PAST MASTERS 243

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

1 Dec 2025

Contents

1: The Ship That Saw a Ghost / Frank Norris

2: The Golden Bean / Beatrice Grimshaw

3: The Fairy Godmother / Edward Dyson

4: That Parson / A. E. Dingle

5: The Crime of Miss Wilks / Capel Boake

6: Old Man Murtrie / Don Marquis

7: A Game With Death / Mark Hellinger

8: The Crime Trust / Edgar Wallace

9: The Return / Sherwood Anderson

10: The Dreams in the Witch-House / H. P. Lovecraft

11: Too Far South / John Arthur Barry

12: Golden Bars / Max Pemberton

13:  Daphne / Guy Boothby

14: The Land Where There is no Death / Stephen Vincent Benét

15: Cool Air / H. P. Lovecraft

16: The Predicament of De Plonville / Robert Barr

17: The Ideal / Stanley G. Weinbaum

18: Egging on Esmond / Sydney Horler

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1: The Ship That Saw a Ghost

Frank Norris

Benjamin Franklin Norris Jr. 1870-1902

Overland Monthly Dec 1902

VERY MUCH of this story must remain untold, for the reason that if it were definitely known what business I had aboard the tramp steam-freighter Glarus, three hundred miles off the South American coast on a certain summer's day, some few years ago, I would very likely be obliged to answer a great many personal and direct questions put by fussy and impertinent experts in maritime law— who are paid to be inquisitive. Also, I would get 'Ally Bazan', Strokher and Hardenberg into trouble.

Suppose on that certain summer's day, you had asked of Lloyds' agency where the Glarus was, and what was her destination and cargo. You would have been told that she was twenty days out from Callao, bound north to San Francisco in ballast; that she had been spoken by the bark Medea and the steamer Benevento; that she was reported to have blown out a cylinder head, but being manageable was proceeding on her way under sail.

That is what Lloyds would have answered.

If you know something of the ways of ships and what is expected of them, you will understand that the Glarus, to be some half a dozen hundred miles south of where Lloyds' would have her, and to be still going south, under full steam, was a scandal that would have made her brothers and sisters ostracise her finally and forever.

And that is curious, too. Humans may indulge in vagaries innumerable, and may go far afield in the way of lying; but a ship may not so much as quibble without suspicion. The least lapse of 'regularity', the least difficulty in squaring performance with intuition, and behold she is on the black list, and her captain, owners, officers, agents and consignors, and even supercargoes, are asked to explain.

And the Glarus was already on the black list. From the beginning her stars had been malign. As the Breda, she had first lost her reputation, seduced into a filibustering escapade down the South American coast, where in the end a plain-clothes United States detective— that is to say, a revenue cutter— arrested her off Buenos Aires and brought her home, a prodigal daughter, besmirched and disgraced.

After that she was in some dreadful blackbirding business in a far quarter of the South Pacific; and after that— her name changed finally to the Glarus—poached seals for a syndicate of Dutchmen who lived in Tacoma, and who afterwards built a club-house out of what she earned.

And after that we got her.

We got her, I say, through Ryder's South Pacific Exploitation Company. The 'President' had picked out a lovely little deal for Hardenberg, Strokher and Ally Bazan (the Three Black Crows), which he swore would make them 'independent rich' the rest of their respective lives. It is a promising deal (B. 300 it is on Ryder's map), and if you want to know more about it you may write to ask Ryder what B. 300 is. If he chooses to tell you, that is his affair.

For B. 300— let us confess it— is, as Hardenberg puts it, as crooked as a dog's hind leg. It is as risky as barratry. If you pull it off you may— after paying Ryder his share— divide sixty-five, or possibly sixty-seven, thousand dollars between you and your associates. If you fail, and you are perilously like to fail, you will be sure to have a man or two of your companions shot, maybe yourself obliged to pistol certain people, and in the end fetch up at Tahiti, prisoner in a French patrolboat.

Observe that B. 300 is spoken of as still open. It is so, for the reason that the Three Black Crows did not pull it off. It still stands marked up in red ink on the map that hangs over Ryder's desk in the San Francisco office; and anyone can have a chance at it who will meet Cyrus Ryder's terms. Only he can't get the Glarus for the attempt.

For the trip to the island after B. 300 was the last occasion on which the Glarus will smell blue water or taste the trades. She will never clear again. She is lumber.

And yet the Glarus on this very blessed day of 1902 is riding to her buoys off Sausalito in San Francisco Bay, complete in every detail (bar a broken propeller shaft), not a rope missing, not a screw loose, not a plank started— a perfectly equipped steam-freighter.

But you may go along the 'Front' in San Francisco from Fisherman's Wharf to the China steamships' docks and shake your dollars under the seamen's noses, and if you so much as whisper Glarus they will edge suddenly off and look at you with scared suspicion, and then, as like as not, walk away without another word. No pilot will take the Glarus out; no captain will navigate her; no stoker will feed her fires; no sailor will walk her decks. The Glarus is suspect. She has seen a ghost.

IT HAPPENED on our voyage to the island after this same B. 300. We had stood well off from shore for day after day, and Hardenberg had shaped our course so far from the track of navigation that since the Benevento had hulled down and vanished over the horizon no stitch of canvas nor smudge of smoke had we seen. We had passed the equator long since, and would fetch a long circuit to the southard, and bear up against the island by a circuitous route. This to avoid being spoken. It was tremendously essential that the Glarus should not be spoken.

I suppose, no doubt, that it was the knowledge of our isolation that impressed me with the dreadful remoteness of our position. Certainly the sea in itself looks no different at a thousand than at a hundred miles from shore. But as day after day I came out on deck at noon, after ascertaining our position on the chart (a mere pin-point in a reach of empty paper), the sight of the ocean weighed down upon me with an infinitely great awesomeness—and I was no new hand to the high seas even then.

But at such times the Glarus seemed to me to be threading a loneliness beyond all worlds and beyond all conception desolate. Even in more populous waters, when no sail notches the line of the horizon, the propinquity of one's kind is nevertheless a thing understood, and to an unappreciated degree comforting. Here, however, I knew we were out, far out in the desert. Never a keel for years upon years before us had parted these waters; never a sail had bellied to these winds. Perfunctorily, day in and day out we turned our eyes through long habit towards the horizon. But we knew, before the look, that the searching would be bootless. Forever and forever, under the pitiless sun and cold blue sky stretched the indigo of the ocean floor. The ether between the planets can be no less empty, no less void.

I never, till that moment, could have so much as conceived the imagination of such loneliness, such utter stagnant abomination of desolation. In an open boat, bereft of comrades, I should have gone mad in thirty minutes.

I remember to have approximated the impression of such empty immensity only once before, in my younger days, when I lay on my back on a treeless, bushless mountainside and stared up into the sky for the better part of an hour.

You probably know the trick. If you do not, you must understand that if you look up at the blue long enough, the flatness of the thing begins little by little to expand, to give here and there; and the eye travels on and on and up and up, till at length (well for you that it lasts but the fraction of a second), you all at once see space. You generally stop there and cry out, and— your hands over your eyes— are only too glad to grovel close to the good old solid earth again. Just as I, so often on short voyage, was glad to wrench my eyes away from that horrid vacancy, to fasten them upon our sailless masts and stack, or to lay my grip upon the sooty smudged taffrail of the only thing that stood between me and the Outer Dark.

For we had come at last to that region of the Great Seas where no ship goes, the silent sea of Coleridge and the Ancient One, the unplumbed, untracked, uncharted Dreadfulness, primordial, hushed, and we were as much alone as a grain of star-dust whirling in the empty space beyond Uranus and the ken of the greater telescopes.

So the Glarus plodded and churned her way onwards. Every day and all day the same pale-blue sky and the unwinking sun bent over that moving speck. Every day and all day the same black-blue water-world, untouched by any known wind, smooth as a slab of syenite, colourful as an opal, stretched out and around and beyond and before and behind us, forever, illimitable, empty. Every day the smoke of our fires veiled the streaked whiteness of our wake. Every day Hardenberg (our skipper) at noon pricked a pin-hole in the chart that hung in the wheel-house, and that showed we were so much farther into the wilderness. Every day the world of men, of civilisation, of newspapers, policemen and street-railways receded, and we steamed on alone, lost and forgotten in that silent sea.

