stepped forward and shook the German’s trembling hand. “I congratulate you, sir,” he said heartily. “Any museum of consequence, or private collector, will give you at least £1,000 for it.”

“In the meantime,” I suggested, “if you and this gentleman,” indicating Stronheim, “will give me the pleasure of your company, we will go and get some lunch”

A BEAUTIFUL VAMPIRE

Nov. 1896

CHAPTER I

There was a flutter indeed in the little town of Argles, when it became known that Dr. Andrew had made an attempt upon the life of Lady Deverish. Andrew was a youngish, good-looking fellow, junior partner in the firm of Byrne and Andrew, the principal doctors in the place. Everybody liked him. He was as clever as he was kind. He would take equal pains to pull the ninth child of a navvy through a croup seizure as he would have done had it been heir to an earldom. Some people thought this mistaken kindness on the doctor’s part — the navvy’s ninth could well have been spared, especially as the navvy drank, and in any case was unable to provide properly for eight. Some even went so far as to assert that Andrew was flying in the face of Providence — to say nothing of the ratepayers — when he brought this superfluous ninth triumphantly through its fifth attack of croup. Otherwise he was as popular as a man may be in a world in which flaws and scandal lend a stimulating quality to tea and bread-and-butter, that is denied to blamelessness and good repute.

“The butler says he heard raised voices,” it was whispered over dainty cups, “and then Lady Deverish shrieked for help, and he ran in and found the doctor clutching her round the throat.”

“And only just in time. Her face was perfectly black!”

“Isn’t it awful? Such a kind man as he has always seemed. Is there any madness in the family?”

“It is not certain. They say his mother was peculiar. Wrote books, and did other extraordinary things. Always wore very large hats with black feathers. Quite out of fashion, Mrs. Byass tells me. She knew her.”

“What have they done with him?”

“That’s the strangest part of it. She wouldn’t charge him: said it was all a mistake. So he just got into his carriage, and continued his rounds.”

“Gracious! Strangling everybody?”

“Oh, I believe not.”

“Her throat was bruised black and blue. Old Dr. Byrne went at once and saw to her. He got a new nurse down from London. They say it was a nurse they quarrelled about, you know.”

“Well, they won’t get anyone to believe that, my dear.”

“No, because she was as plain as can be. And Lady Deverish’s groom told cook that Dr. Andrew scarcely so much as looked at her.”

“And I never heard that he admired Lady Deverish.”

“Ah well, most men do.”

“I don’t see what she wants a nurse at all for. She’s the picture of health.”

“She says she suffers from nerves.”

“If all of us who suffer from ‘nerves’ were to have trained nurses looking after us, there wouldn’t be enough trained nurses to go round.”

“No, but all of us are not widows with the incomes of two rich dear departeds at our bankers, my dear.”

Now, knowing both her charming ladyship and Andrew, I was naturally interested as to why he had put hands about her beautiful throat in anything other than loving kindness. Therefore, I made a point of drinking tea with a number of amiable and gracious persons of my acquaintance during the week following his most notable attempt. All the information I got for my pains has been condensed into the foregoing gossip, and since it was insufficient for my purposes I set about seeking more. I called early at the Manor. I did not entirely credit rumour’s whisper concerning the victim’s mangled throat, but I knew Andrew’s muscular lean hands, if he had been in earnest, would, to say the least of it, have rendered her retirement for the space of some days prudent, so that I did not expect to see anybody but her companion, Mrs. Lyall.

“Gracious, how ill you look!” I could not help exclaiming, as she entered.

I had known her some months earlier a buxom matron. Now she was a haggard old woman. Her features worked and twisted. She slid into a chair, her hands and members shaking like those of one with palsy. For several minutes she could not speak.

“You must have been sadly troubled,” I said.

She was a mild and somewhat flaccid person, one of those plump anaemic women who give one the impression that their veins run milk. But as I spoke her face became contorted. She struggled up and brandished a trembling, clenched hand.

“If he had only done it!” she cried passionately, “if by some mercy of Providence he had only done it!”

She was transformed — distorted. It was as though some mild and milky Alderney had suddenly developed claws. She slid trembling again into her chair.

“My dear Mrs. Lyall,” I remonstrated, “if he had only done it, the world would have lost a beautiful and accomplished member of your sex — and poor Andrew’s career would have come to a summary and lamentable end.”

“No jury would have convicted him,” she protested, “not when they knew.” She dropped her voice and searched the room with apprehensive eyes. Then she whispered, “she is a devil.”

Now I was aware that some plain and very good women are in the habit of regarding every comely member of their sex as allied in one or another way with the Father of Evil, but it was clear that some sentiment stronger than general principles was moving Mrs. Lyall.

My interest was roused. But she had come to the end of her remarks. She glanced round timorously.

“For Heaven’s sake, Lord Syfret, do not mention a word of this,” she stammered. “I am so sadly unnerved. I scarcely know what I say. Poor Lady Deverish has been rather trying.” She shut her weak lips obstinately. I assured her of my discretion. I expressed sympathy, left messages, and went my way.

Byrne had nothing to tell. “Andrew will not say a word,” he said. “He was over-taxed. Been up several nights. She must have exasperated him somehow. Shouldn’t have thought he had it in him. He has always been the kindest of fellows.”

“What does she say?” “Laughs it off, though she don’t seem amiable. Looks as if she don’t want things to come out.”

“You don’t mean — ?”

“My dear fellow, whatever I mean, I don’t say.”

It has always been my habit in life to take the bull by the horns whensoever circumstances have rendered this feat at the same time possible and prudent. I determined to attempt it now. Andrew, after all, was a very mild and tractable bull, despite his recent outbreak.

“I will not disguise the object of my visit,” I informed him. “You know my weakness. Anything you tell me will go no further. The ball of Argle’s scandal will get no push from me. But I like to probe human motive; and you must admit the situation is suggestive.”

He smiled — a nervous smile. I had never before seen him so careworn. He shook his head. “She has tied my hands,” he said. “If they had let me I would have strangled her.”

“I do not wonder you are hard hit,” I ventured, watching him. “She is certainly a siren of the first water.”

He burst out laughing. “Great Scott!” he said. “Is that what they say? Do they think I am aspiring to the Deverish’s hand and acres? No, no; I am not altogether a fool.”

At this moment someone ran up the stairs, and, after a preliminary knock upon the door, burst into the room. “Please, doctor, come quick,” a pageboy blurted. “There’s Lady Deverish’s nurse has fallen down in the road, an they say she’s dying.”

The same change came over Andrew that had come over Mrs. Lyall. His face became contorted. He held a clenched fist in the air. “Damn her!” he cried, and rushed out.

Now this ejaculation had every appearance of applying to her ladyship’s nurse, and would point to an amount of callousness on Andrew’s part — considering the moribund condition of that unfortunate young person — of which I am sure he was incapable. I hasten, therefore, to inform the reader that it was intended solely and absolutely for her ladyship’s bewitching self. It was as fervid and whole-souled a fulmination as I remember to have heard. It left no doubt in my mind whatsoever as to the fact of her ladyship owing her life to that timely advent of her butler. My interest was not abated. I followed Andrew out. In the next street a knot of curious persons stood assembled.

“Stand back,” the doctor called as we went up. “Give her air.”

The circle immediately widened, disclosing the figure of a young woman in nursing dress, lying senseless on the pavement. Her upturned face was curiously pinched and worn, though the conformation was young, and her hair fallen loose about her cheek hung in girlish rings.

“She does not look strong enough for nursing,” I remarked to Byrne, who came up at the moment.

“Strong enough,” he echoed testily. “Why a week ago she was sturdy and robust. The Deverish takes care of that. Can’t stand sickliness about her.” He added half to himself, “Must be something wrong with the house. Drains bad or something. One after another, they’ve gone off like this.” The girl now began to show signs of consciousness. She opened her eyes, and seeing Andrew, smiled faintly. Presently she sat up.

“When you feel equal to it, my dear,” Dr. Byrne said, “we will help you to my carriage, and you can drive straight back.”

“Back,” she repeated wildly, “where?”

“Why, to the Manor. You must—”

She interrupted him, she caught his hand. “No, no,” she gasped, “not there, never there. I cannot stand another hour of it.”

“The beautiful Deverish must be something of a vixen,” I reflected, seeing the expression in the girl’s face.

Andrew was helping her to her feet. “Don’t be afraid,” he said quietly, “I will see that you do not go back.”

She looked into his face. “What is it?” she whispered, with white lips. “Do. you know?”

“Yes, I know,” he answered, meeting her look.

I had an inspiration. Among my clientele I numbered several trained nurses. I called in at the post-office on my way home and wired for one. In less than two hours she was with me. I despatched her to the Manor. “Say you have been sent from Heaven or Buckingham Palace, or any other probable and impressive source, and keep your eyes and ears open,” I enjoined her, with that utter disregard for truth and scrupulousness which I have found the greatest of all aids to me in my researches.

She returned in an hour. There was anger in her eyes. The gauze veil streaming from her bonnet fluttered manelike to the offended toss of her head.

“You did not stay long,” I said.

“My lord,” she returned, “I did not have the opportunity. Lady Devilish — I believe you called her Devilish — just came into the room and gave a little cry, and turned her back on me as if I’d been an ogre. ‘Oh, you would never suit,’ she said, ‘I must have someone young’ — my lord, I am twenty-six — ‘and plump’ — I weigh ten stone — and healthy’ — I have never had a day’s illness. ‘Send someone young, and plump, and healthy,’ and she marched out.”

“I suppose that would not be difficult?” I commented.

“Not at all,” she said, resolutely; “a little padding, a touch of rouge, and some minor details are all that are needed.”

“You mean to go yourself, then?”

“Yes, I mean to go,” she returned. “If there is anything to find out she may be sorry she wasn’t more civil,” she added, meditatively.

“Would she not recognise you?” I persisted. I admire grit. I admired the uncompromising and superior disdain with which she met my question. She turned and left me without condescending a word. In fifteen minutes she came back, or, rather, somebody did whose voice was all I recognised. Her disguise was perfect. Before, she had certainly looked neither youthful (despite her assurance as to twenty-six), nor plump (despite her boasted avoirdupois), nor healthy. Now she was plump, and young, and rosy. She had been dark; now a profusion of rich red hair rippled off her brows.

I wondered why she did not always go about disguised. She explained. “In most houses, my lord,” she said, “there are sons, and brothers, and husbands. A woman who has her living to get by nursing can only afford to sport cherry cheeks under exceptional circumstances.”

When she had gone I dipped my pen in coloured ink and entered her name in my diary. Whether or not she succeeded with Lady “Devilish,” she was a capable person. And capable persons are red-letter persons in a world where incompetency rules seven days out of most weeks.

CHAPTER II NURSE MARIAN’S STORY.

She received me with open arms.

“You’re just what I want,” she said effusively. “I loathe sickliness. There was a gaunt, haggard creature here an hour ago. Ugh!” she shuddered, “I would not have employed her for worlds.”

I may be prejudiced, but after her first remark I confess to feeling somewhat antipathetic to her ladyship. She has a curious way of staring. I suspect her of being short-sighted and shirking glasses for fear of detracting from her looks. Certainly I have never seen anyone so brilliantly beautiful.

Upstairs I was introduced to her companion, a Mrs. Lyall. She did not strike me as being altogether sane. She has rather a grim smile.

“You’ll soon lose those fine cheeks,” she said the moment she saw me. “I trust not,” I returned, with some amount of confidence. I had only just opened a new packet. “Is Lady Devilish rather a trying patient, then?” I asked. She broke into a laugh. “What did you call her?”

“I understood her name to be Devilish,” I said.

“No, it’s her nature,” she retorted, looking furtively about. “Her name has an ‘r’ instead of an ‘I.’”

Her ladyship was plainly no favourite of Mrs. Lyall’s. Indeed, everybody in the house seemed to be in mortal terror of her. The servants would not, if they could help it, enter a room where she was.

From the unhealthy faces of the household I came to the conclusion that the house was thoroughly unsanitary. I determined to investigate the drains. Whatsoever there might be that was unwholesome it did not affect the mistress. Her e was marvellous. She never tired. When, after a long day picnicking or a late ball everybody looked as white as paper, she was as fresh and blooming and gay-spirited as possible. It seemed a mere farce for her to employ a nurse. But she had a fad about massage, and insisted on being “massed” morning and night.

“You don’t look tired,” she remarked, in a puzzled way, at the end of my first night’s operations. She was staring curiously at my rouged cheeks. Strangely enough I was feeling actually faint. Strong-nerved as I am, I fairly reeled.

“Whatsoever I look,” I answered her, a little irritably, “I certainly feel more tired than I ever remember feeling.”

I thought she seemed pleased. Certainly I had said nothing to please her. No doubt she was thinking her own thoughts.

Her engagement to be married again was announced the day after my arrival. She had been already married twice. The young man — the Earl of Arlington — was, with a number of other persons, stopping in the house. He was a handsome, pleasant-looking man. I was told he had thrown over a girl he had cared for and who had cared for him for years in order to propose to Lady Deverish. He did not look capable of it. But, to all appearance, he was head over ears in love. He could not keep his eyes off her. He sat like a man bewitched, and neither ate nor rested.

“Poor young gentleman! He’ll go the way of the others,” Mrs. Plimmer, the housekeeper, confided to me.

“You don’t suspect Lady Deverish of poisoning her husbands?” I returned.

“It isn’t my place to suspect my betters, nurse,” she said with dignity. “All I say is that there’s something terrible mysterious. Why does everybody who comes to the Manor fail in health?”

“Drains,” I suggested.

She tossed her ample chin. “Why did her two young husbands, as likely men as might be, sicken from the day she married. them, and die consumptive? Was that drains, can you tell me?”

I thought it might have been, but having no evidence, did not commit myself.

Mrs. Plimmer tossed her ample chin again, this time triumphantly. “And why,” she proceeded, “did Dr. Andrew, as kind a gentleman as walks, try to strangle her?”

I braved her scorn and ventured “jealousy.”

She eyed me witheringly. “The doctor’s no lady’s man,” she said, “and, besides, if he was, it’s no reason for strangling them.”

I was unable to find any fault with the drains. I began to grow interested. I myself felt strangely out of sorts — a new experience for me.

Lord Arlington’s infatuation amounted to possession. He sat staring at her in a kind of ecstasy of fascination. He was pale and moody and obviously unhappy. I was told he had lost health and spirits markedly since his engagement. Probably his conscience troubled him about the other woman. At breakfast one morning he unwrapped a little packet that had come by post for him, without, it is to be supposed, observing the handwriting. As he undid it mechanically there dropped from the wrappings a ring, a knot of ribbon and a bundle of letters. He seemed like one stunned. Without a word he gathered them together and left the room. I met him later pacing the garden like a madman.

Poor man! His love-affair was short-lived.

A week later I was involuntary witness to a curious scene. I was sitting late one evening in the garden. Lady Deverish would not need me until bedtime, when her massage was due. Suddenly he and she, talking excitedly, came round the shrubbery.

“I have been mad,” he exclaimed, in a hoarse, passionate voice. “For God’s sake let me go free. They say her heart is broken.”

She put her two hands on his shoulders, and lifted her face to his. “I will never let you go,” she said, with a curious ring as of metal in her voice. She wound her arms about his neck and kissed his throat. “And you love me too much,” she added.

“Heaven only knows if it is love,” he answered, “it seems to me like madness. I had loved her faithfully for years.”

“And now you love me, and there is no way out of it,” she whispered. She leaned up again and kissed him. Then with a little cooing laugh she left him.

His love-affair was short. He remained looking after her. “Yes, there is one way out of it,” I heard him say slowly.

That night he shot himself.

Now, although I had known her but a fortnight, I had known her long enough to believe her superior to the weakness of being very deeply in love. Yet the night he died I was inclined to alter my opinion. He had bidden her a hasty goodbye, saying he was summoned to town. He took the last train up.

During the night I was called to her. I found her sitting up in bed, her face ashen pale, her eyes distended, her hands clasped to her head. She was gasping hysterically for breath. She seemed like one stricken: her features were picked out by deep, grey lines. She did not speak, but pointed with an insistent finger to her right temple. I! put my hand upon it. Then I called quickly for a light; for my fingers slipped along that which seemed to be a moist and clammy aperture, moist with a horrible, unmistakable clamminess. But when the light was brought there was neither blood nor aperture, only a curious, blanched, irregular spot, that was chill to the touch.

I gave her brandy, and put hot bottles in her bed. She was shaking like one with ague. She clutched my hands, holding them against that ice-spot in her temple till I was sick and faint with the constrained position. Soon she seemed better. Some colour returned to her.

“My God, he is dead!” she said, through chattering teeth. Then she crouched down in the bed in a shuddering heap.

Next morning the news came. In that same hour he had put a bullet through his right temple. She was ill all that day, nerveless, and almost pulseless. She looked ten years older. I never saw so singular a change in anybody. I sent for Dr. Byrne, who attributed it to the shock of bad news. Why it developed some hours before the news arrived he did not explain. He only said: “Tut, tut, nurse, life is full of coincidences,” and prescribed ammonia.

Next day she was better, and suggested getting up, but changed her mind after having seen a mirror. “Gracious!” she said, with a shudder, “I look like an old woman.” She broke into feeble weeping. “He ought to have thought of me,” she cried, angrily.

She demanded wine and meat-juices, taking them with a curious solicitude, and carefully looking into her mirror for their effect. But she saw little there to comfort her.

“Do you think it might be my death-blow?” she questioned me once through quivering lips. I shook my head. “Ah, you don’t know all,” she muttered.

In the afternoon she asked in a strange voice that the gardener’s child should be brought to her. He was a chubby, rosy little fellow, whom everybody petted. “I must have something to liven me,” she said. I had never supposed her fond of children. But she held her arms hungrily for him, and strained him to her breast. Her spirits rose. Her eyes brightened: she got colour. Soon she was laughing and chatting in her accustomed manner. The child had fallen asleep, but she would not part with him. When at last she let him go, I was horrified to find him cold and pallid. He was breathing heavily, and quite unconscious. I concluded the poor little chap was sickening for something. Later, I was surprised to receive a note from Dr. Andrew, whom I did not know. I dismissed him as I had done Mrs. Lyall, and probably Mrs. Plimmer, as not altogether sane. “I have been called in to attend Willy Daniels,” the note ran. “For Heaven’s sake do not let her get hold of any more children.”

Next day she was better. She seemed to have forgotten Arlington and talked only of her health. She asked again for the boy. I told her he was ill. She broke into a curious laugh that seemed uncalled for. “Thank goodness, I haven’t lost my power,” she said a minute later. But she did not explain the saying.

She was in high spirits all the morning, talking and singing and trying on new laces and bonnets. She still complained of pain in the right temple. After her massage she turned peevish, protesting that it did her no good. “If you hadn’t such a colour I should not believe you healthy,” she said, crossly.

She had the parson’s children in to tea. It would amuse her, she said, to see them eat their strawberries, They seemed afraid of her, and stood eyeing her from a distance. When she attempted to take the little one, it clung to me and shrieked with terror. But she persisted, and it soon fell asleep in her arms. When presently I took it from her, I found it chilled and breathing stertorously and quite unconscious. I thought of Dr. Andrew’s injunction. Heavens! what had she done? Was she a secret poisoner? I dismissed the notion forthwith. I had not left the room a moment during the time the child was with her, nor during the time the child was with her, nor had it taken anything to eat or to drink.