'Jolly lot o' room to turn raound in,' observed Ally Bazan, the colonial, 'withaout steppin' on y'r neighbour's toes.'

'We're clean, clean out o' the track o' navigation,' Hardenberg told him. 'An' a blessed good thing for us, too. Nobody ever comes down into these waters. Ye couldn't pick no course here. Everything leads to nowhere.'

'Might as well be in a bally balloon,' said Strokher.

I shall not tell of the nature of the venture on which the Glarus was bound, further than to say it was not legitimate. It had to do with an ill thing done more than two centuries ago. There was money in the venture, but it was not to be gained by a violation of metes and bounds which are better left intact.

The island towards which we were heading is associated in the minds of men with a Horror. A ship had called there once, two hundred years in advance of the Glarus— a ship not much unlike the crank high-powered caravel of Hudson, and her company had landed, and having accomplished the evil they had set out to do, made shift to sail away. And then, just after the palms of the island had sunk from sight below the water's edge, the unspeakable had happened. The Death that was not Death had arisen from out the sea and stood before the ship, and over it, and the blight of the thing lay along the decks like mould, and the ship sweated in the terror of that which is yet without a name.

Twenty men died in the first week, all but six in the second. These six, with the shadow of insanity upon them, made out to launch a boat, returned to the island and died there, after leaving a record of what had happened.

The six left the ship exactly as she was, sails all set, lanterns all lit—left her in the shadow of the Death that was not Death.

She stood there, becalmed, and watched them go. She was never heard of again.

Or was she— well, that's as may be.

But the main point of the whole affair, to my notion, has always been this. The ship was the last friend of those six poor wretches who made back for the island with their poor chests of plunder. She was their guardian, as it were, would have defended and befriended them to the last; and also we, the Three Black Crows and myself, had no right under heaven, nor before the law of men, to come prying and peeping into this business— into this affair of the dead and buried past. There was sacrilege in it. We were no better than body-snatchers.

WHEN I HEARD the others complaining of the loneliness of our surroundings, I said nothing at first. I was no sailor man, and I was on board only by tolerance. But I looked again at the maddening sameness of the horizon— the same vacant, void horizon that we had seen now for sixteen days on end, and felt in my wits and in my nerves that same formless rebellion and protest such as comes when the same note is reiterated over and over again.

It may seem a little thing that the mere fact of meeting with no other ship should have ground down the edge of the spirit. But let the incredulous— bound upon such a hazard as ours— sail straight into nothingness for sixteen days on end, seeing nothing but the sun, hearing nothing but the thresh of his own screw, and then put the question.

And yet, of all things, we desired no company. Stealth was our one great aim. But I think there were moments— towards the last— when the Three Crows would have welcomed even a cruiser.

Besides, there was more cause for depression, after all, than mere isolation.

On the seventh day Hardenberg and I were forward by the cat-head, adjusting the grain with some half-formed intent of spearing the porpoises that of late had begun to appear under our bows, and Hardenberg had been computing the number of days we were yet to run.

'We are some five hundred odd miles off that island by now,' he said, 'and she's doing her thirteen knots handsome. All's well so far— but do you know, I'd just as soon raise that point o' land as soon as convenient.'

'How so?' said I, bending on the line. 'Expect some weather?'

'Mr Dixon,' said he, giving me a curious glance, 'the sea is a queer proposition, put it any ways. I've been a seafarin' man since I was big as a minute, and I know the sea, and what's more, the Feel o' the Sea. Now, look out yonder. Nothin', hey? Nothin' but the same ol' skyline we've watched all the way out. The glass is as steady as a steeple, and this ol' hooker, I reckon, is as sound as the day she went off the ways. But just the same if I were to home now, a-foolin' about Gloucester way in my little dough-dish— d'ye know what? I'd put into port. I sure would. Because why? Because I got the Feel o' the Sea, Mr Dixon. I got the Feel o' the Sea.'

I had heard old skippers say something of this before, and I cited to Hardenberg the experience of a skipper captain I once knew who had turned turtle in a calm sea off Trincomalee. I ask him what this Feel of the Sea was warning him against just now (for on the high sea any premonition is a premonition of evil, not of good). But he was not explicit.

'I don't know,' he answered moodily, and as if in great perplexity, coiling the rope as he spoke. 'I don't know. There's some blame thing or other close to us, I'll bet a hat. I don't know the name of it, but there's a big Bird in the air, just out of sight som'eres, and,' he suddenly exclaimed, smacking his knee and leaning forward, 'I— don't— like— it— one— dam'— bit.'

The same thing came up in our talk in the cabin that night, after the dinner was taken off and we settled down to tobacco. Only, at this time, Hardenberg was on duty on the bridge. It was Ally Bazan who spoke instead.

'Seems to me,' he hazarded, 'as haow they's somethin' or other a-goin' to bump up pretty blyme soon. I shouldn't be surprised, naow, y'know, if we piled her on some bally uncharted reef along o' to-night and went strite daown afore we'd had a bloomin' charnce to s'y "So long, gen'lemen all."'

He laughed as he spoke, but when, just at that moment, a pan clattered in the galley, he jumped suddenly with an oath, and looked hard about the cabin.

Then Strokher confessed to a sense of distress also. He'd been having it since the day before yesterday, it seemed.

'And I put it to you the glass is lovely,' he said, 'so it's no blow. I guess,' he continued, 'we're all a bit seedy and ship-sore.'

And whether or not this talk worked upon my own nerves, or whether in very truth the Feel of the Sea had found me also, I do not know; but I do know that after dinner that night, just before going to bed, a queer sense of apprehension came upon me, and that when I had come to my stateroom, after my turn upon deck, I became furiously angry with nobody in particular, because I could not at once find the matches. But here was a difference. The other man had been merely vaguely uncomfortable.

I could put a name to my uneasiness. I felt that we were being watched.

IT WAS A STRANGE ship's company we made after that. I speak only of the Crows and myself. We carried a scant crew of stokers, and there was also a chief engineer. But we saw so little of him that he did not count. The Crows and I gloomed on the quarterdeck from dawn to dark, silent, irritable, working upon each other's nerves till the creak of a block would make a man jump like cold steel laid to his flesh. We quarrelled over absolute nothings, glowered at each other for half a word, and each one of us, at different times, was at some pains to declare that never in the course of his career had he been associated with such a disagreeable trio of brutes. Yet we were always together, and sought each other's company with painful insistence.

Only once were we all agreed, and that was when the cook, a Chinaman, spoiled a certain batch of biscuits. Unanimously we fell foul of the creature with so much vociferation as fishwives till he fled the cabin in actual fear of mishandling, leaving us suddenly seized with noisy hilarity— for the first time in a week. Hardenberg proposed a round of drinks from our single remaining case of beer. We stood up and formed an Elk's chain and then drained our glasses to each other's health with profound seriousness.

That same evening, I remember, we all sat on the quarterdeck till late and— oddly enough— related each one his life's history up to date; and then went down to the cabin for a game of euchre before turning in.

We had left Strokher on the bridge— it was his watch— and had forgotten all about him in the interest of the game, when— I suppose it was about one in the morning—I heard him whistle long and shrill. I laid down my cards and said:

'Hark!'

In the silence that followed we heard at first only the muffled lope of our engines, the cadenced snorting of the exhaust, and the ticking of Hardenberg's big watch in his waistcoat that he had hung by the arm-hole to the back of his chair. Then from the bridge, above our deck, prolonged, intoned—a wailing cry in the night— came Strokher's voice:

'Sail oh-h-h.'

And the cards fell from our hands, and, like men turned to stone, we sat looking at each other across the soiled red cloth for what seemed an immeasurably long minute.

Then stumbling and swearing, in a hysteria of hurry, we gained the deck.

There was a moon, very low and reddish, but no wind. The sea beyond the taffrail was as smooth as lava, and so still that the swells from the cutwater of the Glarus did not break as they rolled away from the bows.

I remember that I stood staring and blinking at the empty ocean— where the moonlight lay like a painted stripe reaching to the horizon— stupid and frowning, till Hardenberg, who had gone on ahead cried:

'Not here— on the bridge!'

We joined Strokher, and as I came up the others were asking:

'Where? Where?'

And there, before he had pointed, I saw— we all of us saw— And I heard Hardenberg's teeth come together like a spring trap, while Ally Bazan ducked as though to a blow, muttering:

'Gord 'a' mercy, what nyme do ye put to a ship like that?'

And after that no one spoke for a long minute, and we stood there, moveless black shadows, huddled together for the sake of the blessed elbow touch that means so incalculably much, looking off over our port quarter.

For the ship that we saw there— oh, she was not a half-mile distant— was unlike any ship known to present-day construction.

She was short, and high-pooped, and her stern, which was turned a little towards us, we could see, was set with curious windows, not unlike a house. And on either side of this stern were two great iron cressets such as once were used to burn signal-fires in. She had three masts with mighty yards swung 'thwart ship, but bare of all sails save a few rotting streamers. Here and there about her a tangled mass of rigging drooped and sagged.

And there she lay, in the red eye of the setting moon, in that solitary ocean, shadowy, antique, forlorn, a thing the most abandoned, the most sinister I ever remember to have seen.

Then Strokher began to explain volubly and with many repetitions.

'A derelict, of course. I was asleep; yes, I was asleep. Gross neglect of duty. I say I was asleep— on watch. And we worked up to her. When I woke, why— you see, when I woke, there she was,' he gave a weak little laugh, 'and— and now, why, there she is, you see. I turned around and saw her sudden like— when I woke up, that is.'

He laughed again, and as he laughed the engines far below our feet gave a sudden hiccough. Something crashed and struck the ship's sides till we lurched as we stood. There was a shriek of steam, a shout— and then silence.

The noise of the machinery ceased; the Glarus slid through the still water, moving only by her own decreasing momentum.

Hardenberg sang, 'Stand by!' and called down the tube to the engine-room.

'What's up?'

I was standing close enough to him to hear the answer in a small, faint voice:

'Shaft gone, sir.'

'Broke?'

'Yes, sir.'

Hardenberg faced about.

'Come below. We must talk.' I do not think any of us cast a glance at the Other Ship again. Certainly I kept my eyes away from her. But as we started down the companionway I laid my hand on Strokher's shoulder. The rest were ahead. I looked him straight between the eyes as I asked:

'Were you asleep? Is that why you saw her so suddenly?'

It is now five years since I asked the question. I am still waiting for Strokher's answer.

Well, our shaft was broken. That was flat. We went down into the engine-room and saw the jagged fracture that was the symbol of our broken hopes. And in the course of the next five minutes' conversation with the chief we found that, as we had not provided against such a contingency, there was to be no mending of it. We said nothing about the mishap coinciding with the appearance of the Other Ship. But I know we did not consider the break with any degree of surprise after a few moments.

We came up from the engine-room and sat down to the cabin table.

'Now what?' said Hardenberg, by way of beginning.

Nobody answered at first.

It was by now three in the morning. I recall it all perfectly. The ports opposite where I sat were open and I could see. The moon was all but full set. The dawn was coming up with a copper murkiness over the edge of the world. All the stars were yet out. The sea, for all the red moon and copper dawn, was grey, and there, less than half a mile away, still lay our consort. I could see her through the portholes with each slow careening of the Glarus.

'I vote for the island,' cried Ally Bazan, 'shaft or no shaft. We rigs a bit o' syle, y'know—' and thereat the discussion began.

For upwards of two hours it raged, with loud words and shaken forefingers, and great noisy bangings of the table, and how it would have ended I do not know, but at last—it was then maybe five in the morning—the lookout passed word down to the cabin:

'Will you come on deck, gentlemen?' It was the mate who spoke, and the man was shaken— I could see that— to the very vitals of him. We started and stared at one another, and I watched little Ally Bazan go slowly white to the lips. And even then no word of the ship, except as it might be this from Hardenberg:

'What is it? Good God Almighty, I'm no coward, but this thing is getting one too many for me.'

Then without further speech he went on deck.

The air was cool. The sun was not yet up. It was that strange, queer mid-period between dark and dawn, when the night is over and the day not yet come, just the grey that is neither light nor dark, the dim dead blink as of the refracted light from extinct worlds.

We stood at the rail. We did not speak; we stood watching. It was so still that the drip of steam from some loosened pipe far below was plainly audible, and it sounded in that lifeless, silent greyness like— God knows what— a death tick.

'You see,' said the mate, speaking just above a whisper, 'there's no mistake about it. She is moving—this way.'

'Oh, a current, of course,' Strokher tried to say cheerfully, 'sets her towards us.'

Would the morning never come?

Ally Bazan— his parents were Catholic— began to mutter to himself.

Then Hardenberg spoke aloud.

'I particularly don't want— that— out— there— to cross our bows. I don't want it to come to that. We must get some sails on her.'

'And I put it to you as man to man,' said Strokher, 'where might be your wind?'

He was right. The Glarus floated in absolute calm. On all that slab of ocean nothing moved but the Dead Ship.

She came on slowly; her bows, the high, clumsy bows pointed towards us, the water turning from her forefoot. She came on; she was near at hand. We saw her plainly— saw the rotted planks, the crumbling rigging, the rust-corroded metal-work, the broken rail, the gaping deck, and I could imagine that the clean water broke away from her sides in refluent wavelets as though in recoil from a thing unclean. She made no sound. No single thing stirred aboard the hulk of her— but she moved.

We were helpless. The Glarus could stir no boat in any direction; we were chained to the spot. Nobody had thought to put out our lights, and they still burned on through the dawn, strangely out of place in their red-and-green garishness, like maskers surprised by daylight.

And in the silence of that empty ocean, in that queer half-light between dawn and day, at six o'clock, silent as the settling of the dead to the bottomless bottom of the ocean, grey as fog, lonely, blind, soulless, voiceless, the Dead Ship crossed our bows.

I do not know how long after this the Ship disappeared, or what was the time of day when we at last pulled ourselves together. But we came to some sort of decision at last. This was to go on— under sail. We were too close to the island now to turn back for— for a broken shaft.

The afternoon was spent fitting on the sails to her, and when after nightfall the wind at length came up fresh and favourable, I believe we all felt heartened and a deal more hardy— until the last canvas went aloft, and Hardenberg took the wheel.

We had drifted a good deal since the morning, and the bows of the Glarus were pointed homewards, but as soon as the breeze blew strong enough to get steerageway Hardenberg put the wheel over and, as the booms swung across the deck, headed for the island again.

We had not gone on this course half an hour— no, not twenty minutes— before the wind shifted a whole quarter of the compass and took the Glarus square in the teeth, so that there was nothing for it but to tack. And then the strangest thing befell.

I will make allowance for the fact that there was no centre-board nor keel to speak of to the Glarus. I will admit that the sails upon a nine-hundred-ton freighter are not calculated to speed her, nor steady her. I will even admit the possibility of a current that set from the island towards us. All this may be true, yet the Glarus should have advanced. We should have made a wake.

And instead of this, our stolid, steady, trusty old boat was— what shall I say?

I will say that no man may thoroughly understand a ship— after all. I will say that new ships are cranky and unsteady; that old and seasoned ships have their little crochets, their little fussinesses that their skippers must learn and humour if they are to get anything out of them; that even the best ships may sulk at times, shirk their work, grow unstable, perverse, and refuse to answer helm and handling. And I will say that some ships that for years have sailed blue water as soberly and as docilely as a street-car horse has plodded the treadmill of the 'tween-tracks, have been known to balk, as stubbornly and as conclusively as any old Bay Billy that ever wore a bell. I know this has happened, because I have seen it. I saw, for instance, the Glarus do it.

Quite literally and truly we could do nothing with her. We will say, if you like, that that great jar and wrench when the shaft gave way shook her and crippled her. It is true, however, that whatever the cause may have been, we could not force her towards the island. Of course, we all said 'current'; but why didn't the log-line trail?

For three days and three nights we tried it. And the Glarus heaved and plunged and shook herself just as you have seen a horse plunge and rear when his rider tries to force him at the steam-roller.

I tell you I could feel the fabric of her tremble and shudder from bow to stern-post, as though she were in a storm; I tell you she fell off from the wind, and broad-on drifted back from her course till the sensation of her shrinking was as plain as her own staring lights and a thing pitiful to see.