“What is the matter with it?” I demanded.

Her eye avoided mine. She answered nonchalantly: “What does one expect? Children are everlastingly teething or over-feeding or having measles.”

Next morning I was called up at daybreak. Dr. Andrew was waiting to see me. I threw on my things and went down. He was stalking up and down the drawing-room. He stared at me.

“You seem to have resisted her,” he muttered, looking at my cheeks. I have a long memory, and had not forgotten my rouge. He told me a wild and incredible story. He wound up by handing me a small bottle.

“Give her that dose so soon as she wakes,” he said. The man was probably a better doctor than he was an actor. His manner paraded the nature of the dose. I took out the cork and smelt it. It was as I suspected. I walked across the room and emptied its contents out of the window. “Pardon me,” I said, “but you are exceeding your duty.”

“Is she to be allowed to go on murdering people?” he protested. “Do you know I have been up all night with that unfortunate baby? Do you know that Willy Daniels is not yet out of danger. Good Heavens! if I am willing to take the consequences how can anyone who knows the circumstances hesitate?”

“I have a safer and more justifiable plan,” I said. “If what you say is true, the remedy is simple and poison is uncalled for. After all, Dr. Andrew, your story would sound lame enough in a law court. By my plan you run no risks.”

I laid it before him. He seemed interested, But he would not, after the manner of men in their dealings with women, permit me to take too much credit to myself.

“It might work,” he said lukewarmly, “and as you say it would certainly be safer.”

I went to my room and opened a further packet of rouge. I applied it lavishly. I began to see that the health tint on my cheeks had an important bearing on the situation. I put vermilion on. my lips. Then I carried my patient her breakfast.

She seemed restored and lay in he rose-pink bed, a smiling Venus. She fairly glowed with beautiful health. I thought of that poor little sick-bed. “Goodness!” I said with a start, “how ill you look!” She ceased from smiling. She leapt across the floor, her draperies clinging round her pink flushed toes. She fled to the glass and drew the curtain aside. She turned on me peevishly. “Why did you tell me?” she protested. “I should have thought I looked well.”

I went and stood beside her. “C pare yourself with me.”

She was pale enough indeed by the time she had done so. “Am I losing my power after all?” she muttered. “Heavens! Shall I grow old like other people?” Suddenly she flung herself upon me. She pressed her lips and cheeks against my throat and face.

“Give me some of it,” she Cried ravenously. “You have so much vitality. Let me drain some of that rich health and colour.”

I nearly fell. It seemed as if she were actually sucking out my life. I reeled and sickened. Then with a tremendous effort I pushed her away and stumbled from the room. Was Andrew’s story indeed true? Was she a monster or merely a monomaniac?

Years ago he had said she was dying of consumption. So far as physical signs could be trusted she had not a week to live. Suddenly she began to recover. She made flesh rapidly, gained health, and came back to life from the very jaws of death. Meanwhile, her sister, a sturdy schoolgirl, whom she insisted on having always with her, sickened and died.

Then a brother died, then her mother. By this time she had grown quite strong. Since then she had lived on the vital forces of those surrounding her. “The law of life,” he said, “makes creatures interdependent. Physical vitality is subject to physical laws of diffusion and equalisation. One person below par absorbs the nerve and life sources of healthier persons with them. Many old, debilitated subjects live on the animal forces of the cat they keep persistently in their chair, and die when it dies. Wives and husbands, sisters and brothers, friends and acquaintances: there is a constant interchange of vital force. Lady Deverish has to my knowledge been the actual cause of death of a dozen persons. Besides these she has drained the health of everybody associated with her. And in her case — a rare and extreme one — the faculty is conscious and voluntary. She was living on Arlington. The man was powerless. She paralysed his will, his mind, his energies. She robbed him of strength to resist her. The sequel is interesting, psychologically. She being for the time charged with his vitality, his sudden death, by some curious sympathy, affected her in the way you have described. She was all at once and violently bereft of the source whence she was drawing energy. But she will soon, if she be allowed, find some other to prey on. For some years I have studied her closely. She is the archetype of a class of persons I have had under observation. I find such power depends largely on force of will and concentration. If she can maintain these there is no reason why she should not live to a hundred. There will always be persons of less assertive selfishness to serve as reservoirs of vital strength to her. At present her confidence is shaken, her power — therefore her life trembles in the balance. In the interests of humanity and justice, she must not be allowed to regain her confidence. She lives by wholesale murder.”

CHAPTER III

I drank a glass of port and went back to my patient. She lay panting on her bed.

“Fie!” I said; “that was a bit of hysteria. Come, now, take your breakfast.”

She looked me in the face. A terror of death stood in beads on her skin. “I have heard of transfusion,” she said faintly; “if you will let me have some of the rich red blood run out of your veins into mine I will settle £500 a year on you.”

I shook my head.

“A thousand,” she said. “Fifteen hundred.”

“I should be cheating you,” I said, “even were I willing. The operation has never been really successful.”

She broke into raving and tears. “I cannot die,” she said; “I love life. I love being beautiful and rich; I love admiration. I must have admiration! I love my beautiful, beautiful body and the joy of life! I cannot, cannot die!”

“What nonsense,” I said. “You are not going to die.”

“If I could only get it,” she raved, “I would drink blood out of living bodies rather than I would die.”

An hour later she summoned the housekeeper. She had been cogitating deeply with a fold between her brows; her sharp teeth set like pearls in the red of her lower lip.

“Plimmer,” she said, “give all the servants a month’s wages and an hour’s notice to quit. I cannot endure their sickly faces. Get in a staff of decent healthy people. These cadaverous wretches are killing me.”

Plimmer left the room without a word. At the door she cast one look toward me and threw her hands up, as one who says: “The Lord have mercy on us!”

I followed, and bade her stay her hand. Whether Andrew’s theories were true, or whether my lady were but a person with a mania, there was no doubt but that her convictions played an important part in her case.

I threw on my things and expended a half-sovereign at the chemist’s. I came back the possessor of sundry packets. These I distributed among the household with explicit directions. Her ladyship was not well; her whim must be humoured.

It is surprising what a little rouge will do. In a few minutes the servants’ hall was a scene Arcadian. Even the elderly butler reverted to blooming youth. Then I said to her cheerfully:

“You are making a mistake about the servants. For my part I am struck with their healthy looks.”

“Since I have been ill?” she faltered. She lay quiet, breathing hard through her dilated nostrils. “Send some of them in,” she said presently.

By the time they had gone she was as white as paper. “Good Heavens!” I heard her mutter, “I have lost my power. I am a dead woman.”

Then she flung out her arms and wept. “Get me healthy children,” she cried; “I must have health about me.”

Dr. Byrne, who was attending her, assented in all innocence. “Why, of course,” he said; “it will be cheerful for you. Get in some cherry-cheeked children to amuse her ladyship, nurse.”

I nodded — in token that I was not deaf, and not at all in acquiescence. Food and wine I supplied abundantly, but neither children nor adults. I isolated her in toto. I allowed her maids only to come near her long enough to dust and arrange her room. I have seen her fix them with a basilisk stare, straining her will. She had undoubtedly some baleful hypnotic power that set them trembling and stumbling about in curious, aimless fashion. They would seem drawn as by some spell, to stand motionless and dazed beside her bed. Then I would turn them face about, and parading their roseate tints, scold them for idleness and dismiss them. She would stare after them in a despair that, under other circumstances, would have been pitiful. The sense that her power was gone robbed her actually of power. She raved and cursed her self-murdered lover for involving her in his death.

Whether Dr. Andrew and I were justified in that we did I sometimes wonder now. Then I had no room for doubt. In face of the horrible facts it did not occur to me to question it. If that she believed were true, we were assuredly justified; if not, that we did could not affect results.

Andrew’s theory of those results is that she had lived so long on human energy that food in the crude state stood her in little stead. Certainly, though she was fed unremittingly on the choicest and most nourishing of diets, she was an aged and haggard woman in a week. Nobody would have recognised her. She shrivelled and shrank like one cholera-sticken. One day her dog stole into the room. She put out her hand and clutched it voraciously. I took it an hour later from her. It was dead and stiff.

How I myself, and a nurse I had called in to help me, kept life in us I cannot say. I had been an abstainer. Now I drank wine like water. All round her bed was an atmosphere as of a vault, though outside it was sunny June.

She raged like one possessed. “You are murdering, murdering me,” she cried unceasingly.

Dr. Byrne thought her mind wandering. I knew it centred with a monstrous, selfish sanity. He sent for one of the first London consultants. After a lengthy investigation the great mar pronounced her suffering from some obscure nervous disease. “Nothing to be done,” he said. “I give her three days: most interesting case. Hope you will succeed in getting a post-mortem.”

Once she fixed me with her baleful eyes, how baleful was seen now that their fine lustre and the bloom that had been beneath them were gone.

“I have had ten years more of life and pleasure than my due,” she chuckled in her shrivelled throat — the throat now of an old, old woman.

Then she broke into dry-eyed crying. “I thought I could have lived another ten.” She begged once for a mirror. I thank Heaven that with all my heat of indignation against her, I was not guilty of that cruelty.

Dr. Andrew called daily for my bulletin. Everything that science afforded in the way of concentrated and digestible food and stimulant, he religiously got down from London.

“We must give her every chance,” he said, “every justifiable chance, that is.”

After a few days I was again single-handed. My nurse-colleague succumbed. I felt my powers failing. I could scarcely drag about. I prayed Heaven for strength to last so long as she should. Even in the moment of dissolution, such was her frenzied greed of life, I believed should some non-resistant person take my place, she would struggle back to health.

Once when I arranged her pillows, she seized my hand, and before I could withdraw it she had carried it to her teeth and bitten into it. I felt her suck the blood voraciously. She cried out and struck at me as I wrenched it away.

She died in the third week of her isolation. I saw the death change come into her shrivelled face. Then in the moment that life left her she made one supremest effort.

It seemed as though my heart stopped. My head sank on my chest, my hands dropped at my side. Then I swayed and fell headlong across her bed. They found me later lying on her corpse. I am convinced that had she been a moment earlier, had she nerved her powers the instant before, rather than on the instant life was leaving her, she would be alive to this day, and I — well, as it was I did not leave my bed for a month.

******************

“If I were to write that story in the Lancet,” Dr. Andrew said, “I should be the laughing-stock of the profession. Yet it is the very keynote of human health and human disease, this interchange of vital force that goes on continually between individuals. Such rapacity and greed as the Deverish’s is fortunately rare, but there are a score of such vampires in this very town, vampires in lesser degree. When A. talks with me ten minutes I feel ten years older. It takes me an hour to bring my nerve-power up to par again. People call him a bore. In reality he is a rapacious egotist hungrily absorbing the force of anyone with whom he comes into relation — in other words, a human vampire

HONARIA’S HERO

Dec. 1896

CHAPTER I

“Who is that, Sergeant?”

To address a policeman as sergeant is the road royal to his heart, but today the password failed. He was gazing stupidly, and with an abashed countenance, after a thin little man who had returned his obsequious salutation with a cold stare. He remained looking after this uncivil person till he had passed from sight. Then he stooped and flicked a speck of dust from the knee of his uniform with an overdone indifference.

“That’s McFerret, of Scotland Yard, our boss-detective, your lordship.”

“You don’t seem to be a favourite of his.”

“I forgot my dooty, your lordship, and he’s not the one to forget I forgot it. My dooty was not to reco’nise ’im.”

“Ah,” I said. “He’s after somebody, I suppose?”

Policeman R. looked knowing. Then he resumed his depressed air.

“I igspec I sh’ll never ’ear the end o’ it,” he said dejectedly. “I did it once before and it put me back a year.”

I slipped five shillings into his ready palm.

“Anything up?” I questioned.

“Must be, your lordship, or he wouldn’t be here. But, bless you, he don’t tell me. He’s as deep as a reservoy. Look out, he’s coming back.”

The thin little man was returning at a great pace. Something had happened it was plain. There was triumphant excitement in every nervous line of him. Policeman R. simulated unacquaintance to such purpose that half a mile away you would have supposed the man approaching to be his principal creditor.

The thin man passed in the road without turning his head. As he passed he threw these words out sideways:

“Notice young woman walking with young man.”

Three minutes later a couple sauntered into sight. My eye was on the man, so that I did not recognise his companion till they were abreast of us. He was a well-built, gentleman-like fellow, with a face that would have been handsome had his brow and jaw accorded better. As it was, the disproportion between brain-stuff and brute-stuff jarred me with a sense of insecurity. That jaw of his was capable of taking the brain between its teeth and bolting in a manner that argued ill to such as stood in its way. For the rest he was broad-shouldered, erect, and carried himself well in his tweeds.

Then my eyes went to his companion. I had only time to raise my hat. She did not notice my salute. She did not see me at all. Her pale face was lifted to the well-cut profile of the man beside her. There were tears on her lashes and love in her eyes. There was something more. I am a bachelor, and I trust by the good offices of Fate to die in that state. But I am a man, and I know what that look means in a woman’s face. I know it means, God help her if the conventions of the world have not been satisfied.

As they passed he flashed from under his narrow brows one keen, dare-devil glance in our direction. His voice was lowered: he seemed to be reassuring her. She had no eyes nor ears for anything but him. It seemed to me she did not listen to his words, but only heard his voice. Twice I saw her carry a trembling hand to her lips, and lay it secretly and with a tender fondness on his shoulder.

I had known her from childhood. I put myself between her and the contable’s stare. But the more delicate issues of the case had quite escaped him. His face was one broad grin. He chuckled and slapped his thigh.

“Danged if I ain’t got back at him,” he blustered. “The best joak out. He doan’t make mistakes hisself, doan’t my fine gentleman?”

I let him talk. I had other things to think of. Presently McFerret reappeared.

“Well?” he questioned.

“Well, sir,” the constable returned, with an intonation of civility that the superior criticism of his eye belied.

“Do you know her?”

“Who?”

“Who! Why, the woman with him. The woman who just passed.”

The constable looked important. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” he rejoined, “I ain’t seen any woman pass, though I might ha’ seen a lady.”

“Lady!” the other echoed. “I guess ladies don’t go about with Ted Squance.”

“Thet Ted Squance?” Constable R. interrogated. “Well, now you come to tell me it. I shouldn’t ha’ thought it.”

The thin man lost his temper. “Why the deuce don’t you answer my question?”

“Beg pardon, sir,” the other said. “I was that took aback becos’ I knows both the lady and the gent, and I think—”

“Keep your reflections to yourself, and tell me her name.”

“Well, her name’s Miss ’Onnery Deans, and she’s old Squire Deans’s granddaughter; and the gent’s a gent as stops at the Court a good bit, which ain’t surprisin’ seein’ he’s the Squire’s grand-nephew,” the constable announced, hammering his information into his superior with the indiscreet alacrity of the common fool driving nails into his coffin.

McFerret levelled at him one look which was an epitaph. Then he took a “D” between his teeth and strode off down the road with the air of a man somewhat late for his train.

“What was the object of that lie?” I asked. “You know the squire has no grand-nephew.”

The constable slapped his thigh. “Begging your lordship’s pardon,” he explained. “I giv’ him as good as he’s wuth. P’raps he’ll be civiller another time.”

But the policy of rapping at one’s superiors in office does not pay. The following week a new constable stood at the corner, in the old one’s shoes. The old constable had passed from the ranks of the intelligent force. To this day he may be hired as a hewer of wood or a hoer of potatoes.

CHAPTER II

I had known Squire Deans, if anybody might be said to know him, all my life. He was, I imagine, somewhere to be found inside the crustacean accretion of lore and learning he had deposited about him like a shell, but I must confess I never came across a man who had succeeded in penetrating his most exterior cuticle. Like a tortoise he would sometimes steal a clumsy head out, or advance an extremity, and, as you would do with a tortoise, so with him, you had to take such evidence as proof that the shell contained an entity with a nervous and circulatory system.

Deans Court was a structure rambling and immense, dating from the Seventeenth Century. The original building had been so greatly and so incongruously extended, that it gave you the impression of a strange amphibious monster with more limbs than it required. Moreover, it was tunnelled with subterranean passages wherein, at certain seasons, the wind howled like a dog scenting death. There were secret panellings and sliding walls, and every possible device for such games of hide-and-seek as were played when the seeker carried naked, and it might be dripping, sword in hand, and the hider his life. The oaken floors were dyed in parts with the life-stain that is said not to wash out. Footsteps, booted and spurred, rang over them boldly, and in broad daylight. Silken garments rustled shyly, or fled shivering down the passages. And, doubtless, headless persons walked, for no ghost story that ever has been told of haunted house was not accredited to this one.

The squire was the only person who had never seen or heard anything out of the common, but you would not expect that anything out of the common would trouble to knock long enough upon his horny crust to make itself perceived.

Honoria Deans had never been to boarding-school, for which, from one standpoint, she had something to be thankful. Boarding-schools are human mills whence girls are turned out commonplace and “by the gross” — as toys are “made in Germany.”

Her grandfather did not approve of education for girls. He regarded it as waste of good material. He did not, as a matter of fact, approve of girls at all; indeed, his mind was ever in a twilight of astonishment as to why woman had been created. With means so multiple, resources so fertile at her command, it appeared to him quite simple for Nature to have devised some other expedient whereby a race, masculine and competent, should be perpetuated. “Honoria has the library,” he would say with regard to his granddaughter’s education, “so long as she does not meddle with my theological section. What more can she want?”

Whatscever she wanted it was not in the theological section. So Honoria had the library, and she had the garden. The one served her for schoolhouse, the other for playground. She had absolutely no companions, young or old.

“Honoria has me,” the crustacean had always said, “it is not as if she were alone in the house.”

But I do not think Honoria made great demands upon the crustacean for his society. She had other resources She peopled the garden with persons she met in the library; not the monkish fellows of the theological section, but persons in armour and helmet, in doublet and hose, heroes, and knights and ladies, saints and chivalrous sinners. These she released from the barred imprisonment of printed pages and led them gentle-handed into the sunlight and breeze of the old, wild garden. I have seen her walk and talk there with them; her face aglow, her footstep light and buoyant keeping pace with their fantastic gait, her eyes drinking glimpses, her ears whisperings, of their phantasmal company. Her grandfather was in some ways right. She was more in her element with these persons of print than she would have been in the society of school misses infected with a scarlet fever of fine clothes, a measles of self-consciousness, shooting languishing affected glances after the chemist’s assistant or music-master — who happened at the moment to be the vulgar idol of the school. If any of Honoria’s knights or heroes kissed her on her flushing cheek, or brushed her fingers with aerial hands, what harm was in it? He was a man who had been dead some hundred years, or a man sprung from the finer elements of a romanticist’s brain, or a man she had fashioned out of the innocent materials of her own heart. In fine, he was a man for the anatomist to scoff at: a man without any of the dross that serves to keep a head out of the skies, and concerns itself with street-paving, and the disposal of the civic mud; a man with bone and muscle only for the loftiest deeds; a man who would be always running against the telegraph wires seeking unchivalrous giants whom he might devour, a man of such unequal that were you to stand him up against a wall he would assuredly pitch over lop-sided, ill-balanced, top-heavy with super-excellence and virtue. Yet, not a man too great to see how fair a girl may look when the winds of a wayward morning or the dreams of a winter night have kindled her eyes and flushed her cheeks. Oh! I pray you not too great a man for that! Nor one too bent on knightly deeds to miss perceiving how her last new frock became her. A man to go to the lions for his God, a man to war with dragons for his love, a man to lead a conquering army, a man to be Prime Minister or Czar, a man to pen great books, a man altogether too square for this round world of ours, but not a man to harm a girl though she admitted him to her most intimate society, and in her tenderest moods. Honoria’s lovers, doubtless, rang the changes, down the ages from King Arthur to Carlyle. They were altogether a gay chameleon, changing their colour according to the page on which they happened to be found. So I had learned from sundry little talks and walks I shared with her when she had grown too old to be ridden on a knee, and later, too young to be kissed.

But now it appeared Honoria had got a lover in the h, and — if that face of hers told truth — had, Heaven help her, thought him good enough and top-heavy like that man of her imagining to be admitted to her loneliest moods.

I jumped the fence one noon and met her as she turned the path. Heaven help her, indeed, poor child! There was more now than face to betray her. She walked slowly and with lids drooped low on a pale cheek. Her cloak had blown aside, and her simplicity took no heed to fold it to its place again. It was December, and the snow lay crisp. She did not hear me come. Till, suddenly, she raised her eyes. Now, thanks be to innocence, the man had failed to harm her! However much a ruffian he might be, he had not harmed her. Between him and his kisses there had ever come the knight who had been dead some hundred years, the hero who had braved the lions, the warrior, the poet, the Prime Minister, the top-heavy, lop-sided, impracticable creature of her innocent imaginings. The man had brought shame on her in the world’s sight. In her own there was none — only wonder and a girl’s awe of a tender human mystery — a mystery that had been told with all the baseness blotted out by that shadowy hero of hers.

I noticed that she wore a wedding ring. Of course! Honoria’s sensitive pride would not have satisfied itself with anything less. I pictured such a marriage ceremony as might have taken place in the ruined chapel of the court, the wind moaning, as it had a way of doing, melancholy dirges through the broken organ tubes, the dim light lying on the faded banners, marble persons folding marble hands in everlasting prayer, saints and martyrs richly apparelled crowding the windows and emblazoning the light, an owl or two blinking wide-lidded in the dusty chancel, the mice lying close in their holes, while Honoria stood rapt and reverent looking with blind and tender eyes into a low-browed, strong-jawed face, and seeing in it only the familiar trusted features of her hero.

Doubtless the man had been priest as well as bridegroom. Possibly he had read the commination or baptismal service. I was sure it had been all the same to Honoria, whose rapt ears heard but the celestial music of a heaven-made union. Before I had time to speak to her, Honoria broke suddenly into tears.

“Why, Honoria!” I said.

She stopped in her walk and, faced me. She put her two hands on my shoulders. I could see how thin her face was, how drawn about the mouth. But there was light in her eyes.

“Uncle Syfret,” she said, tremulously (I was no uncle of hers, but it pleased her so to style me), “there are things wonderful, terrible things going to happen. Oh, if I might only tell you.”

“Are you going to have a new frock, Ria, or a season in town?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Oh, I am a child no longer,” she said. “You forget I was seventeen last month.”

“And when may these wonders be expected to take place?” I questioned. “And why terrible? Is anybody to be hurt?”

Her mouth quivered at the corners. “You see it cannot be helped,” she said, “some must be killed — not more than are absolutely necessary. Because, in the end, it is to be so much better for the others.”

“I suppose you are talking of the rooks? Has the Squire consented, at last, to have them thinned?”

“The rooks?” she echoed. She turned astonished eyes to me. “Have you not heard? Has the secret been so well kept?”

“So well kept that I had not a notion it existed. Yet I was with your grandfather yesterday.”

“Oh, he knows nothing,” she answered, with an undutiful scorn. “He does not even know the Queen is a usurper.”

“Well, as you put it like that, Honoria, I confess I was suffering under the same delusion. Into what revolutionary treatise have you been dipping?”

She suddenly wrung her hands. “Oh, what a work it will be,” she cried, distressed. “When even you, who know so much, believe her a lawful queen.”

Seeing her take it so to heart, I expressed myself open to conviction. I had always been led to regard the succession as indisputable, but I was not a man of stubborn prejudices.

She shook her head.

“No, I have said enough,” she insisted. Nevertheless, she held a finger up and whispered oracularly, “Wait until Christmas eve, uncle.”

“I suppose I have no alternative,” I answered. “But, tell me, Ria, are these wonderful and terrible things of such a nature that one should insure his life?”

“Oh, why will you laugh?” she cried, distressed, “when it is all so real.”

I remembered a number of former distresses that had been so real, starting from the time when, at eight years old, I found her without shoes or stockings, and wearing little but a ragged petticoat, leaving home with her grandfather’s walking-stick in hand, and a burden on her shivering shoulders, to find the Slough of Despond, Great-Heart, and the Little Wicket-Gate.

“I am not laughing, dear,” I said. “You know I would serve you in any way. But, tell me, have you no trouble outside this which concerns itself with usurping queens?”

In a moment her attitude changed. She lifted a shining face; her eyes were lambent. “No,” she said, “beyond that there is nothing but a great joy.”

She laid a hand wistfully on mine.

“Uncle Syfret,” she said, shyly, “do you know I am ever so sorry for any man I like because God did not will that he should be a woman.”

Poor Honoria! She was but seventeen.

CHAPTER III

For some months the ghosts at the Court had been lively. It would appear they were holding high revel. Quite late into the morning lights were seen burning in the windows; indeed, on more than one occasion they had been overtaken by the milkman, therein registering a sad anachronism. Footsteps were not only heard in the garden, but were traced there next morning, and apparitions which had not been known to put their heads outside the door for years were observed one midnight filing mysteriously out of the shrubbery. A gardener’s boy had even overheard remarks let fall by an armoured gentleman he afterwards identified in the picture-gallery — a gentleman in breastplate, full-bottomed wig, and lace cravat — remarks which were somewhat more fin-de-siécle than befitted his period and dignity.

“Burn yer blooming soul,” he was reported to have blustered, with a distinctness beyond dispute, “d’yer think I’d stir my bloomin’ boots ef it wasn’t for the tin?”

The sentiment I could not deny as one common to all ages, but the language wherein it was stated did not appeal to me as characteristic of a Seventeenth Century magnate. I dismissed the gardener’s hopeful, therefore, as a person on whose word it would be insecure to build history, though there were some who staked their reputations on it. Servants began to leave, and that at a moment’s notice. One young woman left in sore dudgeon, declaring that she kept company with a respectable grocer, and she wasn’t going to be kissed round corners — gentlemen or no gentlemen, ghosts or no ghosts — by “wicked fellows, who ought to be laying like other decent corpses in their coffins.” Everybody predicted that “something was about to happen,” else why all this post-mortem activity. In former times the manifestations had been rare, and more or less retiring, now they showed a lively disposition to turn the living out of house and home.

I strolled out late one evening. If there were truly things to be seen — The snow made a sort of drab twilight of a moonless night. The Court, with its broad low façade and spread wings, lay like an eyeless creature, crouching in the shelter of tall trees. Not a light was to be seen. Even the west wing, which stretched out from the main building and climbed a slope — the wing reputed to be the headquarters of the trouble — was as dark and silent as the rest. I went in at the main gateway, and strolled in the direction of that western wing. As I went round its outer curve, I discovered that my first impression of desertion had been wrong. There was certainly a light burning; a curtain caught up at one corner of a window disclosed a triangular glare. I threw my cigar away. I took my shoes off — the thing had grown interesting. I stole in my stockinged feet towards the window.

Having looked in, it is possible I rubbed my eyes; one does in such cases. Certainly there was cause enough for rubbing eyes, for nobody would have expected to come upon a scene out of Madame Tussaud’s, or a charade, at that hour of night in the house of a crustacean neighbour. Side by side on a raised dais sat two crowned figures, one male, the other female, round them a group of courtiers, dressed in shining armour and rich stuffs. The crowned woman was of girlish figure, and her robe of ermine-bordered velvet fell over her. young shoulders as though she shrank inside its pretentious dignity. Her face was turned away, but the light made a slender shadow of a girlish cheek. The man beside her was of heavy build. His crown, and a mass of curls falling just short of his shoulders, hid his features. All I could distinguish was the bend of an iron jaw.. He held a staff in one hand, and from time to time pointed his remarks with it. The crowned woman kept her face turned toward him, the anxious outline of her cheek lifting itself to him in a wistful curve out of a veil of silver tissue. The courtiers stood in a circle on the lower plane of the floor, their profiles to me. The room was brilliantly lighted. The crowned man seemed to be speaking at length. Some uneasy impulse stirred in me to see the woman’s face. I moved towards another window; my foot caught, I tripped headlong. As I fell, I thought I heard the distant ripple of a bell. When I stood up again the scene had vanished. On the other side of the window was abysmal blackness. King, queen, and courtiers had like a flash of lightning; where there had been a brilliant illumination now there was no glimmer of light.

I waited for an hour with my eyes against the windowpane. I might have spared myself the trouble, not a sound nor sight was vouchsafed me. Then I put on my shoes and went home. Had I seen ghosts? Who were the crowned personages? who the courtiers?

A memory came back — I had scarcely noticed it at the time — but it came back with farcical insistence. One of the courtiers during the king’s address had bent his head towards a neighbour, and jerked over his shoulder a thumb of derision in the direction of the velvet-robed girl. At the same time a plume of his jewelled cap had caught in a brooch on his fellow’s shoulder. Immediately his curls were twisted awry; a momentary glimpse of a close-cropped crown put a new complexion on his features. In those days, possibly, there were cockney cut-throats; in those days, doubtless, men wore artificial love-locks. But it was a bit of realism that excited my suspicion. Who, then, was the girl? Something in the lifted outline of the cheek perturbed me. I determined to put the matter into other hands.

CHAPTER IV

“If you please your lordship, I am sorry to disturb your lordship’s breakfast, but the gentleman who dined with you last night has been found murdered at the Court.”

I did not finish my second cutlet. In less time than that would have taken I had joined a knot of men who stood grouped about something lying in the snow before the western wing. The news was more true than most news. McEwan — a smart young fellow I had set upon the enigma of the Court — lay huddled in an area of trampled snow as only a dead man lies. It was a ghastly spectacle: he had been literally kicked to death. In one hand was the revolver I had given him the previous evening. Two of its charges had been fired, apparently to some purpose, for some twenty feet from him the snow was disturbed again, and showed a patch and trail of blood. Somebody reported having heard shots fired during the night.

The squire was dragged from his study, whence he came sidling and reluctant. He could not see, he said, what use his presence served. The man was obviously dead; it was a case for the police. Meanwhile proofs of Pantheistic Man lay uncorrected in his study. He gave up the keys of the house with peevish eagerness. We might search the west wing certainly, and the east wing, and the main building. The whole place was free to us to come and go so long as we did not invade the library or meddle with his theological section.

The west wing showed suspicious signs of occupation. For years the door between it and the rest of the house had been locked and bolted, neither servants nor members of the family being known to enter it; yet the dust of the floors showed prints of heavy boots, such boots as those that had done poor McEwan to death; and the furniture was brushed bright in parts from recent use. The key of the door, but only I knew this, was in Honoria’s possession. To all my questions she turned only a white, horror-stricken silence. “It had to be,” she said, and “Wait until Christmas eve.”

After much fruitless investigation, the crime was laid to the already heavy account of a local gang of poachers, and the police directed their energies accordingly. For a while the west wing lost its evil name, the lights and sounds had vanished.

One evening I received a note from Honoria. It was written in an agitated hand, and preferred a request. I should have regarded it as singular from any other than this girl. But anything in Honoria that was not singular, would have been singular in Honoria. She sent me a case of rings and her little pearl-set watch, and begged that I would lend her a few thousand pounds. Knowing Honoria, the request surprised me. The rings and watch at the most were not worth two hundred. I was acquainted with Honoria’s jewel-case. It had been well if somewhat venerably stocked; and the fact that Honoria, poor child, had sent me so little security for my money was evidence enough that these slender possessions were all that remained to her, During this time I had done my utmost to obtain her confidence; but she kept her secret with all the fond tenacity of woman shielding man.

I answered her note in person. The facts looked serious. She was sitting in the little morning-room, her face buried in her hands. I was shocked indeed to see her, she was so white and wan. Poor Honoria! I wondered if she still wasted sympathy on men because they were not women.

“It is so kind of you,” she said, Starting up. “I knew you would not say no.”

“Business with men is a serious matter,” I answered, taking her hands; “and one needs some security for thousands of pounds, my dear.”

She looked up helplessly into my face. “The watch and rings are not enough?”

“Well, you avaricious young person, you have plenty more. I will take, for example, your emerald necklet.”

She turned her face away. Her hand trembled in mine.

“No,” she faltered.

“No?” I repeated. “Your set of rubies and your amethyst and silver belt, then.” She shook her averted head. “And what do you mean by a few thousand pounds, Ria. It is vague for a business transaction?” “You could not spare more than four?” she questioned, searching my face.

“Four thousand pounds is a good deal of money. I must certainly have the emerald necklet and the diamond crescent.”

“The one you gave me, godfather?”

“The same, godchild.”

Her face lighted up. “I have that,” she cried; “I would not part with that.” She hurried from the room. After some minutes she returned, with a bewildered look.

“I cannot find it anywhere,” she said; “yet I know I must have it somewhere. I wore it last night.”

“Why, where were you last night, Miss Cinderella?”

She hung her head.

“That is one of the things I may not tell you.”

“Honoria,” I insisted, “you must. I must know what you want this money for, and what you have done with your jewels.”

She lifted her face; it was beautiful with light.

“Godfather,” she said, “it is such a noble cause.”

“It appears to be an expensive one, at any rate. You must tell me about it. Who is the man?”

The blood mounted to her eyes. “Who told you?” she faltered.

Who told me! Did any person out of a nursery need telling.

“You wear a wedding-ring, my dear.”

“Yes,” she said, simply. “It is true, I am married.”

I questioned her about him. She scarcely heard me: her mind was away.

“Godfather,” she said, when I had done, “have you ever known a man who was as handsome as — as no other man ever was before, and as brave and as true” — her voice broke — “and as tender as a woman, and full of noble aims, and generous and reverent, and yet could be gallant, and clever, and gay—”

Description failed her, she broke off suddenly, and stretched two wistful palms to something invisible to me.

“No, my dear,” I answered, when her eyes came questioning to my face, “I have never known such a man.”

“Oh, but there is one,” she cried, “there is one.”

“What,” I queried, “the man who has your jewels?”

She looked at me, then cried out in laughter, that was more than one part tears: “Why, godfather, did you think he them for himself?”

“I thought so, Ria.”

There were laughter and tenderness together in her eyes.

“Oh!” she whispered, “you do not know the man I mean.”

I thought I should like to. I am not normally violent, but neither am I unintermittently normal.

“Ria,” I insisted, “you must tell me what has been done with your jewels, and for what you want this money; if not, I must go to your grandfather.”

“Not tonight?” she said, catching her breath.

“Not tonight, of course,” I rejoined. “It is too late tonight,”

She breathed more freely.

“You shall know before long,” she said. I could learn nothing more, and left her. It is needless to say I left her still without those thousands.

CHAPTER V

HAVING time on my hands and business with him, I drove to my lawyer. After business we got upon a bottle of port, so that it was nearly midnight when I drove home by Dean’s Court. As we turned the corner there was a crevice of light showing in a window of the western wing.

I pulled the check rein.

“I shall walk the rest of the way,” I told the men. “By the bye, if I do not turn up in a couple of hours, come up, half-a-dozen of you, to the west wing of the Court.”

In the moonlight their faces looked green. I believe for a moment it occurred to them to restrain me forcibly; but I plunged through the hedge and into the darkness.

It appeared that my curiosity was to be unrewarded, for the streak of light admitted nothing more to my view than a portion of brilliantly illuminated ceiling.

I went cautiously — my mind on McEwan — the round of the windows. In the last a top pane was broken. I could hear though I could not see. At first there was merely a confused murmur to be made out, but by and bye it resolved itself into connected speech.

“If it please your Royal Highness,” an obsequious voice said, “the latest despatches from France inform us of delay. Nothing can be done until her Royal Highness has handed over the money promised. In the event of her Royal Highness being unable to procure the sum stated in coin, it is known that there are valuable services of gold and silver plate, and various works of art in the strongroom of the Court, which would do equally well. Her Majesty has but to hand the keys to me, and all will be arranged.”

There was dead silence, you might have heard a pin drop. Then a woman’s voice broke out, distressed:

“Charles, dear, Oh! I can’t do that. You know I can’t do that.”

There was a longer silence. Then a man said, gruffly, “It’s our last chance. We can’t do anything without the money, Ria.”

Another pause, then a sobbing whisper: “Charles, dear, you know I cannot do that. They are not mine.”

“You hear what she says,” the man pronounced sullenly.

A horrible, hoarse murmuring rose up. At the same time half-a-dozen fellows sprang heavily to their feet.

“Force her,” was shouted. “Tommy-rot.” “How’d she like her throat cut, or be kicked?” “D’ she think we’re going to be done out of it?” “Curse er for a fool.”

The strong voice rolled out:

“Silence there! Silence, or I swear I’ll put a dozen bullets among you.”

There was a terrified girlish cry.

“Silence you fools,” the voice insisted, in a lower key.

At that moment I thanked Providence for the brute force of the jaws it issued from. “We’ll pull round yet. The coin will pass in America.” The tones rose again, and took on an unreal bombast: “The cause gains daily. We have but to strike one blow, and victory is ours.”

He was greeted with hoarse laughter.

“Oh! blow the cause. This ain’t any time for play-acting.”

“Cussed if it is,” another said; “there’s been a dashed deal too much time wasted on it a’ready.”

The protest was taken up. There was a sudden trampling of feet as of an uprising of violent men. In my eagerness to see I had nearly broken a windowpane. thought timely of McEwan. Above the trampling and roar I heard the click of a revolver. There was silence again. Then the same voice said, in tones of suppressed rage:

“I swear before God I’ll put a bullet through the next man who speaks.”

The silence broke once more into murmuring, this time the murmur of subjection.

“Our further councils,” the strong voice said, “will be best conducted without the presence of the queen.”

The cry of a half-caught sob swept like the wailing of a harp across the murmuring.

The man’s voice lowered: “Yes, you must go, Ria, I can manage them better by myself.”

“Charles, Charles!” she pleaded.

“Room there for the queen,” he shouted. “The queen leaves the council-chamber.”

“Oh, no she don’t!” a fellow said. I heard him take two steps across the floor; but he stopped short. I imagine he thought better of it. Again I thanked Providence for the iron in that jaw.

“Blest if she ain’t a-goin’ to kiss ’im in front of us all,” one chuckled brutally close up against the window.

“She’s ony a puttin’ ’er ’and on ’is arm to see he ain’t made out o’ air or sky, or a bit o’ blooming ’eaven,” another said, sardonically.

There was a rustle of garments, then a girl cried, falteringly:

“Friends! you would never harm your king?”

The obsequious voice that had first spoken replied, ironically:

“Madame, our king is as the apple of our eye.”