We rowelled her, and we crowded sail upon her, and we coaxed and bullied and humoured her, till the Three Crows, their fortune only a plain sail two days ahead, raved and swore like insensate brutes, or shall we say like mahouts trying to drive their stricken elephant upon the tiger— and all to no purpose. 'Damn the damned current and the damned luck and the damned shaft and all,' Hardenberg would exclaim, as from the wheel he would catch the Glarus falling off. 'Go on, you old hooker— you tub of junk! My God, you'd think she was scared!

Perhaps the Glarus was scared, perhaps not; that point is debatable. But it was beyond doubt of debate that Hardenberg was scared.

A ship that will not obey is only one degree less terrible than a mutinous crew. And we were in a fair way to have both. The stokers, whom we had impressed into duty as A.B.'s, were of course superstitious; and they knew how the Glarus was acting, and it was only a question of time before they got out of hand.

That was the end. We held a final conference in the cabin and decided that there was no help for it— we must turn back.

And back we accordingly turned, and at once the wind followed us, and the 'current' helped us, and the water churned under the forefoot of the Glarus, and the wake whitened under her stern, and the log-line ran out from the trail and strained back as the ship worked homewards.

We had never a mishap from the time we finally swung her about; and considering the circumstances, the voyage back to San Francisco was propitious.

But an incident happened just after we had started back. We were perhaps some five miles on the homeward track. It was early evening and Strokher had the watch. At about seven o'clock he called me up on the bridge.

'See her?' he said.

And there, far behind us, in the shadow of the twilight, loomed the Other Ship again, desolate, lonely beyond words. We were leaving her rapidly astern. Strokher and I stood looking at her till she dwindled to a dot. Then Strokher said:

'She's on post again.'

And when months afterwards we limped into the Golden Gate and cast anchor off the 'Front' our crew went ashore as soon as discharged, and in half a dozen hours the legend was in every sailors' boarding-house and in every seaman's dive, from Barbary Coast to Black Tom's.

It is still there, and that is why no pilot will take the Glarus out, no captain will navigate her, no stoker feed her fires, no sailor walk her decks. The Glarus is suspect. She will never smell blue water again, nor taste the trades. She has seen a Ghost.

______________

2: The Golden Bean

Beatrice Grimshaw

1870-1953

The Windsor Magazine June 1916

Journal (Adelaide) 12 Aug 1916

THE TRADE WIND sang in the funnel stays; the sky was blue crystal, the sea blue diamond. There was a steady pit-pitter of flying fish about the bows. Islands green as a tourmaline, with beaches of incredible, pure white, heaved themselves up through an air that sparkled like Danzig Golden Water. Across the endless plain of the Pacific the Avilion thumped her way.

That was at eight bells, noon. The first-class passengers, on their way to the San Francisco Exposition, were sitting on the boat and promenade decks, reading, flirting, playing cards. The second-class passengers (in Pacific lines the second-class ranks as steerage does in others) were hanging about the meagre afterdeck in hot tweed clothes unsuited to the climate, watching the lucky folk amidships, and thinking that it was very good to be a first-class passenger....

At eight bells midnight— an hour which no bell struck— every first-class passenger of the steamer Avilion was sleeping on the globigerina ooze of the sea bottom, a thousand fathoms down, and all the second class but two had made their bed beside them.

The steamer Avilion, with half her starboard plates ripped clean out by an uncharted reef, lay tilted to one side in a slaty gloom that would never lift to daylight. Three boats that nobody had had time to launch were partly crushed beneath her; a fourth, fifth, and sixth, taken down in the suck of the foundering, were somewhere or other— the Devil of the Deep Seas knew where— on the slimy bottom.

And Ryder and Simms, late second-class passengers on the Avilion, presently shipwrecked men, were lying in the dark on an unknown shore, to which they had swum with the aid of scattered oars, wondering where on earth or in the sea they had got to. Both were strong swimmers, else they bad never made shore when all the rest had failed. Yet they were utterly exhausted when they touched ground and could scarce muster strength to drag themselves up the beach.

Where they might be it was impossible to guess. There were no important groups of islands in this part of the voyage, only small dusters of reefs and atolls, with here and there an island of a mile or so in extent. Manatea was the name of the unimportant little archipelago— so far as either of the men knew, it was unknown and uninhabited. Steamers passed, but none called, which argued the absence of cargo, therefore of white inhabitants.

Crouching in the moonless dark of that terrible night, wet and worn out, upon the invisible sand of the beach, the men held counsel together. They had hardly seen anything of each other on board ship; they only knew, by the names exchanged in the darkness, that one was Simms, the fattish, youngish man with the pale face, who kept so much to his cabin, and that the other was Ryder, a hook-nosed, small, almost dwarfish fellow, with a fighting grey eye, who was the worst dressed and found of all the second class, but nevertheless about the most popular.

Shivering in the dark, with the cold, wet scents of some unseen forest blowing on their faces and the sea lapping near their feet, they held on to each other like children, and tried to warm themselves as they talked.

"Oh, Lord, it was awful!" chattered Simms. "Did you see when she struck—"

Ryder, holding on to him for warmth, shook him, at the same time shaking himself.

"I saw nothing; I don't remember anything," he said. "Nor do you—understand? We're in a dashed ugly fix ourselves, and we'll want all the nerve we've got without wasting it on dead corpses who can't be helped. If you get weepy over it, I'll punch your head."

He was embracing the other affectionately while he spoke—Simms's plumpness made him warm and comforting to the lean little body.

"But where are we?" cried Simms, in the high falsetto of fear.

"Alive and on the earth; you thank any gods you believe in for that, and don't worry about the geography of it. If I don't mistake—" he broke off, and held up one wet hand— "that's the breeze that comes before the rising moon. There's not much left of her, but we'll see something when she gets up."

"How long will it be before she comes?"

"Quarter of an hour or so."

They waited in the darkness of an unknown shore. It seemed as if they had reached the end of the world.

"I say!" came Ryder's voice.

"Yes?"

"You've been in gaol lately, haven't you?"

"'How did you know?"

"Oh, general look of you," said Ryder knowingly.

"Were you ever in gaol yourself?" asked Simms. "No. but I ought to be. Did something, and wasn't caught."

"I didn't do something and was caught. Oh, Lord, what a world it is! Mr. Ryder, do you think we'll die of chill?"

"In these latitudes? No fear. Hold up, a bit closer. What did you— not do?"

"I never took it, but they said I did; bank note; gave me three years. I'll never know who did; if they found him now, it wouldn't matter: I'm broke for the rest of my days. If I'd money to go and make a real new start But I was making for the beach at Samoa; the natives there are kinder than white men, so I've read."

"Why, so was I. Don t know the islands, but they can't be worse than New Zealand."

"What was it you weren't caught for?" breathed Simms.

Here in the dark at the end of the world they opened their secrets and their souls as men who have passed beyond the grave.

"Embezzlement of £312 10/. I never intended to keep it. I borrowed it for three days, to save a— a—"

"I know," moaned Simms. "There was one in my story too. I sometimes think she took it herself. Did yours make you take it? That was cleverer."

"Yes. He found it out. He was my I stepbrother. Hard old case, successful, and all that, but no more heart than a rotten nut. I knew he would arrest me, so I cut and came to New Zealand. Put an ad. in the paper to ask if he'd let up if I replaced the money— I thought I had a chance— and he answered yes. But the chance capsized, so there I was. Fact is, I haven't got the money-making knack; might as well hope to get three millions. And yet I've tried. Don't drink, never lazy, worked myself sick, over and over again; never made more than tucker; never will. And only a few little hundreds wanting— what fellows spend on a decent hunter or a few weeks' salmon fishing— to get back to the old world and the things I had, and to— well, it wasn't her fault, you know."

"Oh, it never is," said the other voice wearily. "I don't care anyhow. I'm done with all my old life, but to have enough to buy a bit of land and a house and a place that I could live on—why, it would be heaven. This beggar's life! But I'll never—"

"Don't do it; if you snivel, one snivel, I swear I will punch your head, Man, I'm in as bad a way as you; the same boat, in fact. We both want the right to live, instead of being kicked about, and we aren't likely to get it. But Simms loosened himself from Ryder's hold.

"Ain't that— isn't that the moon?" he said excitedly, "You must pardon my occasional bad grammar, Mr. Ryder; I was once a school master, but the company I've had to keep! Yes, it is. Look, look!"

The wearied yellow crescent of the waning moon was just lifting through a bank of clouds. A strong, warm breeze went before it.