A door closed — there was a moment’s silence. Then the obsequious voice changed to an extremely bullying one.

“Now, then, Squance, chuck the Adelphi, and don’t waste any more time. Perhaps you’ll give us your kingly plans?”

“I will,” the other answered, coolly. “It’s every man for himself, and the devil take the fool who’s fool enough to be taken.”

There was a rush of feet.

“Keep off,” he cried. “If I fire it will bring the police. The place is thick with them — McFerret brought a trainful down tonight. As it is, you’ll find it precious hard to get away.”

“We’ve got that bit o’ bizness to do first,” was shouted, brutally. “Keys or no keys, we ain’t a-goin’ before we’ve lifted every brass farthin’s worth in the house.”

“No, that I swear you shan’t,” Squance said; “I’ll set the cops on you myself first.” There was a hoarse roar. Then he shouted, violently: “Sykes, I’ll shoot you like a dog if you lay hands on that door.”

Immediately the place was pandemonium. There were scuffling and trampling of brutal feet. There was the dull sound of blow meeting blow. The air was thick with horrible cries, and more horrible curses. A sudden blackness where the triangular glare between the window-frame and curtain had been showed that the lights had gone out. Inside there was to be heard the hoarse muttering and gasping breath as of men tearing one another limb from limb. Then a blinding flash, and two pairs of hands grappled down upon my shoulders. Before I had time to turn I four d myself in handcuffs.

“We’re thirty strong, and you’d best come quiet, mate,” a rough voice blurted in my ear.

CHAPTER VI

I stood in the snow for an hour, my hands linked together, a man with a bludgeon standing over me.

“You may be Lord Syfit, for all I cares,” he said, uncivilly; “but you’re along o’ Gentleman Squance’s gang o’ coiners, and I guess you’re in for fourteen year.”

I was glad when my numbed limbs were presently trotted into the interior of the western wing. At a table, showing an exultant, if an unpleasant face, McFerret sat. Round him were officers and prisoners in various stages of dilapidation. On the floor great clots of blood and dust, overturned furniture and torn upholstery showed how violent a struggle there had been. In one corner a man lay dead.

As I entered by one door Honoria entered by another. Honoria in a trailing dressing-gown that showed her pitiful condition, her long hair falling disordered about her. Her face wore a curious stricken look — its blanched whiteness throwing up her terror-darkened eyes. A police-sergeant had her by the arm.

“Is this the woman?” asked McFerret.

A mean-faced ruffian started forward. “Thet’s ’er, yer worship,” he whined. “’Twas ’er gave us the key.”

The officer in whose custody he was dragged at him savagely. Behind McFerret’s back I was pleased to see him grip and shake the wretch. I marked his number — I mentally devoted half a sovereign to his service.

“Mr. McFerret,” I began. My constable took me straightway by the collar, while McFerret shouted “Silence!” A second time he shouted it, and the second time he did so I was shaken by the stalwart fool in whose care I was, as though I had been a rat.

“Sir, is he hurt?” Honoria entreated of the detective.

“I am bound to inform you,” the latter rasped, “that anything you say will be used in evidence against you.”

“Only tell me if he is hurt?” she repeated. Her eyes swept the room; they dilated for a moment on the body lying in the corner.

One of the prisoners mumbled, good-naturedly, and as articulately as a man with a broken jaw may mumble: “He’s got off, ma’am — clean safe.”

Her face became illumined. “Is the battle won?” she faltered.

“We’ve dropped that king business,” the other said, shortly.

Suddenly she bent her ear. She ran towards the door. A constable took her gently by the shoulder.

“Charles,” she cried, in a low, piercing voice, “don’t come, dear, don’t come, there is danger.”

Not a sound had been audible to anyone. An officer darted outside; after a minute he came back, “No one there,” he said.

A minute later a man walked into the room; he was ghastly pale, and walked with difficulty. His right arm hung broken at his side. Across one cheek a great gash went, and blood had dripped from it on to his collar and shirt. I knew him in a moment for the man with whom I had seen Honoria. It was a strong, bad face, despite its handsomeness. He walked in with a brazen coolness.

Half-a-dozen officers, McFerret among them, started towards him; but Honoria was first, she had her arms about him, her cheek lay pressed against his cut one, where the blood was drying. She was sobbing her heart out in kisses.

“Dearest,” she cried, as a soul might cry out for salvation, “tell me that what they say about you is not true. Tell me you are really a king.”

With one clenched fist he parried the officers above her prone head, with his wounded arm he pressed her face down on his chest.

“Before God, Honoria,” he cried out, passionately, “I swear to you, as I hope for mercy, that I am the lawful king, and you, my wife, are queen.”

“Oh, thank heaven!” she cried; “my dear, my dear.”

He made a little movement towards his breast.

“Good Lord!” I shouted, “stop him.”

But I was too late. There was a flash and a loud report, one long sob, and a quiver of her clinging frame. Then her arms fell from about his neck, a red stain spread in the side of her white gown.

In a moment a dozen hands were on him — in a moment she was torn out of his hold.

“Coward!” “Devil!” rose in execration round him. He was buffeted and roughly handled.

He flung the smoking weapon from him. The mortal hunger of the gaze he sent after it told at what price he had spared her his last bullet. He wiped his dry lips. Then his eyes turned towards her body, where they had laid it on a couch. For one moment Honoria’s poet-knight, Prime Minister, looked out of his gashed face.

“Fools!” I heard him mutter, as they handcuffed him, “it is the one decent act of my life, and I shall hang for it!”

PRINCE
RANJICHATTERJEE’S
VENGEANCE

Jan. 1897

CHAPTER I

Lord and Lady Wycombe had been dining with me. They were new friends, or, to speak quite accurately, new acquaintance, for I never regard as my friend any man I have not known ten years. I have calculated to a nicety that period as being essential to sufficient oxidation of the social polish to enable one to judge of what metal a man is made.

Lord Wycombe had no social polish whatsoever. In dealing with him you at no time saw yourself brilliantly or flatteringly reflected. He was not even nickel-plated. He was pewter right through — from the mugginess of his outer person to the inner recesses of that purely physiological contrivance which served him for a heart. Indeed, I used to wonder by what manner of means its valves worked. Without doubt, they worked stiffly and occasionally “clicked.”

The Wycombes were in my neighbourhood for the first time since their marriage, and for the first time since that ceremony were dining with me. I had ceased long before this to speculate as to why women marry particular men, or why men marry particular women. When the Powers had fashioned our world, they detected in it the possibilities of an Eden. This being not at all their intention, they inspired man with the fatal expedient of marriage, whereby he should make the one act of his life into which he would inevitably crowd the greatest measure of folly — irrevocable, and Eden has since translated itself to some remote and inaccessible region of space.

The Wycombes were a signal example of the human discord tethered fast and for all time with lawyer’s tape. After she had left us that evening we remained long over our wine. Or, rather, he did: for I, with marked intention, sat with an empty glass before me.

Suddenly he broke out brutally: “You wouldn’t suspect that woman of being a common thief!” His face was flushed, his hand unsteady. Before we began dinner he had already taken his quantum of wine.

We had been speaking of his wife. I could not pretend ignorance of that he meant. “Nobody would suspect Lady Wycombe of any more serious crime than that of breaking hearts,” I answered tritely.

“Ah! These lovely creatures have a dashed sight more original sin in ’em than most people give ’em credit for. But I’m no fool. Never was. Before I was twenty I could give you most women’s price — and calculated fine at that, even to the farthings.”

“I believe I could have done the same — though I will not answer for the farthings — at the same age,” I said. “Ten years later I was not quite so sure of my arithmetic. Now I have given up the practice altogether. To find the unknown quantity one requires certain data, and the difficulty of finding the difference between these in different women makes the calculation altogether too fatiguing, especially as it is pretty sure to come out wrong in the end.”

“Ah, you price ’em too high, I expect,” he said knowingly. “Now I never suffered from that.” He poured himself another glass of port. “Good wine,” he commented.

“And, so you wouldn’t suspect her charming ladyship of being a common thief! Now, you’re fond of stories, I hear—”

I pushed my plate of nutshells noisily before me. The pallid misery of a beautiful face was beside me again as it had been during dinner. I thought of her sitting upstairs alone but for some grief that was sapping her life, while we men laid bare her sorrows over a bottle of port.

I rose. “Lady Wycombe is by herself,” I said. “We must not leave her longer.”

He stared. Then he filled his glass again. “By your leave,” he laughed, “we’ll finish this excellent bottle.” I had no alternative but to sit down again.

“I don’t tell everyone,” he began, “though she thinks I do.” (I remembered the haunting appeal her eyes had sent him over my shoulder as I held the door for her.) “You’ve got to keep the whip-hand of a woman — when she don’t care about you. If it wasn’t for that little slip of hers she’d be always on a pedestal, and out of reach. And she’d never have been Lady Wycombe,” he added, with an ugly look.

“Pooh!” I protested again; “if it is so long ago as that let it rest. Don’t rake up an old story. You would be sorry for it tomorrow.”

He struck his fist on the table. It rattled with a pewter ring. “Damn her!” he cried. “I’ll take the airs out of her. She don’t talk to me and look at me like she did with you tonight.”

The brute was jealous. Heavens! And we had only been discussing some sanitary alterations she was planning for her cottagers, with a little hopeful eagerness.

“She was a Wells,” he persisted, “a family of handsome girls with a gambling father. I was easy with him. He got more and more in my debt. I wanted her: she was the best-looking of ’em. But there was another man — some poor beggar of a diplomat — and she wouldn’t look at me. I talked straight to Wells. I said, ‘Look here, you know, she’s got to have me or—’ Well, he was mortgaged up to the hilt, and I was mortgagee. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you must talk it over with her.’ I was fond of her — I’m fond of her now,” he interjected with bloodshot eyes. After a pause, during which he rolled my wine appreciatively on his tongue, he continued: “I knew how women sell their souls for diamonds. I sent her a magnificent necklace — a thing I’d picked up somewhere in the East” — he was silent for some minutes — “never seen such a thing,” he resumed abruptly, “a of diamonds as big as beans, splendidly cut, and each set in the centre of four gold petals. It must have been worth at least ten thousand pounds. ‘Put it round her neck,’ I said, ‘and take her to the glass, and tell her while she’s admiring herself.’ Well, I never saw the necklace again. Wells turned up next day with a long face, and the case, said he was deucedly sorry, but Miss Aline declined me at any price. Supposed things must take their course. I locked the case in my strongroom, like a fool, without looking at it. I instructed my;lawyers. Just then, as luck would have it, somebody left the Wells a fortune, and I was paid in full. Wells sent a cheque and mentioned incidentally that Aline was shortly to marry her beggar. Now I might never have opened the necklace-case from that day to this, because I was not at all set on marrying, and Aline had given me a dose; but three days before that fixed for her wedding something made me go to the safe and open the case.”

“Well?” I questioned eagerly.

He tossed down the last glass of port. He turned his hot eyes on me. “So you’re interested?” he said.

I made an effort. I rose. “I think we have finished our wine. Let us go upstairs.”

He put a purple hand on mine. “By heaven,” he cried, “you shall hear me out. When I opened the case—” he burst into a rough laugh. “What a fool I might have been: in two days she would have married the other man — when I opened the case—”

“There was nothing there,” I broke in, and could immediately have bitten my tongue out.

“Oh, she was not so fresh,” he said. “There was a string of metal beads with a brass enamelled clasp — worth, I should say, some couple of shillings — but heavy enough and capable of rattling so that the fraud might have been long undetected.”

“Of course, it occurred to you her father took them?”

“I cleared that up. He wasn’t that kind of man. He was dumbfounded. There was no mistake about it. He was like a madman. Offered to sell all he had to keep it quiet. Aline had taken charge of them that night.”

“Where did she put them?”

“Locked the case up, so she said, with her other things. Took it out next morning and handed it to her father. She had guilt all over her when I confronted her. She didn’t marry the beggar.”

“Why did you marry her after such—”

“Oh, I had never supposed her an angel,” he said, coarsely, “and I wanted her.”

CHAPTER II

I was calling on Lady Wycombe. I had been able to give her some hints as to the new plans. When that look of fixed misery slipped out of her face she was a lovely woman. As I was leaving her manner changed. She hesitated. The hand in mine trembled. She raised a pair of appealing eyes.

Lord Syfret,” she said, “Henry has told me your kind — most chivalrous — intention. I cannot thank you enough, but, believe me, the very greatest kindness you can do me is to let the matter rest. It is five years, and, Heaven knows, I have suffered enough.”

“Lord Wycombe should not have mentioned it. I asked him particularly not to do so. Only if I discovered the real culprit—”

She shrank before me. A hot flush rose in her cheeks.

“You believe me innocent?”

“The question needs no answer.”

She dropped into a chair and covered her face with her hands. “For Heaven’s sake, if you know what pity is, let the matter rest. Even should you clear me—” She broke off abruptly. Her manner made it evident that she knew something. “Even should you clear me—”

I finished the sentence: “You would inculpate someone dearer.” I do not approve of scapegoats, howsoever willing. Let each man take the blame due to him. “Lady Wycombe,” I objected, “you know my hobby. You must please permit me to ride it on this occasion. I give you my word that should I discover anything — a remote possibility — I will not move a step nor say a word without first consulting you.”

“Thank you,” she faltered, “but your greatest kindness would be to discover nothing.”

“Have you the metal beads?”

She lifted her head out of her hands.

“I have never seen them,” she said simply.

Then perceiving the significance of her admission, “Please, please,” she entreated, “let the matter rest; I can bear the blame.”

On the stairs I met Wycombe. He scowled under his shaggy brows. He was jealous of any man who lifted hat to her.

“By-the-bye,” I said coolly, “do you happen to have those metal beads you spoke of?”

“What the deuce should I keep such rubbish for?” he blurted bluntly. “I flung them out of window.”

“Then you acted like a fool,” I said as re “they were the chief clue to the thief.”

Two days later I opened my Times with interest. I turned to the advertisement sheet. “I hope it has a prominent place,” I reflected.

It had, and read as follows:

“A Thousand Pounds Reward—
Anybody giving information which shall lead to the recovery of a certain diamond necklace of unique pattern, consisting of thirty-four large diamonds — each set in the centre of four beautifully-wrought gold petals, shall receive the above reward, Apply, &c.”

And below this, another:

“Ten Pounds Reward—
Any person who picked up, or has knowledge that will lead to the recovery of, a string of metal beads lost outside a house in Eaton Square on or about the 10th of April, 1883, shall receive, on proving it to be the same, the above sum. Apply, &c.”

“Now for bogus applicants,” I mused, when I had found the advertisement duly published in the half-dozen papers to which I had ordered it to be sent. Then, “Good heavens!” I ejaculated. For immediately below my second advertisement I found the following:

“Four Thousands Pound Rewards shall be given to any mans informing news to discover a diamond necklace composing of thirty-eight beautifully cut diamond dews dropped in richly embossed golden tulip-flowers with four leaved. To be communicated with Somers, Grand Hotel, between ten and four.”

Below this still another:

“Four Thousands Pound Rewards shall be given to any mans informing news to discover a string of thirty-eight large beads in bluish-greys metal with octagonal clasp of gold enamel. To be communicated with Somers, Grand Hotel, between ten and four.”

These advertisements I found in four of the papers in which mine appeared. I further learned that both had appeared every morning for the preceding week.

“So,” I remonstrated with Wycombe on meeting him later at the club, “you have taken that matter of the diamonds out of my hands?” He stared. “I am a little curious to know why you did not put your advertisement into intelligible English. Or were you the victim of an unlettered printer?”

“Perhaps you will explain what you are talking about,” he said.

I took him to the reading-room. I showed him the advertisements. “Good Lord,” he broke out, “why it’s my necklace. The description is exact.”

He assured me he had nothing to do with the advertisements. He had come to his conclusions long before. I thought he looked perturbed. He begged me to let the matter drop. But the chase had grown exciting. I took my hat. I jumped into a hansom, and was soon at the Grand Hotel. It was within seven minutes of four as I drove up.

“Is Mr. Somers in?” I inquired of the porter.

“Is it the advertisement, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, that’s Prince Ranjichatterjee.”

A little man with long white beard and Hebrew features slipped something out of his eager dirty fingers into those of the porter.

“Remember I wash firsht,” he whispered. The coin was small. I cast a calculating eye over the shabby Jew. Sixpence I decided. I put a half-crown into the porter’s other hand.

The Prince was in, I believed, giving him my card.

“This gentleman was first, my lord,” the man responded, firmly, and passed the dirty Hebrew on to a pageboy.

“I am afraid your lordship is too late for his Highness,” he added, civilly. “He sees nobody after four; and today’s the last day. There’s been about three hundred people to see him already.” He tested between his teeth the coin the Jew had given him. It was a half-sovereign. I anathematised myself for a fool; Jews are not stingy when four thousand pounds are in the running. At that moment the Jew came hurrying back. His face was crestfallen. The boy behind him grinned wide-mouthed. The Jew darted at the porter. “Gif me back my ’alf soferings. The Prince not see me,” he shrieked.

The porter gazed benignly and unconsciously upon him from a height of six feet two. “No, sir,” he said, indulgently. “No ole clo’s today.”

The clock marked three minutes to the hour. “Take me to the Prince,” I insisted.

There was some demur at the door. Then my card was sent in, and after a minute I was admitted to a room which had been Orientalised so far as were possible to a room in a London hotel. Divans and couches draped with magnificent rugs and luxuriously cushioned took the place of chairs. Hanging lanterns curiously wrought, and with panels of rich glass, shed a dim light. There was a heavy aromatic odour on the air.

In the middle of the room, with a table before him, sat a lithe, eager-looking man — a Hindoo. His eyes flashed toward me like two lamps. He returned my bow without rising, and waited for me to speak. Behind his chair four men stood like sombre shadows.

“I have the pieasure to address His Highness Prince Ranjichatterjee?” I began. He bowed again.

“You advertised I believe—”

The Prince extended a finger with a curious gliding stealth. Not a muscle of his face moved. I heard the distant “ting” of a bell. Immediately four other shadows seemed to start up from the floor noiselessly and like inanimate things. Two of them took up their stations at opposite doors of the room, at the same time folding the heavy wadded portieres well over these. I felt two steal up close behind me. Instinctively I had ceased speaking.

“I advertised—” the Prince suggested with a sinuous bend of his dark head.

“You advertised with regard to a diamond necklace. I also am seeking a diamond necklace—”

“You have lost a diamond necklace?” the Prince insinuated. I nodded. It was sufficient for his purpose.

His eyes emitted light. “The necklace I have been seeking,” he said, softly, “is uniquitous. It do be consisting of thirty-eight diamonds.”

“Ah!” I said, “the one I mean had only thirty-four.”

He seemed taken aback. Then a wily look stole into his face. “It is not difficult to subtract four diamonds from thirty-eight.”

“So then,” I said, “you lost it first?”

He fixed his eyes expressionlessly on me. I felt the steamy breath of the men behind me unpleasantly hot on my neck.

Then the Prince observed suavely: “In a world where the lady is half people, there is many necklaces.”

“That is true, of course,” I admitted, “but your necklace was composed of diamonds set in the centre of golden tulips, golden tulips with four leaves?”

“Tulips has five,” he said, simply. “It be a mistake. The jeweller was his head chopped off.” There was quite a sweet smile on his face as at the recollection of something delectable.

“Good gracious! is that how you do things?”

“We do things, so there is no more talk,” he purred.

“Well, sir,” I went on, “I should think there is not much doubt about it that your necklace and my necklace are one and the same. The four-leaved tulip settles it. There would not be two necklaces of so curious a pattern.”

His face paled. His eyes seemed to go out. “No,” he said, almost inaudibly, “It was my idea. She was the lovely dewdrop, the petals of my heart to enfold her.”

“How did you lose it?” I questioned.

His eyes lit up again. His face got colour. He made a little motion with his hand.

“That you will tell me,”he said, blandly

Before I knew where I was I found myself gagged, upon my knees, with four men standing over me, and round my throat by some mysterious means, a bowstring drawn sufficiently tight to be somewhat more than an unpleasant hint.

CHAPTER III

IT sounds like a bit from an “Arabian Nights.” At the moment, even above the consciousness that my life was not worth a minute’s purchase — for there was no mistaking the grim sincerity of the Prince’s face, nor the strictly business intention of the men about me — even at that moment I was conscious of a sense of the ludicrous. But there is an ugly feel about a bowstring, and the irrelevancy between it and my Bond Street collar soon ceased to amuse.

The Prince rose and came toward me noiselessly across the richly carpeted floor. He spat before me. He struck me with a womanish feeble spitefulness on either cheek. Then he rubbed his long dark hands exultantly.

“So I be found you at last!” he said, with an evil chuckle. “I be found you at last, you robber of women.”

His mood changed. He flung himself prone on the floor, He moaned, and writhed, and beat his clenched fists against the carpet. He struck his brows. “She is gone,” he cried passionately, “my dewdrop, my pearl, my moon of the heavens. She is gone, and only it be with me to vengeance.”

He continued in the same strain for some minutes, but the remainder of his lament was Hindi and unintelligible, He sobbed and gasped as though he had been a fractious child.

A woman stole in through a lifted curtain — a woman like a tawny tiger-lily, with wide full eyes deep-fringed and liquid, and a mouth like a scarlet flower. She glanced contemptuously at his grovelling figure, then moved toward it with the undulance of flowing water. She laid an ivory hand on either of his shoulders, and spoke to him in a foreign tongue. He rose with an abashed look; then, his eyes lighting on me, he made as if to renew his childish assault. But she withheld him, motioning him with a flash of her tropical eyes to his seat at the table. She took up her place beside him, and for the first time, so far as I had seen, though I was aware she was conscious all the while of my presence, her dark glance fell on me. It was a long penetrating glance, and seemed to search my very soul. Then she stooped and whispered to the Prince. He made a motion of his hand. The gag was removed from my mouth at the same time that one of the fellows beside me gave a warning tug to the string about my throat.

After a moment the Prince demanded in a voice of concentrated fury: “Was it from her you got the necklace?”

I shook my head. “The necklace has never been in my possession,” I said. “You are making a mistake.”

“Yet you have confessed you losed it,” he insisted furiously.

“I have never seen it. I am seeking it for a friend who lost it five years since.”

He scrutinised me fiercely. “You been once in Calcutta?”

“Never.”

“Do you swear?”

“I swear.”

The woman touched him questioningly on the shoulder. He evidently interpreted my words to her, for she scanned me narrowly. Then she stretched her hand toward the table. A bell “tinged.” Immediately a swarthy negro entered. She directed his attention to me. He shook his head violently, mumbling something. He came to. wards me and carefully examined my face. Then he spread his hands with an emphatic repudiation, shook his head, and mumbled again. A question being put to him again, he shook his head. The Prince dismissed him. Then turning on me he demanded with sullen balked anger, “Who is your friend?”

“That,” I said, feeling my tongue somewhat dry in my mouth, “I am not at liberty to tell.”

A minute later I did, however. And let any man feel his brain full and throbbing fit to burst with black blood, and his eyeballs force themselves between his lids like peas out of a pod, and I imagine he would have done the same. After all, I was not bound to take on myself Wycombe’s responsibilities, supposing him to have incurred any in the affair, a suspicion I had no reason for entertaining. Certainly I did not suspect him of stealing diamonds; and in any case he need not be fool enough to put his head into such a noose as I had done. They slackened the string and dashed water into my face. After a time I got breath, and told what I knew of the matter. I was compelled to point out Wycombe’s name in a Peerage which they laid before me. The Prince put an ominous angry-looking cross in red ink against it.

“And the lady?” he said He made a gesture of inquiry towards the face of the woman beside him.

“No,” I said; “she is an Englishwoman. She has never been to India. My friend had the necklace before he knew her.”

“Among the women of his house is there a lady of my race?”

I could hardly remain serious. The notion of Lady Wycombe harbouring such a rival beneath her roof was so preposterous.

“My friend bought the necklace,” I insisted. “A man of his wealth and position does not steal diamonds.”

“Nor women?” he questioned, with an evil look.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Lord Wycombe assures me he bought the jewels in Calcutta. I have no doubt he will give you the name of the man from whom he bought them.”

He motioned one of the men behind him. “Bring Lord Weekam here,” he said imperiously. The man moved to the door.

“Prince Ranjichatterjee,” I said, “you are, maybe, a powerful prince in your own country, and accustomed to be obeyed. But in England men do not go hither and thither at another man’s word. I warn you Lord Wycombe will not come.”

He started up with clenched hands. “I shall make him!” he cried shrilly.

The woman cast some contemptuous epithet at him. With a spasm of uncontrollable rage he motioned one of the guards towards her. The man took two steps forward. She laid her scarlet lips back over her gleaming teeth, and pointed him with a scornful finger to his place again. Then she spoke low in the Prince’s ear.

“Will you send a letter to your friend, asking he comes?” he demanded, petulantly.

“No,” I replied, “I do not like your way of treating your guests.”

Livid with rage, he interpreted my answer to her. I thought she glanced towards me with the suspicion of a smile. She addressed me, but her words were unintelligible. I bowed and shook my head.

“What will you do?” the Prince interpreted.

“I will do what I .can to bring my friend here tomorrow,” I replied.

“Do you swear by your God?”

“If you insist on it,” I said. “I cannot be sure he will come, but I will do my best.”

“And the lady?” he questioned, with flaring eyes.

“No,” I said, “not the lady; she has nothing to do with it.”

He lost his temper again. He could not tolerate the slightest check. Again the woman soothed him. I was sworn by half-a-dozen oaths to secrecy as to that which had occurred. I was put upon my honour. Then the bowstring was slipped up over my chin, with permission to leave.

As I took myself down the hotel steps. where the Jew stood expostulating still with the blandly dissenting porter, I congratulated myself on an adventure the recollection of which would preserve me from boredom for many a long day, though all round my neck was a girdle of raw skin which my collar unpleasantly rasped

CHAPTER IV

“Ranjichatterjee! — the devil!” Wycombe ejaculated, with a curious change of expression.

“A near relative, assuredly,” I agreed.

Why did his lips blanch? He lost his accustomed bluster. There was a strange, sudden stillness about him, as of a man meeting his fate.

He saw my eyes on him. “I hate these Hindoo fellows,” he blurted, drawing in his breath.

“You need only give him the name of the jeweller,” I said.

“Oh?! the name of the jeweller,” he echoed stupidly. His mind was very much elsewhere. He broke out suddenly: “Why the devil did you ever go into the thing at all? See what you’ve done, with your confounded meddling.”

“Plainly,” I said, “the necklace had a history before it came into Lady Wycombe’s hands.”

“I did as much for her as anybody would have done,” he cried. “I didn’t want her wretched necklace. I told her to take it with her.”

“The jeweller’s name is by no means all the information you will be able to give his Highness,” I said, drily.

“His Highness will whistle a cursed time,” he said, with that same stillness about him, “before he makes my acquaintance.”

“Who was she?” I inquired.

“Oh, you can have the whole story. She was one of his — wives. The harem garden overlooked mine. She was a soft little creature, with eyes like moons and a little red mouth no good for anything but kissing — the kind a man gets tired of in a week. Of course, I got tired of her — dead, dead sick of her. But what could I do? She crept in one night with her hands running blood. He’d found out something, and, in a rage, had her wretched little thumbs cut off. Of course, I had to take her in. There was a tremendous hue-and-cry. He’s a great man out there, and she was his favourite wife. I kept her hidden as long as I was in Calcutta, and brought her as far as Bombay when I left. I couldn’t bring her to England.”

“What did you do with her?”

“I didn’t do anything. I gave her money.”

“She couldn’t work without thumbs, poor creature”

“Oh, she couldn’t work,” he said. “Women like that don’t work. I gave her money. She was pretty.”

“And the necklace?”

For a time he would not speak. Then he said suddenly: “Oh, have the whole story if you like. She was a little fool. The night before I left she found she wasn’t coming. She crept in and kissed my feet and hands and cried, and bent her head before me — the women there have different ways from our women, goodness knows — and next day I found she’d left her confounded necklace round my throat. I tried to trace her.”

“Did she take the money?”

He got up blustering: “What the deuce does it matter. She would have if she’d had a grain of sense.”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t think I should have mixed up a necklace with a history like that, in a love affair of any importance.”

Later on he came to me with a sick face. “I’m off to Paris tonight. There’s a beast of an Indian been following me about all day. These fellows stick at nothing. My life was attempted in Madras. Why the deuce did you rake up the affair again?”

“Why the deuce,” I answered, “did you not tell me the truth in the beginning? Then I should have known there was excellent reason for letting it rest.”

I called, next morning at the Grand. “No, thank you,” I responded to the porter’s invitation to walk upstairs; “I will see his Highness in the public drawing-room.” I adjusted my shirt collar. That galled furrow round my throat rode on the edge of it as martyrs are said to have ridden on ploughshares. I chose a recess in which we might talk unobserved. The Prince came in presently, glancing about him with a haughty intolerance as though he expected the several occupants of the room to salaam, and abjectly retire.

“So your friend — he sail away,” he began maliciously.

“My friend had business which deprived him of the pleasure of meeting you this morning,” I returned, with an uncomfortable sense that Wycombe had by no means got out of the wood when he booked for Paris.

“What he do with her?” he demanded feverishly.

I declined to say anything. I had no personal knowledge of the affair.

“I make him tell,” he said with evil eyes. I warned him that should anything happen to Wycombe, suspicion would fall on him.

“Pooh!” he said, “you have to prove. I no fool.”

“By-the-bye,” I urged, “I see you advertise for a string of metal beads, and strangely enough offer as large a reward for these as you do for the diamonds. What do you know about the metal beads?”

He scanned me curiously. Then he said with a significant smile: “Weekam, he shall tell you.”

For the first time I felt a suspicion of Wycombe’s good faith in the matter. Next morning I received a note from Lady Wycombe:

Dear Lord Syfret, — I shall be glad of your advice. Lord Wycombe is away. For the last few days the house has been watched and I have been followed by some curious-looking foreigners. As I left the carriage two evenings ago, one put his face close up to mine, examining me as if for some purpose, and my maid last night found my bedroom door locked. She ran downstairs for help, and on returning she and some of the men found my jewels lying about the room. Nothing had been stolen — I suppose the thieves were frightened and left hurriedly.

I drove at once to Piccadilly. The house was in the hands of the police. Lady Wycombe looked very much alarmed. She held an open letter in her hand. “It is strange,” she said, “but they write from the Towers (the Wycombe’s country house) that similar dark foreigners have been haunting the place, peering inquisitively into the women-servants’ faces, and asking questions in the village.”

“Heavens!” thought I, “I have indeed brought a hornet’s nest about my friends.”

I reassured her, at the same time keeping my own counsel. I knew well enough no danger threatened her. They were but seeking the Hindoo woman and the necklace. I called again next morning. I was shown into Wycombe’s library. “I will tell her ladyship,” the footman said. Then he blurted an apology, for her ladyship was already there — her ladyship confronting a tall distinguished-looking man, who stood over her with angry eyes.

“And you dismissed me on so pitiful a lie!” I heard him say as the door opened.

I had met the man some evenings earlier at a reception given by one of the Embassies. He had but lately returned from abroad. In a moment I made up my mind that this was the “beggarly diplomat” Lady Wycombe had been within three days of marrying.

We exchanged bows. “Lord Syfret,” he said at once, “I hear from Lady Wycombe that you are moving in the matter of a certain diamond necklace. I shall be infinitely obliged if you will transfer the matter to me. I have good right indeed, for it appears I am under suspicion of having stolen it.”

She made a gesture of protest.

“Oh, how cruel you are!” she cried, under her breath. “I have never said a word.”

“It should give you some pleasure,” I said, formally, “to take the suspicion on yourself. Lady Wycombe has borne it long enough.”

“Lady Wycombe,” he echoed. “Aline, has anybody dared—”

She burst out in tears.

He bent above her prone head. “That, then,” he said, tenderly, “is the reason for your miserable face?”

“No, no,” she whispered. “I could have borne that if — if I could have kept my faith in you.”

“And this is a woman’s faith,” he said, bitterly, “to take the man she was within a few hours of marrying for a common thief — to dismiss him without a chance of clearing himself, and to marry another man within six weeks.”

“What could I do?” she faltered. “You were with me that evening. You unclasped the necklace with your own hands and put it in the case. The case was returned to Lord Wycombe next day. Father himself returned it. When Lord Wycombe opened it there was nothing but a string of beads. He threatened proceedings. I knew you were poor. Forgive me — oh, forgive me — I thought it would be discovered, and I — I married him.”

“It was a trick on his part—” he began.

“I think not,” I said. “Wycombe was certainly sincere about it. He believes honestly to this day that Lady Wycombe stole the jewels. The mystery goes deeper than that.”

I took him aside. I told him all the circumstances.

“Why did Ranjichatterjee advertise for a string of metal beads in connection with the diamonds?” I asked.

“We will find out from himself,” he said.

But the Prince had only a tissue of Oriental lies to tell us. “The diamonds, they was charmed,” he said, turning his wily looks from one to the other of us. “On the throat of the disloyal wife the dewdrops be lose their crystal lustre and become as mere dross till they be charmed again. The yogi jeweller I threaten him with death if he make me not such a necklace, so I keep my women’s hearts my own. Seven times the charm it worked, and seven times I rid the world of the disloyal wives.”

“He is only laughing at us with his yogi rubbish,” Redvers said, indignantly.

“Your friend, Lord Wycombe, be he well?” Ranjichatterjee queried, guilelessly, as we departed.

But it appeared our friend, Lord Wycombe, was not well, for Lady Wycombe met us with a telegram.

“Henry is very ill,” she said. “I am starting immediately for Paris.” I travelled with her, leaving Ranjichatterjee to Redvers.

But we were too late: Lord Wycombe had been found dead in his room that morning, from what cause was never discovered. There was evidence neither of violence nor poison. Redvers and I kept our suspicions to ourselves, for Ranjichatterjee disappeared within ten minutes of our leaving him.

CHAPTER V

It will be remembered that in advertising I offered a reward of ten pounds for a certain string of metal beads which could be proven to have been picked up in Eaton Square on or about a certain date — the date on which Wycombe had furiously flung it from his window. I had begun to doubt his good faith in the matter, when one morning there was ushered into my room the little old Jew I had previously encountered at the Grand Hotel. I recognised him in a moment.

“There wash ten guineas offered in reward for a shtring of beads?” he began.

“Ten pounds.”

“Oh, shay ten guineas for a poor ole man,” he insinuated, with a detestable leer.

“Not a penny more than I have said. Why did you not come before?”

“The rewardsh was not enough to pay a toiler for ish trouble,” he retorted, slyly.

“You thought the fool who offered a reward so large for a thing so worthless must require it badly, and would offer more?” I said.

He grinned. I was evidently a person of intelligence.

“Oh, they are very good beadsh,” he said, heartily. “My little grandschild — my dear little grandschild pick them up in Eaton Shquare. I take great care of them since.” “I suppose round the grandchild’s neck,” I said. “What it matter?” he replied, distinctly abashed. “It do no harm if she wears them shjust a little. She very careful.”

“Where are they?”

He produced cautiously from the shabbiest of leathern bags a paper parcel, which, unfolded, proved to contain a string of blue-grey beads of a curious metallic lustre. I counted them. There were thirty-four. I thought them strangely heavy.

“What are they made of?” I inquired.

“Foreign metal,” he said; “very good foreign metal. I do not know.”

“You will have to prove your granddaughter picked them up in Eaton Square on or about the date specified.”

“Yes, I shee her,” he said glibly, “and my wife she shee her.”

“Ah,” I said, “I shall want some other evidence than that.”

He burst into tears. He protested that his word was as the Gospel. I had been mechanically slipping the beads from one hand to the other. Suddenly I dropped them into my pocket. I took ten pounds from my desk. “Well,” I said, “I will take. your word for it. I believe these are the beads.” I put the note into his dirty hands.

He looked up cunningly into my face. “You very glad,” he said; “your hand shake bad — your voice change. Gif poor man some more — a little more because he take such very good care of that you prize so much.”

“Not a cent,” I protested, controlling my voice; “but if you send your grandchild here tomorrow I will give her a five-pound note for herself.”

•   •   •   •   •

Lady Wycombe and Redvers were to be married the following day. Her year of conventional mourning was up.

“Let me present you with a second wedding-present,” I said nonchalantly, calling on her that evening. Redvers was on the point of bidding her good-night.

“What trick or double-dyed generosity is this?” he asked. He was looking well pleased into her lovely eyes. Then—

“Good heavens, Syfret! why don’t you let that story drop. One is weary of the name of metal beads.”

“Permit me,” I said. I clasped them round her throat. In doing so I pressed a spring in the enamelled clasp.

Instantly there was a dazzle of light. The soft electric lamps sent sudden challenging and interchanging gleams across the room to where a focus of prismatic radiance played in parti-coloured flame about her. For her throat was strung by a string of four-leaved golden tulips, and from the yellow cup of each a magnificent diamond blazed.

Ranjichatterjee’s yogi jeweller had practised a slight deception on his princely master.

THE METAMORPHOSIS
OF PETER HUMBY

Feb. 1897

CHAPTER I

It would have been difficult to find a plainer man than Peter Humby. There was not one of his features which bore even a distant kinship with another. Whole cycles of evolution yawned between some of them, for though his nose was characteristically Napoleonic, belonging therefore to our century, his forehead was aboriginal, while his eyes and brows suggested a possibility of having been wrested entire from the countenance of some early and heathen Chinee. To make matters worse he had the complexion of a negro and a shock of light-red hair. The whole effect was singular and striking, but from the moment it loomed on your horizon you made up your mind that Peter Humby was about the least attractive looking person it had been your misfortune to meet.

The human mind is variable, its tastes diverse, yet I do not remember to have heard two even slightly differing opinions on the subject. Nor have I known anybody modify his first impression and say, as one does say, “Well, after all, when you get accustomed to him, Peter is not so absolutely hideous.” He was as hideous at the end of twenty years as he had been on the day when you first met him. I imagine it must have been the irrelation of his features which aroused a kind of chronological confusion in the mind. A silk hat is not perhaps an altogether unlovely thing, inasmuch as it possesses attributes of symmetry and sleekness, but worn with a toga or a kilt it would produce in you much the same sort of exasperation Humby’s face did.