"Oh, thank God!" breathed the schoolmaster, who was an agnostic by belief. "Now we'll see."

"We shan't see much," said Ryder, getting up and shaking himself. He was horribly cold. The moon crept out of the clouds. They saw a white, sandy beach, a row of leaning palms, a tangle of brushwood underneath, and cutting through the brush—

"Oh, Holy Mike!" cried the shivering little Ryder, jumping up and down in the sand. "It's a track; white man's or I'll be hanged. Now, Simms, if you're used to reciting, here's the time to yell 'Saved! Saved!' We'll be inside blankets and outside of a hot whisky in half an hour."

But Simms, in the relief of the moment, was really snivelling at last. "I don't mind if you blub a bit now," said Ryder indulgently.

Simms stopped.

"I'm better now," he choked. "You don't know nothing—I mean, you don't know anything about prison life or you wouldn't blame me. It saps the soul out of a man."

"Plays up with you, and gives you gyp generally; yes, I can guess. I don't want to come any nearer than guessing. Come on." He dragged the bigger man roughly by the hand. "What you want is to get a move on you, body and soul. I can see that."

"I'm coming. Yes, I suppose I've got sort of clack-twisted; but if I'd only a chance. I wish fairly tales was— were true, Mr. Ryder."

"What then? Don't walk in that brush; keep on the track. Never know there mightn't be snakes."

"Why," said the fatter man, panting as he kept pace with Ryder's lean, little frame, "I'd wish we might find a crock of gold at the end of this track. Same as the rainbow, ye know. Or a palace full of treasure, and all the people that guarded it turned into stone. Seems as if anything might happen in a place like this, don't— doesn't it, Mr. Ryder?"

"Anything might happen anywhere, only mostly it doesn't," said Ryder wisely.

They tramped on in silence for a little, weary to the bone, but upheld by the thought of those clean beds and warming glasses that Ryder had predicted. There was something in the width and neatness of the coral-gravelled pathway, now fully visible in the moonlight, that suggested comfort. Houses in the South Sea Islands are always near the beach.

They had not passed through more than a hundred yards of warm, wet forest, rich with scents sweet and heavy as those in graveyards wreaths, when the moonlight that had lain in loose streamers upon their path broadened out into a flood of greenish silver, wide and splendid as the sea. Unconfined, it shone upon, a deep, cleared valley seven or eight acres in extent, planted with something low and spreading upon a gray flat, cut across by the coral path; upon an iron house, white in the moonlight, standing at the end of the path.

"Saved! Saved!" cried Ryder, flinging his arms about and mimicking the jerky emotion of the amateur reciter. "We've fallen on our feet all right."

"The people is— are in bed," commented Simms, trailing wearily behind.

"What would you expect at two in the morning?" asked Ryder.

"I dunno. It's very silent. Mr. Ryder."

They paused for a minute. The woodchopper bird, at its midnight task in the forest, made a ghostly chop-chop or two far away. A flying fox, black against the moon, went by without a sound. They could hear the sea lapping on the sandy beach.

"Come on," said Ryder, crunching over the coral path. "We've got to wake them up, whoever they are."

He was suddenly conscious of his soaked and dragging clothes; of his weary little legs. The night had grown almost cold. Simms followed him to the verandah steps. The doors were open.

"They are always open in hot countries," said Ryder, answering a question that nobody had put. The two men halted on the pathway.

"Ain't you—haven't you a match?" breathed Simms. He did not seem to remember that all their matches were hopelessly soaked.

"What a queer smell!" said Ryder.

"Were?"

"Everywhere," replied Ryder, sniffing the air.

"I— I do get it, I think. Yes, I do. What do you think it is, Mr. Ryder?"

Ryder did not answer; he stood still on the path and seemed to be looking,  or listening.  The sea talked on the sandy beach a long way off. From the forest l the giant locusts sent out sharp radio messages of warning trrt-tt-tt; trrt-tt-tt-trrt. You might have thought there was a ship there behind the banyans and cottonwoods, crackling forth her crisp Marconi talk across the seas.

Simms, hanging back, heard the long intake of Ryder's breath as the little fellow mounted the veranda steps determinedly and made for the door. He was absent but a moment, and when he came back his face looked greenish under the silver-green of the moon.

"There's a dead man in there," he said, lowering his voice as we all lower it in the presence of those sleepers who can never be waked any more. "I touched his hand. It wasn't— nice. I'm not a nervous chap, but I think, on the whole, we'll wait for dawn before going in to see."

"Lord 'lmighty!" said Simms. "Let's get back to the beach, Mr. Ryder. I don't like this."

"Hold on," said Ryder. "We may as well camp on the track as anywhere else. Dead men don't bite. Don't be a fool. Stop here and help me to keep warm."

"I don't want to be alone, said Simms, his voice shaking. "If you won't come, I'll stay." Arm round arm and breast to breast, the two strangers crouched together, shivering, and waited for the day.

WHEN the first flakes of yellow broke above the cottonwood tops like a flight of butterflies, they rose and tramped about on the gravel, shaking themselves and waiting for high sun. Long rays lay full upon the coral pathway before the castaways took heart to ascend the veranda steps once more. Even then Simms lagged behind and waited for the other to enter first.

"Come in," called Ryder. "There's nothing here to hurt you."

Simms, stepping cautiously, followed him.

It was a common little sitting room, in two-roomed iron house of the usual island kind. There were trophies of arrows and paddles on the walls, chains of yellow-blue shells festooned above the window, a swinging lamp, a few chairs, a kitchen table. And, seated at the table, half tumbled across it, were two dead men— white men, young men, well-dressed men, for the islands; they wore good new shirts, khaki trousers, socks, and white shoes. Men they were who did not look like criminals or desperadoes, yet they had killed each other there as they sat, for one had a bullet wound in his breast, crimson upon the grey of the flannel shirt, and a revolver had fallen from his right hand upon the floor; while the other, with no weapon to his hand, showed a dark, red-edged hole through his forehead.

"One can see," said Ryder, staring curiously, "the fellow with the hole in his forehead shot the other fellow through his chest; and then the other fellow snatched the revolver and shot the first fellow through the head, and then he died himself."

"Let's get out of this," pleaded Simms, with his sleeve over his mouth and nose.

"You can. I'm going to investigate."

Ryder was passing light-footed round the table, disturbing nothing, looking at everything.

"Gambling," he pronounced presently. "See the dice. And the counters; must have been playing high by the look of things."

"Where are the counters?"

"These queer black beans cut up into chunks."

He picked one up and smelled it. "Reminds me of something. What does it remind me of? Something to do with dances, I think. Hello, they're marked."

The little beans were marked, apparently by a needle, in figures, "50 lb.," "100 lb., "1,000 lb."

"Now, that's odd," commented Simms, looking at them. "Not pounds sterling, but pounds avoirdupois. What could they have been gambling about?"

Ryder did not seem to hear him; he was examining the dice.

"Look at that," he said, handing them over. Four years before the ex-schoolmaster would not have known a loaded die when he saw, or, rather, felt it. But the ex-schoolmaster who had been graduated in a convict prison did know.

"One of them's a crook," he pronounced.

"Exactly."

"But what's it all about?"

"Well, you can see who killed whom, and why. But this counter business puzzles me. Let it alone: we'll find out presently."

He hunted through the pockets of the silent players, but nothing save pipes, knives, and matches resulted. "I'm that hungry— so hungry I could lay— lie down and die," complained Simms. "Do you suppose there's food anywhere?"

"Sure to be." Ryder, his small legs moving fast with eagerness and hope, led the way to the kitchen outside. It was a rough little place, built of cocoanut and sago stem, but it had a fixed fireplace of ant-bed concrete, with a kettle swinging over, and there was a locked wooden cupboard in one corner.

Ryder picked up the tomahawk that lay beside the woodpile, and smashed in the door. Tinned meat, tea, flour, sugar, biscuit, a bottle or two . Within two minutes the castaways had found pannikins, water, and knife, and were seated on the rough packing-case table eating like famished dogs, and barely pausing to pour strong draughts of whisky and water down their throats.

"I'd give the world to sleep," said Simms after his food, staring before him with eyes glazed by satiation and fatigue.

"You needn't give the world," answered Ryder. "Come into the bedroom; there's two stretchers there."

"But them— those corpses!" shuddered Simms.