Of course Humby was married: one never yet came across a man or a woman sufficiently plain who was not, plainness possessing its own inherent charm. Of course, also, he was married to the prettiest woman in the village. It was said that when Humby went courting he could have had his pick of the very comeliest girls. The confusion produced in their minds by those incongruous features of his resulted in a kind of fatal and irresistible fascination. And the village belle broke off her engagement with the village beau in order to give Humby an opportunity of proposing to her.

But even this triumph did not dissipate the gloom as to his looks, which haunted him up to the period of middle age. From the hour of his birth his mother proclaimed herself ashamed of him, repudiating her responsibility in the matter by avowing everywhere that if she had had the modelling of him, she would have turned out a very different article. She maintained sturdily, and it may be confessed, also wordily, that her poor ugly duckling must of necessity “favour” his father’s family, for nobody on her side had ever had such looks, an affront which Humby senior invariably retorted to by repairing straightway to the “Spotted Pig.”

It may be imagined that this particular bone of contention, resuscitated by one or other of his parents once at least in the course of every week, did not tend to raise poor Peter in his own esteem. And indeed had I not a “happy ever after” ending to this unlucky fellow’s story I should never have had the heart to set out upon it.

Humby was some fifty years of age when I first knew him. He was then a sullen-tempered, curt-spoken man of feeble brain and sour humour. To what extent his manners and character had suffered from the obloquy attaching to his features it were difficult to say. But so far as one could learn, he had at no time been affable. He was a milkman by occupation, and walked the roads twice daily with his twofold yoke of milk and ugliness upon him, uttering blood-chilling cries. The most careful of the housewives went out of their way to buy their milk elsewhere, regarding it as next to impossible that a milkman of such looks should not curdle the contents of his transplendent cans. But he was an industrious, hard-working man, and he had his supporters.

CHAPTER II

Now there also lived in the village a Slade Professor, a notable artist and member of the Royal Academy. The Professor had founded an Art-School, and, reviving the fashion of a bygone day, was friend and master to his students. Since its foundation, the village had furnished this school with rustic models, so that the stranger walking through its straggling high street and its lanes, would come upon familiar-seeming faces, which, idealised on canvas, had been lifted to the honourable altitude of Gallery walls. In time it happened that there were but few houses in the village which had not provided at least one model, a child, a mother, or a grandfather, for the students to make “studies” from. Only the most highly favoured by nature, however, attained the dignity of figuring in finished pictures.

Now I need scarcely tell you that Humby had never been harassed by importunities to “sit.” Indeed this was one of the chief causes of his complaining, a tacit endorsement by the school of the village verdict. For Humby by no means shared the general impression on the subject of his looks. He examined his features in detail, and found some of them to be better even than those of his neighbours. To examine them in detail was of course the very thing he should not have done had he sought unprejudiced opinion; but it may be unprejudiced opinion was the last thing he was seeking. He had noticed, in a house to which he carried milk, a coloured print of Napoleon, and his sensitive vanity had in a moment detected some likeness in that of the hero to his one good feature. After this he always sturdily maintained that he had “a nose like a picter, which were a precious sight more than a many others could say.” And he eyed with brooding detestation all such persons as, not having noses like “picters,” yet “sat” to the students for their three hours’ study.

Now things with Humby were bad indeed, for the next ugliest person in the village — a man he had always secretly delighted to believe a good many degrees more ugly than himself — had, partly by virtue of a dearth of models, but chiefly because of a certain stalwart build of chest, been sent for to the studio. For a whole week Humby did never a stroke of work, but lay out on his back all day beneath an elm tree chewing the cud of bitter introspection. “Jacob ain’t got a nose like a picter,” he soliloquised, regarding his cherished feature from time to time in a fragment of looking-glass he carried in his pocket for that purpose. “Then why put Jacob in a picter?”

As luck would have it, while he lay rolling his prone uncouthness sullenly from side to side, anathematising the fate which allowed his one merit to escape recognition, the Professor passed his way.

The students had not of late been pleasing him. Some unexplained laxity of aim and falling away from the very catechism of his creed had set them striving after meretricious effect. They had imbibed a taste for sentiment and smoothness. The apotheosis of the “tea-tray” was imminent, the oleograph held the floor. The Professor had been at his wit’s end as to how he should stem the tide of wishy-washiness that had set in. The worst of it was that their dangerous and fellow self-applauding lapse was encouraged by their aunts and cousins.

“Dear and honoured Professor,” a student’s grand-uncle had that morning written him, “though an old man, I must make the journey of a hundred miles in order to shake you by the hand. You have made our Archie. I shall live to see him President. I have done something in art myself and know what I am talking about. Those cows in his last picture are as smooth and finely finished as if they had been cut out of velvet. I never saw a better bit of painting. And the bunch of roses in the foreground might easily pass for wax, it is so exquisitely modelled.”

It says something for the Professor’s powers of moderation that on reading this effusion he came to the end without using any epithet stronger than “Good Heavens!”

The rays of the westering sun shot low beneath the branches of the tree where Humby lay, his face upturned, his eyes closed obstinately. From the point at which the Professor stood the Napoleonic nose was thrown up vividly against the tree trunk, the aboriginal brows, the Mongolian upward slit of the lids, the negro mouth and colouring, the pale red hair, illuminated by a flood of rosy light, surpassed themselves. The Professor gazed. A smile broke slowly over his face. He chuckled. He rubbed his hands. “I fancy Humby’s drawing would settle them,” he mused. “If they get any of the pretty-pretty into that they are cleverer than even they suspect.” Succumbing to the awful fascination inseparable from them, he lingered scanning the sun-suffused features. “By Jove,” he broke out, “how the fellow gets on one’s nerves. I should not particularly care to tackle him myself. Yes, I’ll give them Humby. I say, my man!” he concluded aloud.

“Durned ef I be yourn nor any other felly’sman,” the prostrate Humby growled, his eyes still obstinately closed. The Professor marked the way in which the Mongolian lids assumed a still more upward slant, and how the nose came villainously down to their possessor’s mood. Again he chuckled. He imagined Humby would sober them!

“Get up, Peter” he said, “I want to talk to you.”

“Then I’m danged ef all the wantin’ beant on your side, for I’m bothered ef any uv it be on mine,” the amiable Peter retorted. His countenance relaxed as if he congratulated himself on having got the better of an adversary. Perhaps he was looking for its effect, for he suddenly sat up and opened his eyes. “Oh, it’s you, Purfessur,” he grunted, more civilly.

“Yes. Do you want a job?”

“No, I’m smothered ef I do.” He flung himself down on his back again and shut up his eyes with an air of dismissing the subject and its propounder.

“Oh, very well,” the artist said, moving away, “only I thought you might like to sit to the students.”

Humby sat up again, this time with energy. “Wot be that, maister?” he cried. “Say it again, maister.”

“Would you like to sit up at the studio?”

“Me — like — to — set?”

The Professor nodded.

“Pete Umby?”

“Peter Humby.”

Peter turned it over in his mind with a deliberation in which uncertainty had no share. Then he slapped his thigh. “Blest ef I wouldn’t,” he blustered.

“Be at the studio tomorrow at nine then,” the Professor called out as he walked away.

Humby gazed after him long. Then he took out his scrap of looking-glass and studied his feature complacently. “Dom’d ef I didn’t think they’d come to it!” he ejaculated and smiled. Fortunately for itself and for him the glass was not wide enough to attempt his smile!

CHAPTER III

With a serious face the Professor presented their new model to his class. Ridicule, rage, rebellion, were depicted on their countenances as the top light fell on Peter’s feature, and his forehead shelving violently back into the shade, gave him an exasperating effect of having a face that began at the root of his nose. He had combed out his shock of rusty hair till it stood around him like a tepid halo, making a gruesome jar with his bronze and weather-beaten skin. The students in the foreground murmured and shuffled their feet, those further off. grumbled sotto voce, while those in the rear gave snorts of disgust. One cried “Good Lord!”

The Professor passed the several rows in review with a quiet eye, demanding silence. In two minutes it had come. He then began: “Gentlemen, we have been travelling a bit too fast of late. We have been giving too free a rein to flowery fancy. Sentiment and Romanticism are well enough when they do not lead us to forget that one of the functions of art is to make itself intelligible. We have to speak to mortals less highly gifted than ourselves. In order that the general public — and, gentlemen, the general public is a factor in life — in order therefore that we shall be in some measure in touch with this factor, we are reduced to the necessity of presenting our ideas sufficiently like to nature that this general public shall be able to recognise the things we paint for the things we intend. Such commonplaces as cows and cradles should be distinguishable as cows and cradles, and should not be so rendered as to be possibly mistaken the one for the other, or for some third object — a haystack, for example. Nor in our repudiation of the realistic should we permit our cows and cradles to assume the semblance and texture of clouds. You have heard how Opie mixed his colours with brains, sir. Let me suggest to you, gentlemen, if brains be not available, that you should nevertheless choose some medium of a firmer consistency than milk-and-water. Let me recommend you to return to common earth. Put aside hyperbole. Learn to paint cows. Learn to paint cradles. And though bones are not ethereal, do not altogether ignore them in your studies of the human form! To assist you in reverting to the real, I have procured for you a child of nature (groans), a subject which shall give your idealistic faculties a spell of well-earned rest. I have obtained for you a model — Peter Humby (ironical cheers, and cries of ‘Good old Humby’) a model, ‘good old Humby’ as you say.” Here the Professor levelled his dark eyes quietly on the loudest of the murmurers. A moment later you could have heard a pin drop. “Peter Humby,” the Professor resumed, “the complex and intricate drawing in whose face will take your attention off its nobler attributes of symmetry and sentiment. The tints of his hair, gentlemen (smothered ironical groans), the tints of his hair, gentlemen, in juxtaposition with the tints of his complexion (groans a little louder), with the tints of his complexion — as I said the tints of his hair, gentlemen, in juxtaposition (the faintest of groans), the tints of his hair, as I was saying, gentlemen, in juxtaposition with the tints of his complexion” — the Professor paused indulgently — “will prove to you an invaluable lesson in relative tones. The modelling of his nose and forehead (a laugh). Jones, your cough distresses you” — the Professor rested a tranquil eye on the offender — “perhaps the studio heat is too much for you. I will excuse you if you wish. No? Are you prudent in remaining? The modelling of Peter Humby’s nose and forehead, gentlemen, combined with his rare obliquity of eyes and brows, will do you good service in intricate drawing. The mouth — is that you again, Jones? You would do better to be advised — I was about to point out that the mouth of our admirable model will try your skill in both colour and drawing. And if any two of you agree as to the combination of pigments which shall faithfully portray his eyes, I shall be surprised. Gentlemen, let me commend to your industry and attention our model Peter Humby, of whom I should like you to make faithful and repeated sketches until you have mastered one of the most interesting and complex studies it has been my privilege to present to you. I should not, I think, in his case adopt any classic or heroic draperies. These would under the circumstances be superfluous. The man is admirable as he stands. And now, gentlemen, to your work!”

CHAPTER IV

I was some months absent from the village. On my return the first thing that impressed me was a vision of my old friend Humby. He was mounted on a dilapidated cart, which, having dropped by the wayside, nobody had made it his business to remove.

A crowd of youngsters stood about him, whispering one with another, and eyeing him with mixed looks of awe and fear.

He stood above them with an exalted mien, holding one arm aloft, and with the other sawed the air. His old hat tilted jauntily to one side, was bound about with lace and ribbons, and upright in the front of it was set an ostrich feather. Such colour as this once had known had been washed away by the weather, and the wind had broken it in sundry places, so that it drooped dismally. Round his throat were a couple of rabbit-skins, tied like a woman’s boa with a bunch of ribbons. A pink and green rosette was pinned to one shoulder, a spray of dirty artificial flowers to the other. His trousers were tucked high up his calves and their edges were frilled with torn lace. He wore one blue stocking and one red, and about his ankles hung strings of beads. A length of scarlet baize fell sashwise from his waist, and from each end of this sash dangled an empty lobster tin. There was scarcely an inch of him which was not decked with odds-and-ends, ribbons, berries, flowers or silver paper. And out of all this bedizenry loomed Peter’s face, uglier than ever, if that were possible — but happy, supremely and ecstatically happy. He had vindicated his appearance. He had proved the village wrong. Art had claimed him for her own. His nose had found its way into many scores of “picters,” and one of these — a study, the cleverness of which showed the Professor to have been in the right when he “gave them Humby” — had held a place of honour in “the New.” Since then he had never done a stroke of work, but, handing the milk-business over to his eldest son, spent his time declaiming, posing and generally vaunting himself before his neighbours.

He recognised me with a nod and a gleam of the supremest self-complacency. Then he re-assumed his grave demeanour, and began to speak, the children nudging one another, giggling and whispering, but keenly interested. “There was me,” he said, “a-living all a-the-midst uv ye, a deliverin’ melk same as ef I’d been the hordinerest. Till the Purfessur he come along when I was lyin’ hunder that there helm, and sez he to ’em he’ve the hintricutest face ’s ever I seed. There’s tints in ’im and tones in ’im. ’Is nose and ’is forrid is modled like ez ef it wuz a ’umin form. Genelmen, ef you wants to be genrally at the ‘public’ paint ’em cows and cradles: Genelmen, ef you wants to be genrally at the ‘public’ paint ‘em clouds! Genelmen, ef you wants to be genrally at the ‘public’ paint ’em Umby! And genelmen, sez he ‘none o’ yer melk-and-water — that ain’t Umby’s style. He ain’t no adulter. ’Is melk’s fust-rate, tho’ ’is son Zeke now carries of it. He’s a child o’ nater. Genelmen,’ sez he, ‘the modlin’ o’ Peter Umby’s nose and forrid is just sich a posishun with the tints o’ his ’air combined with a raal aliquity uv heyes and brows ’ll do ye the goodest turn I know. Genelmen,’ he goes on, ‘Peter Umby’s eyes is sich as I defy two uv ye together, ‘and as ye may try, to paint. Genelmen, I recommend to yer careful hindustry Mr. Umby. Master ’im. Study ’im. He’s a hinterest and a complix ez it’s been my privilidge to meet. Genelmen, Mr. Umby don’t need clo’s. ’E’s hadmirable ez he stands. Genelmen, some fellies wants classy clo’s, and some fellies wants harmour, same ez yer own feyther Jake Welch (addressing one of the youngsters) were put in at the stoodyo to cover ‘isself up with. But Mr. Umby don’t call for nayther. Genelmen, Umby is hadmirable. Good old Umby! Give ’im thrice times three! Which they did — ’earty — , and then the Purfessur he looks straight afore ’im. ‘And now, genelmen,’ he sez sharp, ‘git to work — Mr. Umby’s a-waitin.’”

THE BEAUTIFUL
MRS TOMPKYNS

Mar. 1897

The following has been communicated to me by a medical woman of my acquaintance. It explains a mystery at one time much discussed in a certain circle. To many it remains to this day a mystery.

CHAPTER I

“She’s just pining away before my very eyes,” Mr. Tompkyns said. Mr. Tompkyns was a person small of physique but great in the city, who had summoned me — the only medical woman in the neighbourhood — to prescribe for his wife. His pre-eminence in things financial was proclaimed, had the fact needed insistence, by the magnificence of his possessions.

The road to his house had taken me through miles of beautiful parkland, which was but a fraction of the Tompkyns estate, and was set with the rarest shrubs and trees that skill and gold could induce to grow there. The house was a marble mansion, each room a triumph of art. Yet with all his prosperities Tompkyns was able to ward from his lovely young wife neither sickness, nor childlessness, nor any other ill save hunger and cold and the blessing of drudgery to which flesh is heir.

No woman out of a Zenana [women’s quarters in a Hindu or Muslim dwelling] could afford to wear such gorgeous gowns, no well-living reputably wedded woman boasted such jewels. Nor had any a more charmingly appointed house, or handsomer horses and carriages, to speed her through life. If she had wished she might even have wheeled on a silver cycle. Yet, as the poor little fellow deplored, she was pining away before his eyes.

She was a beautiful creature. Too ethereal for a goddess — our notions of have descended to us from an age of stone — she was like some pictured seraph. But in her face were lines of human yearning such as seraphs — so we are taught to believe — are never guilty of, and her eyes suggested weariness and tears. She sat in her pink boudoir that morning a dainty iridescence in a silken tea-gown bedecked with ostrich-feathers and begirt with silver clasps. Her fingers flashed with rings of diamond, amethyst and pearl, and her great knot of nut-brown hair was loosely caught back on her neck by a silver dagger, diamond-hilted. Her small silk-stockinged feet nestled in satin slippers, and frills of the filmiest lace peeped out at the hem of her gown. If money were at all another name for happiness, then would the chalice of Mrs Tompkyns’ bliss have been full indeed, but happiness walks as frequently bare-footed as it does in buckled shoes.

Mrs. Tompkyns was manifestly ill. Health never showed a skin so milky or such lustrous eyes; nor have hands of her translucency a hold on life. “I have taken her abroad,” Tompkyns said, “but she only gets worse. She is crying all the while for home.”

He crossed the dainty room, every stick and stitch of whose daintiness belonged to him, as did the white-clad woman in its midst. He took one of her delicate hands in his. It shivered for a moment, then lay passive on his short stout palm. He held it wistfully, his mean features working with a pathos that would have dignified a visage less vulgar. But Tompkyns was exceptionally ordinary. “There’s a hand for a Christian,” he protested in his common way. “I’m downright ashamed of it. Looks as if I starved her.”

Mrs. Tompkyns laughed faintly and retook possession of her hand. “Oh no! You do not starve me, Robert,” she rejoined.

They made a striking contrast, standing together; she with her willowy grace and refinement, he stunted, thick-set and without one line or feature that did not transgress the physical ideal. Yet there were sterling qualities in the man, qualities of industry, honesty, and affection, and the luxury with which he had beset this feminine blossom was the outcome of enterprise and dogged application. For Tompkyns was a man of sturdy honour, whose word was his bond, whose name in the city was safe as the Bank of England.

Nature had certainly been hard on him. Through all her transparent skin, his dainty wife flushed with repudiation at his coming. There was not a fibre in her but rebelled against him. She shuddered under his touch. Even the lustrous velvet pupils of her eyes shrank upon him. Yet she smiled and suffered his caresses, as if recognising the claims of his worth and affection, and the fact that she belonged to him. When he soon left us she drew a deep breath of relief. Her whole expression changed. “I am not very strong,” she said, “but there is really nothing wrong with me. My husband would take me away, and I am not happy except at home.”

Her eye met mine just then. A sudden tide of sensitive blood rushed over her face and throat, her lids were down-cast with a curious consciousness. “I have never been strong,” she continued, striving for composure. “We are not a long-lived family.”

I went into her case, but could find no cause for her weakness and wasting.

“Does the mind never prey on the body?” she asked, impatient of my questions.

“Certainly,” I answered, “but the fact of some physical failure just as frequently preys on the mind, and cause and effect get jumbled. Many a girl attributes to a sentimental cause the depression that is merely the outcome of dyspepsia.”

“I do not know what dyspepsia means,” she said, “but then I have never any appetite.”

“You have not enough to do?”

“Do you know I was last week at four balls, two dinners, three hunt breakfasts and a wedding; and I had a good-sized house-party all the time.”

“Then you have too much to do,”

She shook her head. “When my time is occupied I do not brood.”

“What in the name of wonder have you to brood over? If you were to see the conditions under which some of my patients live, you would learn what real trouble is.”

“I daresay I would change with some of them,” she said slowly, “for some of them have what I have not.”

“One cannot have everything,” was my sententious comment.

“Ah! but there are things and things,” she answered with a quiver of her lovely lips.

With Tompkyns in my mind, her meaning was evident enough.

Now in the name of all the gods who order domesticity, I pondered, let no Leander fall in Mrs. Tompkyns’ way. If, indeed, I added, remembering her sudden flush and consciousness, Leander be not already in the tide.

CHAPTER II

I could hear of no Leander. A doctor is made the recipient of much gossip, for in sickness persons wax confidential both as regards their own and their neighbours’ affairs. But “the beautiful Mrs. Tompkyns,” as she was known through all the county, had shown no preference, had in fact for that very reason given dire offence among the train of cavaliers to be found at the charming heels of any young and attractive woman whose wifehood obviates the matrimonial risks besetting single blessedness. Her indifference to the other sex was so pronounced that it was generally conceded there must be somebody at a distance, or even somebody dead, whom she had met and loved before she married Tompkyns. Nobody knew anything definite. They only knew that here was a young and lovely woman who plainly did not love her husband (a circumstance not regarded as unusual) or anybody else in view, and so they wondered who and where was the man she did love. They ignored the significant fact that many a young and lovely woman is in love with nobody so much as with herself.

For some months after I knew her I was as sure there was no man in the case, as I was sure it was not herself of whom she was enamoured. Whensoever I met her, her eyes were seeking, always seeking. This characteristic gave colour in the minds of many to that belief in a somebody whom she had found, and, it might be, had lost again. But to me there was something in her great unhappy eyes that said she had never found him. A change came presently over her. There appeared a certain glow in her face and her eyes tranquillised. She smiled more often, more serenely. People said he had returned. But there was not a shadow of proof. Nor could those most concerned in ferreting scandals lay so much as a fingertip on him.

I was dining one night with the Tompkyns, being from time to time in attendance on her, when Tompkyns sent for me into the library. It was evident something had happened. His face was white with a passion the glare in his overhung eyes proclaimed to be anger. He walked about the handsome room, clenching and unclenching his fists.

“I overheard something as I left the dining-room,” he began, stifling in his voice a rage that would have roared. Then he lost control. “If there’s any truth in it I swear before God I’ll kill him.”

Perspiration beaded his forehead, though all round the house the snow lay thick and the library fire had gone out.

“You know there’s no truth in it,” I insisted.

He turned on me suspiciously. “You have heard it then.”

“I have heard some silly gossip. Her delicacy and melancholy have served for an excuse for idle tongues. You know as well as I do that there is not the least foundation for such a suspicion.”

“I know! Great Heavens, what does any man know where a woman is concerned?” he raged.

“You are not just. I believe no one more honourable-minded lives.”

He grasped my hand and wrung it For a moment he was almost good-looking. “Thank you for that,” he said, “thank you for it. I’ve always found her so. But what did Somers mean? He spoke as if he knew something.”

“He knows nothing more, I am confident, than that she once very properly snubbed him. I have heard the whole thing threshed out. The worst they can say is that she must be pining for somebody because she has that touch of melancholy you know in her.”

“Yes, but may it not be so? Why is she melancholy?”

“Temperament.”

“Ah, you say so. But she is certainly melancholy — and ill.” His voice fell as though he feared to give substance to the truth by speaking it.

“God knows I’m not the sort of man for any woman to be in love with,” he said presently. “I’m only a money-grubbing machine. I’ve been able to buy myself one of the loveliest creatures God ever made, but I can’t make her care for me any more than she cares for one of the footmen.” He laughed bitterly. “When I was a poor devil of a clerk I could spend hours in picture-galleries and field. Now I have a picture-gallery and a park of my own it bores me to walk through them. I’ve spent my life in getting things I was all the while losing the power to enjoy as I see ninety-five per cent. of my neighbours doing. While I’ve been grubbing money to set my wife in luxury I’ve been losing all that might have made her care for me. We haven’t a taste in common. She is — well, you know what she is. I — well, you can see what I am.”

The unfortunate man was unburdening himself to himself rather than to me, and I felt in the embarrassing position of one who overhears what is not meant for him. The contempt with which he reviewed his own shortcomings — and I could not deny that he had painted a faithful if a cruel portrait — was of a kind we sometimes indulge against ourselves in solitude, but rarely in public.

“If I ever have any sons,” he wound up, “I’ll stop the breed of money machines. I’ll put them to the plough and make men of them.”

CHAPTER III

It was close upon twelve and I was on the point of retiring when some weeks later Tompkyns thundered upon my door. Hearing him in the hall I went out. “Can you come at once?” he asked. “She is ill.”

“What is the matter?”

“I charged her with it — and it’s true,” he broke out furiously.

“Did she admit anything?”

“Do women ever tell the truth? I caught her kissing his portrait. She wears a rose over her heart. And to think,” he broke out passionately, “to think of the thousands of roses I have given her and she has thrown aside.”

“A thing belonging to her girlhood,” I hazarded, “withered and shrivelled almost beyond recognition.”

“Not three days old, I’ll swear,” he said sardonically.

I found her in her white room, an exhausted, weary woman. Her appearance was alarming. I had not seen her for some weeks and during that interval, she had altered sadly for the worse. She did not notice my approach. She lay on a couch with closed eyes. In the curled fingers of one wasted hand was a little heap of rose-petals — rose-petals obviously, as her husband had said, “not three days old!”

He turned on his heel and went out.

While we were getting her to bed a photograph slipped from her dress and fell on the floor, face down. In picking it up the maid half turned it over. I caught a glimpse of a noble head. The photograph was recent, for the name on the back was that of a photographer who had not long come into the neighbourhood. Poor Mr. Tompkyns! I reflected, contrasting his a with that of this classic rival. And poor Mrs. Tompkyns! I reflected, considering her white and wasted arms and the pathetic shrinking of her beautiful breast. What a tragedy civilization had made of nature. Every curve in her dainty womanhood called out for love: her seeking eyes, her tender hands, the unshed kisses of her mouth. Every nerve in her strung to the tension of the noble, cried for a hero. Society and her mother had given her — Mr. Tompkyns.

Possibly weighed in the balance of citizenship the scale would speak in Tompkyns’ rather than in Leander’s favour, but the Tompkyns virtues were essentially of the counting-house order, and no woman has ever been found to love a man, because he happened to be gifted with an exceptional head for figures, though many a woman has been found to marry one for no more valid reason!

CHAPTER IV

Despite the evidence of the rose and portrait, the object of Mrs. Tompkyns’ interest remained concealed. All her husband’s efforts, and though he maintained a sullen silence on the subject, I knew he was moving heaven and earth to trace his rival, proved abortive. The post-bag held no letters either in her or the unknown’s hand. She preserved the same indifference to every man who visited the house. And she died by inches.

During this period Tompkyns behaved extraordinarily well. I was in constant attendance, and I never knew him to speak a word of complaint or rebuke. He was tender and kind to a degree pathetic to one who knew the circumstances. At the end of a long day in the city, and his days there were long and onerous, he would be ready — eager if need there were — to sit up with her at night, to ride any distance for some trifle she desired, or to fulfil any other duty whereof his staff of servants might well have relieved him.

He was jealous that anybody but himself should do the least thing for her. But all that the poor man did out of the tenderest and finest in his nature, his mean appearance and ill-manner of doing spoilt. Though I saw and realised his merits I could not blind myself to the fact that he had not one quality to rouse a woman’s love. For nature making for physical perfectness gives physical perfectness her magic. And, as I have said, poor Tompkyns was so very ordinary.

Once as he arranged her pillows, during the illness that followed, I saw her turn and kiss his clumsy fingers wistfully. There was in her eyes a look of pain as though she would gratefully have loved him if she could. But nature had decreed against him — cruelly if you will — but nature did not want any of Mr. Tompkyns in her perfect man.

At the touch of her lips, an incoherent moan, like the cry of a hurt animal, broke from him. He flung himself down by her bed, and buried his face in its satin and lace. The very abandon of his pain and passion would in another man have been convincing and coercive, but the intensity of the impulse only saved the unfortunate Tompkyns from grotesqueness. The physical degeneracy consequent on his life and heredity masked the natural man. Romeo, for all his sentiment and ardour, could not move you so vulgarly disguised.

Mrs. Tompkyns was on a fair road to recovery when I found her one morning with high fever, a pulse that proclaimed the blood-tide dashing through its channels with devastating force, blazing eyes that seemed to scorch great circling shadows round them. “What is the meaning of this?” I questioned of her maid.

Her mistress’s burning eyes flashed her an entreaty. But the girl was faithfully obdurate. “I told her I must tell you,” she replied, “because she’s just killing herself. She was out last night again, ma’am.”

“Out! Out with the thermometer near freezing point! Out in all that rain!”

“She was in the quadrangle, ma’am. She’s there for hours together. And it’s enough to give anybody their death, let alone her being so delicate. I said I’d tell the doctor, ma’am. It wasn’t anything but my duty,” she excused herself.

Mrs. Tompkyns’ gaze met mine. face became suddenly suffused with that same blush and shame I had seen before. She turned her looks away. So there is a Leander, after all, I concluded, and I confess my sympathies at that moment were with Tompkyns.

When she was better I warned her. “You must give up those visits to the quadrangle, my dear. The damp there endangers your life.” She glanced at me beseechingly. Her hand stole up with a gesture of secrecy to something at her breast.

“Your husband is a kind but a jealous man,” I went on, “and if he were to find anybody you care about, there would be sad trouble.”

She gave a little choking sob and turned her face away. “There is nobody at all,” she faltered.

I strolled one day into the quadrangle. It was, as Bradley had said, a dismal place enough, and certainly the last place in the world for my delicate patient. It was shut in tomb-like by a wall of yews. It was marble paved and the pavement glistened dank and mossy. At one end a sun-dial carven in stone showed the hour in shadow; at the other a statue of young Antinous, begirt from shoulder to knee with a leopard-skin, stood poised holding a javelin lightly in one hand. He was set high on a mound of grass, and showed supple and beautiful against the hedge of yews. At the foot of the bank I found a fading rose.

I was turning aside with a cynical thought — for the rose had not dropped from the skies — when my attention was caught by the gleam of something white protruding from between the statue’s shapely shoulder and his leopard skin. It was a note with the superscription “To my Dearest,” in Mrs. Tompkyns’ failing hand. I felt myself at liberty to pocket it lest somebody less scrupulous should do so. It was stained and wet, having apparently lain in its hiding-place some days.

I restored it to her next morning. “I found it in the quadrangle,” I said.

Her white face flushed and the hand she held for it shook till the paper rustled. She thanked me below her breath and with an air of shame. She leaned up presently as though she had it in her mind to speak, but she thought better of it and sank back on her pillows with a sigh.

Meanwhile, where was Leander hiding! The world outside Mrs. Tompkyns’ gates had come to the conclusion that Leander was a fiction, just as the facts of his hitherto doubted existence were forcing themselves irresistibly on the notice of her own house.

Tompkyns. became a changed man. He was moody and absent. People wondered why he had taken to spending his Sundays and Saturday afternoons in pistol-practice. Two or three youths not yet of an age to realise that which is due to the millionaire hazarded the witticism that Tompkyns projected inviting the Prince of Wales or the German Emperor to shoot over his coverts the following season, and being city-bred imagined partridges and pheasants to be brought down with revolver and bullets. But if they had met the man as I have met him, his sallow face ashen, his mouth one grim line, his eyes fixed wildly as in some lonely corner of his park he aimed for the heart of an imagined adversary, they would have held their peace. He prowled about at night and came home at odd seasons. Of all of which assiduities on his part I believe Mrs. Tompkyns was wholly unsuspicious. She said only she thought it must be better for Robert’s health that he should not be continually in that horrid city.

But that day when I found him putting bullets into the bark of a cherished gatalpa tree, he had avowed himself. “By God!” he had said, the sweat standing thick on his forehead, “I’ll find him yet.”

“You do yourself and her a cruel injustice,” I had answered and passed on. For though I could not deny that there was something I did not think what he thought.

And then the whole pitiful thing came out. It was just upon midnight when Bradley precipitated herself into my room. “Please, ma’am, come,” she panted, “come or she’ll get her death. I did all I could, but she would go out.”

The girl had commanded or cajoled a dog-cart out of the stables and I drove back post-haste with her. Arrived we made a feint of entering by a side door, leaving the groom in the drive. “This way,” she whispered, “it’s a short cut to the quadrangle. And whatever will the master say?”

The moon was making of the world a giant monotone. We could see our way clearly, though at intervals we were plunged in the profoundest shade. Not a sound stirred beyond the crunching of the gravel under our feet and the brush and snap of twigs as we pushed past.

The quadrangle was a flood of light. In that white flood like a drowned thing, Mrs. Tompkyns lay — prone at the statue’s feet. She wore but a thin robe, a robe designed for warm luxurious rooms, and she lay with her fragile limbs in the wet frost-crisping grass.

One wasted arm was flung about the marble feet. From time to time she kissed them. “When I am dead, dear,” she whispered as though someone had been there, “shall I see you? Are you in the world where I am going?”

I anathematised him for a selfish brute, whosoever he might be. But I doubted that he had been there that evening. He would scarcely have left her in such plight. We got her away. She was weak and light. It was easy to loose her clinging hands. As we bore her upstairs, treading softly, for scandal has sensitive ears, we met Tompkyns coming down. His eyes were bloodshot. He was dressed for walking; he held a revolver in one hand.

At sight of us he started. “Good Heavens, what is it? Is she hurt?”

“Mistress was delirious, sir, and wandered in her sleep,” the faithful Bradley said.

“You are a liar,” he thundered, “and if I find you’ve been deceiving me, you shall go before morning.”

Bradley tossed her head and muttered. But she dared not speak.

Mrs. Tompkyns died that night. She regained consciousness for that moment only in which she lost it forever. Her face became illumined, her soul leapt out through her eyes. “Now I am coming,” she cried, and died.

Perhaps, after all, I reflected, the man is dead and she was but keeping a memory green.

But the secret did not die with her.

Two mornings later Tompkyns strode into my room. In his hand was an envelope. He laid it before me. On it was written in his wife’s hand, the tremulous hand of her latter days :

Dear Robert, it is something I have loved, something that has been the most to me in my short life. Put it on my heart, dear, and bury it with me. Oh, I shall sleep so quietly.

“I would not open it without a witness,” he said, taking up the envelope again.

“You should not open it at all.”

He laughed, a short, harsh laugh. His bloodshot eyes seemed starting from his head. “Then I might pass him in the street, or even sit at meat with him,” he said. He tore it open.

A photograph fell out. I recognised it in a moment. He scanned it closely, impressing the features on his memory, I thought. For some minutes his fury blinded him. Then his face limned the changes from rage, jealousy, revenge, to absolute bewilderment. He flung it down and burst into a fit of baffled laughter. “What does it mean?” he gasped.

I knew the classic head at a glance. I remembered how a former glimpse of it had set me pitting it against Tompkyns. But I was not prepared for that which turned out. The portrait was a portrait of the marble Antinous of the quadrangle.

It was faded and worn with the cling and moisture of a thousand kisses. It was moulded and curved by the warmth of her bosom and cheek. There were circles where tears that had rained from her eyes had fallen on it. About it clung tenderly and like a long caress a strand of her beautiful hair. Out of its envelope a shower of sad-scented rose-petals dropped, tied to it by a ribbon was a knot of love-notes — love-notes bearing that superscription “To my Dearest.”

“What does it mean?” he whispered, his face as white in the dawning of the mystery as hers at home.

“It means nothing, my friend,” I said. as well as I was able. “Nothing but another woman’s broken heart!”

AN OGRE IN TWEEDS

Apr. 1897

CHAPTER I

I was visiting my friend Lord Townricarde. He has a pretty place on the Fife coast, where I had long promised to spend a few weeks with him. One of his girls was a godchild of mine, and some trouble had arisen about a love affair.

Temple of the Guards had been for two years dancing attendance on her, buffeted during those years between the Scylla of her smiles and the Charybdis of her discontent. She would not take another man, yet would she not take him. “The deuce is in the girl,” her father wrote. “For Heaven’s sake come and preach sense to her. Temple’s a first-rate chap in every way, and, as I tell her, I can’t spare her more than a few thousands. She seems to think she can pick and choose as though she were an heiress. And she isn’t a beauty either. She has the unfortunate O’Brien nose.”

I knew the O’Brien nose. Lady Townricarde had been an O’Brien. I sighed remembering it. I glanced toward a crayon drawing over my mantelpiece. What a nose I had once thought it, with its delicate tip-tiltedness. Scorn, laughter, roguery, tears, it limned according to the angle whereunto the mood of its possessor lifted or depressed it.

And her widower called it the “unfortunate O’Brien nose.” Dear nose; small wonder that it and the impressionable sensitiveness it symbolised lay now tip-tilted in waxen immobility beneath the daisies, while its ravishing curves remain unrecorded, artists having been instructed in every other portrait than that belonging to me to give it as Romana sweep as was compatible with likeness, in order that the Townricarde prestige might lose nothing in the Townricarde picture-gallery. So Nancy O’Brien passes down to posterity with a half-inch bridge of dignity between her dark laughter-lurking pools of eyes.

Gladys received me in the drawing-room. Her father was right: she was not a beauty, though had I been a younger man, or one about to marry, I should not have quarrelled with her face. She smiled sedately, presenting her cheek. “It would be most illogical for you to join the league against me, sir,” she said, “being as you are a crystallised old bachelor.”

“Good Heavens,” I protested, “if you do not wish to marry Temple, I should be the last man in the world to counsel your doing so.”

She put her hand through my arm. “Thank you,” she said gratefully. “I do not wish to marry anybody. Perhaps when I do — if I ever do,” she added whimsically, “perhaps Colonel Temple might be the man.”

Temple came next morning. I had asked that he should be present during part at least of my stay. I had not seen them together. But after the confession she had made I imagined things would arrange themselves satisfactorily. I drove with Townricarde to the station to meet him. He had always seemed to me a man of whom a woman might be fond, but in these matters, women, to quote a Scottish friend of mine, are exceeding “kittle-cattle” [capricious]. Perhaps he struck me as being especially personable that morning by contrast with another friend of my host’s, who came in by the same train, a man against whom I conceived a strong aversion the moment I set eyes on him. Since the preponderance of women relieved the other sex of the obligation to woo, masculine beauty has so far declined that we have ceased to look for it, but this man exceeded the limits of average ugliness and bordered upon the absolutely repulsive. He was immense in height and girth and massive of muscle, facts which gave a certain aggressiveness to his ill-looks.

“My friend, Major Yeo,” Townricarde introduced him, leaving us to walk together while he went ahead with Temple.

Depend on it, Temple will be all right, I reflected, my eye on his soldierly stride and handsome proportions. Gladys has hesitated! Knowing her father it occurred to me that Yeo had possibly been invited in the capacity of foil, though in relation with Temple a man many degrees less prepossessing would have served. Then I forgot his ugliness hearing him talk. He was a brilliant conversationist, flashing a keen and caustic humour over all topics, giving one almost the impression that his big brain was surfaced with a fine steel polish.