"They don't want their beds any more," said Ryder with a chuckle, jumping down off the table. "They'll let us have them."

In the bedroom the two men threw off their wet clothes, rummaged for fresh shirts and trousers, and threw themselves down to sleep. The sun was far down the sky before they awoke.

"First thing," said Ryder, "is to clear them out."

He took the blankets off the beds and slung the dead men in them. Then he and Simms carried the ghastly loads down to the edge of the deep forest, and a little way in.

"Aren't we going to bury them?" asked Simms.

"You can if you like. I mean to leave the job to rats and ants. They'll do to clean."

"Well," said the other doubtfully. "We have no spades."

"No. Butter your conscience with that. Now let's get the hang of the place."

The island seemed to be a small one; they could catch the gleam of sea water through the trees on the farthest side, and far as they could judge it was totally uninhabited. They climbed an isolated tree, brushing green ants by the hundreds from their faces and arms, and took a general view.

The little archipelago of Manatea— two islands, an atoll, like a wreath flung down upon the water, and half a dozen reefs and islets almost awash— lay clear to sight. There was not thread of smoke, not a brown native roof, anywhere to be seen. The small iron house of the two dead men and a couple of sheds near it, one thatch, one iron, were the only buildings visible.

The little valley that they had noticed on the previous night stood out clear in the. afternoon sun. It was smaller than they had thought; the stuff it was planted with, whatever that low-spreading growth might be, did not cover more than six acres at the most.

"Food, I guess," said Ryder, his small, sharp face peering through the boughs like a gargoyle set high among stone leafage on a tower. "Nothing else would be worth while in such a small space."

"What sort of food?" panted Simms a good way below.

"Couldn't say. Never been in the tropics before, same as you. Might be manioc, or something, for the labour."

"Labour?"

"Yes. You never supposed they carried on a plantation of any sort with their own hands, did you? That's been the natives' house— that thatch roof— not more than eight or 10 of 'em."

"Where are they?"

"Take your face out of the way of my feet; I'm coming down. Where? Bolted home with the cutter or schooner belonging to the place, I suppose. No doubt they'd loot the store and clear out as soon as they saw what had happened. You'll find there's mighty little food but what we've seen."

The two men were on the ground again now. They made for the iron shed at once, feeling in every step the strange loneliness of the island. There is no solitude like the solitude where life has been and is not.

The iron shed stood in a clearing; the fierce afternoon sun beat upon the roof and blazed through the open door. The heat inside was frightful. There were rough shelves across one end, where food had evidently been stored, but not a tin or a bag remained. A few handfuls of rice, trampled and dirty, were strewn about the floor. The door had been broken in with a plantation axe, which was lying in one corner.

"Cleared out," commented Ryder. "As I guessed."

"Sherlock Holmes ain't— isn't in it with you," said the other man admiringly. "I wisht— wish I had been a practical man like you, Mr. Ryder. It comes home to a man in places like this. Purely subjective, my type of mind, Mr. Ryder."

Ryder put his head into the inner shed.

"This has been forced too," he said, his eyebrows bobbing up and down with perplexity. "What in the name of Holy Mike did those two dead beggars want with all those beans? Seems the natives didn't want them anyhow. They went off and left them, after breaking the door in Look there."

"And bad beans at that," said Simms, peering in at the masses of dark, shrivelled stuff that lay piled up on shelves. "Smell strong of something, they do. Permeating odour, like."

"This island seems to specialize in permeating odours," said Ryder dryly. "And beans. I judge those two corpses to have had beans on the brain, more or less. This is the same kind as they were using for counters."

"Oh, it's a mad place, right enough," said Simms dispiritedly. "Not much treasure-island sort of stuff about it, is there? Somehow, Mr. Ryder, I did have a silly sort of idea that we'd dropped on something. On a chance like a— an opportunity for rehabilitation. Assets of some sort, as you might say. But , find two sti— malodorous corpses, who were mad about beans when they were alive, and a tin house no use any one, and a store that's looted, except where it's full of them—those same silly leguminous vegetables, all withered away anyhow. No, there ain't none except the fairy tales other people tell about your character."

"That's where they grow their blessed beans, no doubt," say Ryder, standing off the threshold of the broken door, and looking out down the small cleared gully where the low-growing plants— whatever they were— spread themselves out in the sun.

"It beats me to know where and how they thought they could make money out of any such stuff. Perhaps the things might boil all right; it may be a way of preserving them, but I can't see where it would pay at the price of any kind of bean on this earth. Haricots are a sight more eatable looking, and they go cheap as mud."

"And yet," he went on, working his Mestophelian eyebrows oddly up and down, "those two dead chaps in the house didn't look like fools. I wish I knew something about these countries. Let's go down and look at their bally beans, and then hunt the house."

"What for, Mr. Ryder?"

"Don't know. More beans, perhaps."

In the valley, red with coming sunset they found nothing that either could understand. Rows and rows of beans, green in this case, but evidently the same as the beans in the house and shed; beans with big fleshy leaves, hanging on long wooden palings, with thin tall trees planted between the rows, apparently for shade; beans that had an unusually pretty flower— but still, just beans.

"Perhaps," suggested Simms, "it was the niggers' food. I've heard there is a kind of bean they feed them on sometimes."

"They don't seem to have liked this very much," said Ryder grimly. "If I could only remember what the dashed smell reminded me of— but I can think of nothing except dances long ago at home, and some girl on my arm."

"Maybe it was the scent she used."

"I don't know, maybe. Let's go back to the house."

"I do feel that— so disappointed, Mr Ryder," said Simms, trailing up the track behind the little man. "I did have an idea somehow that we'd got into something."

Ryder said nothing; his back was hunched up, his hands in his pockets; he poked his head forward as he walked, and seemed to be thinking. They reached the house again. Simms, tired out, threw himself on one of the beds. Ryder sat down on the other, and with his odd Punch countenance in his hands, and one knee crossed over the other, remained humped and silent, staring at the wall.

A cricket or two wound furious rattles under the window; the sound of shrewish screaming came from the forest, where white cockatoos were winging their way home. On the bookshelf that hung upon the wall a praying mantis as long as one's hand had settled itself, its forelegs outstretched in supplication. The light went down; a dewy smell of leaves and underbrush crept through the window. Simms, on the bed, had begun to snore.

"Holy Mike!" yelled Ryder, jumping into the middle of the floor.

The mantis at its prayers, turned its long neck with out moving its body, and looked at him with large, disapproving eyes.

"Simms, wake up; I've got it!" cried the little man, pulling at the supine body on the bed.

"Got what?" asked the other sleepily.

"The beans! I've remembered the smell."

"Smell?"

"Yes, it was the smell of things at a ball supper— vanilla! They're vanilla beans. Hundredweights of them. We're made, my boy. They pile up fortunes out of vanilla in Tahiti and places like that. We've got the chance, after all."

Simms was sitting up now, broad awake. His pitiful, prison-sallowed face looked terribly eager.

"But I say," he broke in. "Ain't— isn't it stealing? Suppose they had heirs of some kind somewhere."

Ryder's queer Punch countenance set hard.

"See here," he said. "You and I have got on the wrong side of things: one of us has been in gaol, and one ought to have been. We've no right left to cultivate fine scruples. Those are for people on the right side of things, where we'll be in a few weeks' time; then we can be as scrupulous as you like. I can only see one thing now, and that's that these men gambled with each other for  their crop— remember the figures on the beans?— and one of them cheated and the other killed him, and got killed himself doing it. They had their chance and they chucked it away, and now it's lying loose about the universe in general so to speak; nobody's. Well, it's got to be picked up by us. As for heirs, we don't know they have any, and if they have the heirs can look after themselves. And you know dashed well, don't you Simms, that that's what you think yourself, only you haven't the pluck to say so; you want to saddle it on me."

The years of gaol behind Simms made him easy meat for a dominating voice and manner.

"I don't say you aren't right, Mr. Ryder," he said in a weak voice, "but what I'd like to know is, how are we to make anything out of it."

"I'll tell you," answered the little man, who was striding up and down the bedroom. He paused in his stride to fix Simms with his glass-grey eyes. "We're going to look for the book on vanilla that's dead sure to be here."  He made a hawk-like pounce upon the bookshelf, and pulled a volume out— "The Vanilla Planter's Guide."

"See that? And we're going to get in the remainder of the crop ourselves and cure it ourselves if we work till we drop in our tracks. And then we're going to wait till the ship comes along that Supplies this place— there must be one—  and we'll get away somehow with the stuff to Auckland or Sydney. If there's any Questions asked, we can cay we've taken over charge."

"What do you think we'll make?" asked Simms, a greedy light in his eye.

"Let's look in the book."

But there was disappointment here. For the book, though it gave full directions as to the planting and harvesting of the crop, and discoursed to weariness of the different kinds of bean, said nothing at all about price. It seemed to think that you would know all about that yourself. What you had to spend in planting and upkeep it told you in the utmost detail, but there was no mention of sales.

"We shall have to guess," said Ryder. "According to this book the place ought to have about six thousand pounds of beans on it. Supposing they were worth two shillings a pound, and I dare say they are, that would be six hundred pounds— enough to start both of us fresh in life. I'd pay off and go back— Lord, I hope they do bring two shillings!"

He broke off.

"Judging by the samples in the book, these beans are of much better quality than ordinary."

"They might bring more," suggested Simins covetously. "If they brought five, now, why, it'd be a little fortune.

"Well, make no mistake about this— we've got to work to earn it," said Ryder. "You and I have to do the work of two white men and seven or eight niggers in the next few weeks if we're going to get through in time to save it all."

IT IS LONG AGO now, but never since those days has Ryder or Simms been able to endure the smell of vanilla. The sweet, clinging scent means to them things not at all sweet— fierce toil beneath a tropic sun, gathering and carrying and heaping up the beans; hours, long, faint, weary hours, spent in the bent of noon over the boiling water with which the curing was done; days at last when labour, though incessant, was comparatively light, the beans being laid out to sweat between blankets in the sun, and aired every now and then.

Always there was the smell of vanilla, vanilla, sickening strong; the hands were sodden with it, all food tasted of vanilla, everything smelled of it, the very bedclothes reeked of it. Food was scanty, grew scantier as the weeks went on. For the stores in the house that had escaped looting ran low, for Ryder would not spare time for fishing or shooting. Some yams and sweet potatoes there were, apparently not thought of by the escaping boys; and on these they lived at the last. Ryder had fully anticipated having to drive the other man to his work by violence when the pinch came, but Simms's natural laziness had been hardened in the fire of convict labour, and he answered to an order as to a whip.

And at the last the crop was in. The vanilla, all harvested and cured, was stacked upon the shelves in the big shed, dark, odorous, glistening with the frostlike "givre" that the castaways had learned from the book to be a warrant of finest quality.

And for three days Ryder and Simms, tired and happy, fished idly in the cool hours of early morning, shot birds with the gun they had found in the house, and sated their thirst for meat. Also they took soap, and lye water made of wood ashes, and soaked the reek of vanilla out of their clothes and hair and bodies. They spiced their food with mustard to forget the taste of it. They put the thumbed and scented book away at the back of the bookshelf, and threw the cover blankets into the sea.

And every day, in the morning and in the evening, they walked up and down upon the small cleared hill and looked out for a ship. By the scantiness of the stores found in the house, Ryder guessed one must be nearly due.

On the fourth morning, as the two-were indulging in a late lie-in, accompanied by pipes of trade tobacco, they were both lifted out of their beds in a leap by nothing but a sound. It was the sound of a footstep upon the tinkling coral path.

They rushed out on the verandah. A smart-looking, middle-aged man, dressed in neat white ducks, and wearing a gold-banded cap, was coming toward the house.

"lorana!" he cried, waving his hand.

Ryder, guessing that it was some kind of native salutation, replied boldly, "lorana!"

"He'll see in a minute we aren't them— those two men," whispered Simms apprehensively. "What are you going to say. Mr. Ryder?"

Ryder's reply was stopped by another hail from the captain, evidently addressed to himself.

"You're Mr. Frere, aren't you; and the other is Mr. Wallis?"

" 'E doesn't know us. 'E 'asn't been 'ere before," said Simms, in a fiercely agitated whisper, his h's suddenly, and for the first time in Ryder's knowledge, deserting him, under the stress of emotion.

"Where's the other captain?" called Ryder, at a guess. By this time the captain was close up to the house.

"Oh, Grills?" he said easily. "He and the Siandra won't be along this trip. Got on a reef and gone to repair. Hogg, Jamieson. & Co. have sent me along instead. Only the little Phyllis, but she'll take your cargo all right. How's the vanilla?"

"Come in and have a drink," said Ryder.  "Vanilla's done splendidly. We've got six thousand eight hundred pounds odd for you, first-class quality. How did you leave them all down below?"

"Hogg Jamieson as prosperous and as economical as ever," said the captain, stepping up on the verandah. "Sydney still where it was. Thanks. I'll sit. outside. Thanks, thanks, enough: just a little more water. What a splendid view you have here!"

"It's very lovely," answered Ryder perfunctorily, without looking down at the panorama of blue sea and jewel-green lagoon, white creaming reef, and white coral sand. He was looking ay the captain instead. The man was very handsome, smart, well-mannered, and well-dressed. Ryder wondered why he did not like him.

"What's the Phyllis?" he asked. "Steamer?"

"Oh, dear, no; schooner; 68 tons; no auxiliary, but as good a little boat as you'd wish to see. That reminds me; I've got to be away before noon; the tide will make it deuced awkward getting out of the lagoon if I wait till it's running in. I'll have my men up at once, if you don't mind, and get the cargo on board."

"I suppose you'll have a look at the stuff first," said Ryder, wondering why Simms, the sheep-like, had fixed such an unpleasant glare upon the newcomer. Simms looked actually fierce. It occurred to Ryder to kick him secretly.

"Ho!" ejaculated Simms, making his involuntary cry do duty for an exclamation, as of one who has forgotten something. "You and me— you and I, Mr.— (Ryder kicked him again)— Mr. Frere, have got to sort out some of the stuff first. I suppose, captain— I don't know your name, sir "

"Capt. Brown," supplied the sailor, wrinkling up his light-blue eyes in a laugh that seemed rather uncalled for.

"Capt. Brown, I suppose you won't mind waiting a few minutes?"

"Oh, no, not in the least; quite a pleasure to wait here with this nice breeze and lovely view. Really, you two partners are very much to be envied, very much. Quite a little paradise or your own."

He lit a cigar from his case and settled himself in a deck chair.

Ryder, somewhat puzzled, followed the other man down to the vanilla store. He did not know of any further sorting that the stuff required, but he saw that Simms wanted to speak to him. In the stifling-sweet atmosphere of the shed, light coming dimly in strips through half-shuts slats on the louvered windows, Simms set his back against the door and spoke:—

"He's a crook, Mr. Ryder; he's a crook. I'd stake my life on it. First it was the look of him "

"Oh, rats; you can't call a man a swindler. which I suppose is what you mean, because he's got a face you don't fancy."

"That ain't— is not it, Mr. Ryder. If you'd been housed and elbowed with crooks for three years of hell, you'd know 'em— you'd know 'em by every bit of 'em, from their boots up to their hair. You'd know 'em in the dark, when you was asleep or blind drunk. And that ain't all."

He was so much in earnest that he forgot to correct his grammar.

"He didn't give you his own name. He had to think a minute before he said it, and he laughed like, to cover it up. And that ain't all." He was standing m the green light of the louvers, his face sallower than ever, and working with emotion. "Hogg Jamieson haven't got no— any schooners left. I know the man who bought the last they had, last year; they've given them all up for steam this good while. Now, Mr. Ryder!"

Ryder bit his nails, his eyebrows working up and down.

"I believe you're right," he said at last. "What do you think he means to do?"

"We can't tell till he does it. Better come back, Mr. Ryder; it won't do to stop, he's bound to be full of suspicion of everything and everybody."

They found the captain finishing his cigar, with a pleasant smile on his rather too pleasant face.

"Ready for inspection?" he asked.

"Come and have a look," said Ryder. "It's good stuff."

His heart was beating so hard that it turned him sick. Were they, after all, to be deprived of their golden chance?

The captain, throwing away the end of his cigar, followed them to the vanilla house. Both men watched, him narrowly as he look up handful after handful of the beans, smelling them, holding them up to the light, touching them with his tongue, and both were struck with the same idea— that he was more intent on getting through with the task than on making a close estimate of values. Many heaps he sampled lightly; some he did not touch at all, and often, when his hands were busy, his eyes were looking somewhere else. In a few minutes he came out, lighting another cigar in order to keep his face partly hidden, Ryder thought.