The men had travelled by the night train, and on reaching the house went straight to their rooms for a wash and change.

In the meantime I repaired to the verandah, taking with me an evening paper one of them had brought. On the verandah I found Gladys and a younger sister, their pretty heads together over a book.

“Oh, don’t interrupt us,” they cried in a breathless couplet, “we are right in the midst of the loveliest murder. He is just seizing hold of her by her lovely golden hair.”

“Thank Heaven, then I can read my paper undisturbed while he cuts her lovely lily throat, and the hero or some other equally guiltless person gets arrested for his pains,” I retorted, and retired to an opposite corner.

There were interesting items in my St. James’s and I was soon engrossed. Then, suddenly, I heard a laugh — a quick sharp ripple — as suddenly caught in a girl’s throat. I looked up.

“Good Lord!” I ejaculated. Yeo was standing like some giant apparition in the centre of the verandah staring straight before him over the moorland. Facing me, their eyes on him, the girls sat, in attitudes of startled astonishment, the murder-book clutched spasmodically in a hand of each. The cheeks of Gladys as I looked crimsoned over with painful shame — for the laughter had been hers.

It was a mortifying situation. But I myself could scarcely keep my gravity in view of Yeo.

He had changed to a blue serge suit of the jauntiest, flimsiest cut. About his huge middle a narrow belt of stuff was buttoned — sorely against its will, for the serge had stretched to a mere rag with the strain of meeting. On his big heavy-brained head was set askew a white straw hat, a sailor hat many sizes too small for him and bound with a blue ribbon. His nether garments stopping short at the knees revealed an unparalleled pair of calves and ankles encircled with yellow-ringed worsted stockings. The man was grotesque, absurd! Small wonder that the girl — snatched suddenly from her absorption in blood-curdling crime to this vision of buffoonery — had been betrayed into laughter.

The thing in itself was a comedy. But the horrible mortification of the Major’s face transformed it straightaway into something more like tragedy. I started forward, meaning to cover embarrassment by speech, but before I could reach him he had passed rapidly down the steps and disappeared in the garden.

Gladys let her book fall to the ground. She hid her flushed face in her hands. “Oh, I am so ashamed,” she cried. “I am ready to die of shame. How could I have done such a horrible, vulgar thing!”

But Effie assumed a different standpoint. She had kept her countenance before, but now broke into a laugh. “It served him right,” she insisted. “He should not have made himself so ridiculous. Did you see that funny little girdle round his waist? And his dear ridiculous little hat stuck on one side of his dear little head?”

“Hush, hush,” Gladys admonished her. “He may be coming back. Oh, what a horrible thing to happen. I was lost in the book, and suddenly looked up.”

“Who is he?” queried Effie.

“Major Yeo, a friend of your father’s,” I told her.

“Why didn’t father dress him properly?” she cried indignantly. “He had no right to bring such an object here, without us. I wonder he didn’t come in tights and spangles, but I suppose he is reserving those for dinner.”

“He is a very clever man,” I excused him. “You will not find him ridiculous when you know him.”

But Effie had no ears for reason. “Good gracious!” she bubbled over. “Do you think he has a wardrobe of surprises like that? It will be rather entertaining, you know. I shall go and look through his things in advance, and warn you what he intends wearing, so that we may not be taken again at a disadvantage. Why don’t you laugh, Gladys?”

But Gladys had no more laughter in her.

CHAPTER II

It has been said that no good woman understands dress. The term “good woman” needs to be defined before the proposition can be stated. If Mrs. Grundy herself — as she leads me to suspect — be the only member of her sex embraced by that definition — or by anything or anybody else — then is the proposition demonstrated. Mrs. Grundy is lamentably lacking in the science of clothes. However this may be, I have certainly known men otherwise unimpugnable who have been a signal discredit to the art of tailoring.

Yeo was one of these. Though I never after saw him in that suit — which he straightaway discarded — I have rarely seen him decently dressed, save in the evening when custom left him no alternative. Otherwise his choice of clothes was little less than criminal, or if Mrs. Grundy’s bonnet may be fitted to his sex, something more than saintly! For pattern he indulged in checks of chess-board dimension or stripes of zebra-like exaggeration. For colour his weakness was such that he had no heart to prefer one before another, but chose stuffs amalgamating all. It has annoyed me many a time since to remember that I might have added to my stock of curious information the name of Yeo’s tailor, whereas I am still in ignorance as to whence such grotesques may be obtained. The poor man, I believe, was striving to divert attention from his unfortunate appearance by that which he conceived to be a unique and elaborate taste in dress.

I was present in the drawing-room when Townricarde introduced him to the girls. He had changed into a Harris tweed, wherein his large unwieldy bulk lost nothing of size or unwieldiness, but stopped short of being ludicrous.

“We have already met,” he insisted with a bitter meaning in his voice, bowing to Gladys.

Her face crimsoned. Her looks dropped guiltily before his fierce mortification.

I saw Temple glance from the one to the other in surprise. “I thought you had not met my girls,” Townricarde said.

But Effie broke in sedately: “Major Yeo only means that he flitted like a vision across the verandah when Gladys and I were laughing over a comical book.”

Yeo presented her with a blood-red volume. “I picked it up as I came back into the house,” he said punctiliously, adding with emphasis: “From the title and a superficial inspection, one would not suspect it of being humorous.”

“One should not judge by externals,” Effie retorted.

“It is a maxim I have reason to uphold,” was his caustic rejoinder.

Gladys flushed guiltily again. She lifted her eyes to his with a sudden pleading abasement. His glance rested on her face with interest. He swept her fine figure and charming looks. He was curiously heavy-lidded. That and a certain torpid cruelty of expression set me thinking of a snake.

“Poor Yeo certainly can’t be called a beauty,” Temple responded to my remarks, “but he seems to be a good fellow.” This is what Temple himself was essentially, and as I have noticed in other men of that sort, by virtue of the quality, he imagined most of his acquaintance to see it.

For my part it was the last qualification I should have applied to Yeo. Eminently capable, rapid-witted and virile, I should assuredly have admitted him as being, but not the other thing.

“Can’t help being sorry for him,” Temple continued. “He’s so morbidly sensitive about his looks. Some girl treated him badly — threw him over for a handsome chap — he was awfully hard hit. I am told he has never been the same since.”

“His parents ought certainly to be ashamed of themselves,” I said. “If they in collaboration had perpetrated a book or a picture of the calibre of this son of theirs, they would have been locked up.”

Temple smiled.

“I am perfectly serious,” I insisted.

He smiled again. “That is what gives your jokes such point, sir,” he said. After a pause — “Poor Gladys was quite cut up when I told her about it—” he resumed.

“Oh, you told Gladys.”

“Yes, I thought she would have cried. She has such a heart, Gladys has. She said it was the most pathetic thing she had heard. I never knew her to use strong language before, but she insisted that the girl who treated him so badly ought to have been hanged, or something of that sort. Dear girl!” He puffed at his cigar. “That was the reason she was so nice to him all last evening. Quite pretty to see her talking to him, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, quite,” I said. After reflection I inquired: “How long is he stopping?”

“Yeo? Oh, I don’t know. He seems to be enjoying himself.”

“And you?”

“I always enjoy myself here,” he said hopefully.

Gladys had not to all appearance exhausted her indignation against the fickle breaker of Yeo’s heart, or it may be her sympathy with him, for she continued to be what Temple termed “so nice” to him to the exclusion of Temple himself.

“I can’t think how he managed the thing,” the Colonel confided to me, “although he’s such a clever chap. To beat Gladys by four holes up, and she such a ripping player and he only learning — it’s amazing.”

I had seen the method of it, having walked round with them, so that the victory did not appear so amazing to me.

“You dare say a word,” she had menaced me after sending only a few yards a ball she was capable of driving some hundreds. “Major Yeo is so sensitive,” she had added diffidently, “it disheartens him to lose.”

I glanced at his burly frame striding some paces in advance. “He scarcely looks a subject for cotton-wool wrappings,” I demurred.

“Perhaps you think that because he is not very good-looking he has no heart,” she observed with a little defiant air, that reminded me of her mother. “He has a very sad story — very, very sad,” she said, glancing after him.

I watched her through the game, till the end, when her mistaken quixotism reached its climax; seeing the balm of victory soothe his excoriate vanity. I began to watch her closely and with some misgiving. Heavens! what will-o’-the-wisp fatuity fermented in her brain?

The man had some power over her. She grew to flush and tremble at his approach. She lost her bright manner and speech. She seemed for ever afraid of hurting him, for ever entreating pardon for her offence against him. Her remorse for that offence was a weak spot in her armour, her passion to make amends a lever whereby he moved her, and of these he did not scruple to make use. Day by day he further dominated her, day by day she resisted less. The snake-like impression I had of him was strengthened. He consciously and intentionally magnetised her. He was fond of her, I suppose, after a fashion, but it was a fashion, for the most part cruelty. Townricarde in his opinionated way scoffed at my fears. He did not hesitate to characterise them unflatteringly.

“No girl,” he insisted, “would care for an ugly brute like Yeo. Why you yourself told me she laughed at him.”

I had not suggested that she cared. There were fear and aversion in her face when he approached her, but there were pity also and appeal and dangerous surrender.

Temple saw it, and grew perplexed. “Why is Gladys so much with that brute?” he once observed. “He has a shocking record. Her father had no right to bring him here.”

“Can’t you rid us of him, somehow?” I urged.

He looked up apprehensively. “Good God, you are not afraid—” he broke out. “She couldn’t care for a brute like that.”

Certainly it seemed incredible. Yeo stayed on. Townricarde was as pigheaded as he was obtuse, and the man cajoled him and deceived him with all his rare powers of deceit and cajolery.

Things came to a climax at the end of three weeks. Yeo’s and Temple’s visits were to terminate next day. I had begun to hope. I was confident that, once removed from the dominant spell of his personality and the pitfall of her innocent offence against him, she would see him in all his repulsiveness — for he grew no less repulsive on further acquaintance.

He and she had repaired after breakfast to the library. Thither I followed them. I was determined not to give him an opportunity of a farewell téte a téte.

As I entered he levelled one swift insolent look at me, but taking a book I withdrew to the further end of the room.

They had been chatting some time, when suddenly he dropped his voice, and his words, which before I had failed to hear, now reached me. “I have only loved two women,” he was saying, his heavy-lidded eyes on her face. “One of them to whom I was engaged jilted me for another man, because of my ugliness. The second,” he spoke slowly and impressively, “ridiculed me openly for the same reason.”

He paused. She had broken into a sobbing cry, as though he had struck her. She stretched a trembling hand out. “She ought to have been whipped,” I heard her falter, “but she did not know you.”

“Know me,” he echoed bitterly. “That makes little difference to a woman. Your sex, Miss Haldane, prefers a straight-nosed, pink-skinned doll before a man of brains and character who has the misfortune to be plain. Do not trouble to inform me that I have not the conformation of an ogre. God knows! I have reason enough to be aware of it.”

I could not hear her answer, but I heard her tones, compassionate, impulsive, healing. The room was long, and one judging from appearances would not have supposed that, at the distance they sat from me, their words would have been audible. But the ceiling was dome-shaped, and the hollow caught and amplified their voices, bringing the conversation to me with harsh distinctness. I had no scruple in listening. The man was dangerous, corrupt. It is a supererogation of punctiliousness to wash hands before closing with a sooty foe.

“I do not contend to virtue, either,” he continued with a kind of purring rasp in his voice. “My face in the glass is enough to nip any wretch’s morning aspirations. I have been consistent. I am as bad as I look. I am candid with you, you see. You cannot expect a broken-nosed person like me to walk straight,” he ended with a horrid laugh.

She started up. She put out a hand as one blind feeling her way. “Oh, I cannot bear it,” she cried. “Somebody must help you. Somebody should be with you to show you how mistaken you are, how little your appearance would matter to one who cared for you.”

He was silent. They seemed to have forgotten me. I sat apparently lost in my book, in reality observing them from beneath its lower edge. His low-lidded eyes swept her face. A flash of triumph passed over his uncouth features. But he put a strong control upon himself. He shook his head hopelessly. “It might have been,” he said. “It is too late now. I have lived too long with my own hideousness to have any self-respect or ideals left. Once—”

She faltered toward him. She drew back. Then she faltered again toward him. She put a hand on his arm. “It is never too late,” she insisted. “And I do not believe what you say. If you were not ever so much more good than bad, you would not feel so bitterly any wrong you may have done. It is cruel — Oh, it is cruel—”

He finished the sentence for her. “For a man to be so plain,” he said bitterly.

She looked into his face. “Yes,” she said simply, “for a man so clever and strong and — sensitive as you.”

A rage of candour or an indecency of revelation seized him. “If I am what I look,” he burst out with his repulsive laugh, “if all my brutality of face is only the expression of brutality of nature, if I have indulged in the worst vices, if I am capable of the vilest crimes — my face leading me—”

There was no faltering in her now. Her face was irradiate, her step firm. She rose and moved swiftly to him. She laid her two hands on his shoulders, and stood so, looking up into his odious face. “If I could help you?” she said.

“How could you help me?” he cried harshly.

I thought for the first time there was compunction in his voice.

“I could help you,” “I admire your intellect and your strength. I am very, very sorry — ! could make you respect yourself for all the power and cleverness there are in you. I could—” she suppressed a little shuddering cry, “—perhaps I could love you,” she faltered.

He stood looking down upon her bowed head, that white heat of triumph in his face. He had possibly some affection for her. It was not all vanity that stirred him. He put an arm about her. With a cry she tore herself away. She stood at a distance from him, holding out a hand of avoidance. “Oh, I do not love you — yet,” she cried breathlessly.

He broke into a scoffing laugh. “No, nor ever will,” he retorted, turning violently on his heel.

She hesitated one moment. Then she followed and caught up with him before he reached the door. She laid an arm about his throat, she laid her cheek against his shoulder.

“I will, I do,” she said gently. “You shall never again go alone through life with — with only your poor ugliness.” He was about to kiss her, when I coughed. I walked down the room to where they stood, together. “Really, Major Yeo!” I said with undisguised disfavour.

“Really, Lord Syfret!” he retorted, with admirable insolence, adding with a bow and a laugh, “One might suppose you feel somewhat de trop.”

CHAPTER III

Now whether Yeo loved her after that fashion of his which was more than two-thirds cruelty, or whether it was merely a sop to his galled vanity to carry a siege which Temple, famous for fine looks, fine character, and fine possessions, had vainly attempted two whole years, I cannot say.

I thought the Colonel would have blown his brains out when he knew. “She could never marry him. Good Heavens! how can a girl like her marry him?” he raved. “He is as big a brute as he looks.”

“What could I do,” Gladys pleaded to me. “I laughed at him. I wounded him. You heard me laugh.”

“Pooh,” I insisted, “an accident, a trifling error. Are you to sacrifice your life to such an indiscretion?”

“Everything is against him,” she insisted. “I can help him. I can save him from himself. He will throw away his life.”

“He is bad, and a cad,” I urged, “or he would never have used his ugliness and vices to compel you as he has done. And why should you pity him rather than Temple?”

She broke out crying. “It is fate,” she wailed. “Oh, it is no good talking. I cannot help myself.”

“Take Temple,” I said. “He will only be too happy to help you.”

“No, no,” she sobbed, “he is handsome, and fortunate, and good — he has no need of me.”

“No need, poor wretch; hasn’t he shown his need faithfully and sufficiently these two years?” The two men were at this moment approaching from opposite sides of the garden. I saw her eyes glance from one to the other. The fear I had before seen into her face as she turned from Temple’s fine personality to the hideousness of his rival. Before they had reached the verandah, she had fled.

Though things had gone so far, I believe she might even then have been saved had Townricarde not acted like a fool.

“For goodness’ sake,” I enjoined him, “go carefully, or you will fling her irrevocably into the brute’s arms.”

But nothing gives a man so much self-confidence as does his own pigheadedness. “My dear Syfret,” he returned complacently, “Yeo leaves tomorrow, and I shall forbid her to see him again.”

Next morning after breakfast I was summoned to the library. Outside the door, her fingers trembling about the handle, Gladys stood.

“It has come,” she faltered, “and I cannot help myself, it is fate — it is fate!”

I took her hand, and together we went in.

Townricarde stood at one end of the hearthrug, gesticulating violently. At the other end, self-resolute and towering above him stood Yeo. “Your daughter shall speak for herself,” he was saying, as we entered: “I will take no other answer.”

“Speak for yourself, Gladys,” her father insisted. “Send this man away. He has the insolence to tell me you have chosen him — a person you have known less than three weeks — for husband.”

The Major folded his arms across his chest, and stood in a Napoleonic attitude, gloomy, deserted, forbearing. I could have kicked him for his tragic airs. I saw her look toward him helplessly. I saw the fear and weakness in her face.

“It is unfair,” I protested. “We must give her time. Major Yeo will not take advantage of a girl’s impulse—”

“She shall speak now or never,” her father thundered. “Major Yeo leaves for London by the midday train.”

The Major bowed. He took out his watch and consulted it. “That gives a clear hour for her — having already pledged herself — to speak,” he said, adding brutally, “and for me to pack.”

Ninety-nine women out of a hundred have a fibre which responds to savagery. It is a remnant of the squaw, the echo of an age wherein nature, making for physical fitness, fashioned woman in such wise that she should choose her mate in the red-handed victor. Gladys was the hundredth woman, however, and she distinguished between savagery and strength. She recoiled from the coarseness of his attitude and speech. She looked him unwaveringly in the face. It was a moment of advantage.

But Townricarde lost it by intemperate action. He cast by his control, and starting forward shook a powerless fist in Yeo’s face.

“You are a scoundrel, sir,” he cried.

Yeo remained calm and dignified. “You take advantage of my position as your guest and of your daughter’s presence to insult me,” he submitted with admirable self-control.

Before I could prevent him, Townricarde crossed the room, and had rung the bell. “Major Yeo is leaving by the half-past one train,” he said when the butler appeared. “See that the dog-cart is round.”

The man swept our faces with a shrewd respectful glance. “Will Major Yeo take lunch, my lord?”

“No,” his lordship thundered.

“Father,” Gladys put in, in a low voice, “you forget you have not invited Major Yeo.”

“I have not asked him to lunch here, because I do not mean that he shall,” her father burst out violently.

The butler closed the door respectfully behind him. The Major stood a minute. Then he turned, bowed, and walked down the room. I confess I was sorry for him at that moment, well as we were rid of him. It was a moment to humiliate the most audacious.

However, he was a man whose misfortunes stood him in good stead. As he went, mute, erect and dignified, he stumbled suddenly against a footstool and, tripping, fell headlong. He was quickly on his feet again, but in rising turned on us such a face of rage, mortification and pitiful ugliness that Gladys with a low cry ran down the room to him. She put a detaining hand on his arm. She turned her face and streaming eyes.

“Father,” she cried, “if you send Major Yeo away, I shall go with him.”

•   •   •   •   •

They had not been married three months before her heart was broken. In less than twelve she had suffered an inordinately bitter punishment for that unwitting laugh of hers, had learned the lesson that the reclamation of a brute is no such light achievement, and further, that one pays in this round hollow world of ours more grievously for sins of judgement than one does for cold-blooded crimes. However, in that time she had carried these flint-stone facts, her broken heart, and a little dead, ugly-faced baby with her to the grave.