"Fair— fair," he said, shielding the tip of the cigar with his hands. "Not quite up to your usual standard. Six thousand pounds you said you had?"

"Six thousand eight hundred and nine," answered Simms.

"Well—"

They were back on the verandah now, seated comfortably in the shade, with the breeze blowing up from the sea in their faces— "what did you—  puff— think of— puff— asking for it?"

Simms, watching him with a hostile eye, was silent.

"We can't take less than the last time," said Ryder readily. He judged that the newcomer, if he were indeed some kind of impostor masquerading as Hogg Jamieson's agent, would not care to acknowledge ignorance of the price generally paid to island traders. It was, of course, a foregone conclusion that he knew the ordinary prices of vanilla.

"Couldn't rise to it," said the captain, with that exceedingly pleasant smile of his. "Vanilla market's fairly glutted this year, and they're turning out so much of the chemical stuff. No, really, we couldn't do it. Mention a price, and I'll see if I can meet you."

Then it was that Simms had his inspiration.

Even as Ryder was opening his mouth to ask boldly for two shillings, the starved, greedy soul of the ex-convict did something too quick for its owner to follow, and he said determinedly, in a voice he hardly knew— "Twenty shillings."

"Twenty devils!" shouted the captain, while Ryder sat horrified. "Do you think you're first-grade Seychelles? Eight is my top price, and you may make up your mind to that."

Ryder, seizing the situation, jumped in with both feet; he was better suited than Simms for bargaining, and in the duel that followed fully held his own. At the end of 20 minutes the crop was sold for 11 shillings a pound. Then the captain relaxed, and his delightful smile came back, accompanied by a shade of cunning, which Simms saw as if it were a beacon on a reef, and Ryder at least guessed at.

"Right!" he said. "As I'm in a hurry, I'll give you a draft on Hogg Jamieson straightaway, and whistle for the boys to take away the stuff. By the way, where are yours?''

"Away on the boat," replied Ryder. "We weren't expecting you."

"Well, about that draft. Have you a pen and ink?"

"Yes," answered Ryder. "Come along in."

"What are you doing?" whispered Simms, catching him by the sleeve. "We don't want no— any draft; it's bound to be snide."

"You won't get any," said little Ryder, his eyebrows working up and down. "Leave it to me."

He went into the sitting room after the captain, and Simms, listening on the verandah, heard their talk begin.

"By-the-way, won't you ask your mate up for a yarn and a drink? We don't see many white men here."

"Awfully sorry," said the pleasant voice. "I haven't got one. No white man on board but myself. Mate left me in the last group of islands, and I'm worrying along with a kanaka crew."

"No witnesses to his games," said the ex-convict to himself. Sharp! But it cuts two ways."

"Well," (in Ryder's voice), "let's get to business. I must have cash for this lot, captain. I've no proof of your authority to give drafts on Hogg Jamieson."

There was a little stir at the table.

"Do you question my honesty?" asked the agreeable voice, into which a disagreeable edge had somehow crept.

"I want cash"— curt and sharp. "I'm asking no questions and telling no lies. I don't want to know anything. I want cash."

There was a silence.

Simms, peeping in, saw the captain twisting both sides of his moustache and looking unsteadily at Ryder, whose grey, basilisk gaze was fixed immovably upon the other man's face.

"Do you think I carry sacks of gold in my cabin?" asked the alleged Brown.

"That vanilla," said Ryder, "is of the highest grade; it's worth something like £7,000. I've sold it to you for £3,744/19/. What cash have you on board?"

Simms, peeping again, saw that a revolver— the one they had found in the. sitting room— was hanging negligently in Ryder's hand just below the table edge, and that the captain had undoubtedly seen it.

The captain's voice was curiously subdued when he spoke again:— "You—you put an amazingly high value on your stuff, even if your place deserved the absurd reputation it has. As to cash, I swear I haven't more than £260 on board."

"Write an order to your boys, and my partner will go and get it."

"Hanged if I do."

"You'll be something worse than hanged if you don't."

"Who are you? I don't believe you're Frere and Wallis after all. They said Frere was a small man, but good-looking, and you're as ugly as the devil."

"You'll find I act exactly up to my appearance if you don't make haste. I don't ask who you are; I only know who you aren't, and that's Hogg Jamieson's captain or agent."

"My crew can't read."

"In a quarter of the Pacific that's full of missions. Probably half of them can. Give me that order."

"Why— why, this is robbery!"

"Oh, no, it isn't. If my partner brings back what we think enough money, well let you have the vanilla, and you can clear and make your fortune with it. There's a pen."

There was a minute's silence, then the scratching of the pen and the thump of blotting paper.

"Here," said Ryder through the window. "Take this on board, and collar all the cash you see."

Simms, his eyes shining and his mouth hanging open with greed, ran down the path and hurried into the belt of cottonwood and mangrove. He was a long time coming back. The captain sat and chewed his nails; Ryder sat and stared at him, hand lying ready in pocket. Locusts wound their rattles among the golden allamanda outside; pigeons cooed in the forest; the long leaves of the coconuts swinging in the trade wind beat like rain upon the iron roof of the house.

Simms's step came back along the tinkling path. He entered the house and laid a heavy cashbox upon the table.

"Key, please," said Ryder.

The captain threw them at him.

"Empty it and count," said the little man.

Simms counted. "Sixteen hundred and seventy-three pounds seven and twopence," he gave out. "This beggar has been having another haul somewhere or other."

His eyes were glistening, his jaws moving like the eyes and jaws of a hungry man who scents food.

"Now, the question is," said Ryder, "whether we're going to take this or not The vanilla's worth a heap more, but then—"

"But then—" mimicked the captain, whose pleasant manner had been oozing away drop by drop and was now almost gone. "Don't forget the 'but then.' "

"I incline to think," said the little man coolly, "that this— and Capt. Alias Brown's whaleboat— will do."

The captain swore fluently. "She's worth eighty pounds," he cried.

"All the better for us. Come, don't you be a fool. You've got the best of the bargain. We're all vultures here together, battening on what remains of the corpses— I  didn't tell you that we found your Frere and Wallis lying dead over this table: shot each other in a row about cogged dice— and you've got by far the biggest bite. None of us want to see Hogg Jamieson or any one else come along. You take the vanilla and clear for Tahiti; you'll make a sight more than you deserve there, and my partner and I will get out in the boat. Shipwrecked mariners, you know; and that'll be no lie. I never did like lies, you will observe, Mr. Alias Brown, that I told you none."

"Give me another whisky, and call it a deal," said the captain. His pleasant manner had suddenly returned; fractured to splinters a moment before, you would have sworn it had not a crack. They shared the last bottle in the store. Later, quite amicably, the vanilla was carried down to the ship by a dozen stout Kanaka boys, and the whaleboat handed over. The captain got into his dinghy, and prepared to be rowed to his ship.

"What I wants to know," roared Simms, warm with whisky, across the water, "is— are you Bully Hayes come alive again, or what?"

"I think you can call me 'what,' " shouted the captain very pleasantly.

The castaways. left alone on the beach, looked at each other.

"Anyhow, we got— we have secured our chance," said Simms.

Ryder did not answer. He had a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, shutting away the last waft of perfume from the vanilla.

____________

3: The Fairy Godmother

Edward Dyson (as by "Silas Snell")

1865-1931

Punch (Melbourne) 26 March 1914

The first of a short series of "Miss Trigg, Domestic" stories in the Melbourne "Punch".

MINNIE had a romantic temperament. Certainly she did not look it in the early morning, when the milkman was in the habit of discovering her valiantly storming the enemy— Dirt— on the back verandah with a dexterous hair-broom, her sunny locks (some wretches called them red) screwed into a small, hard knot not unlike the handle of a crumb-tray at the back, of her head, her skimp skirt caught up at one side, showing a liberal allowance of bony leg in a white stocking and a dilapidated shoe, a black smudge from the gas-stove on her nose, and her left eye blinded by that contrary and unpenitent whisp of hair that would persist in breaking bounds and going on its own.

At such times Minnie had the prosaic aspect of any common or back-door domestic— in fact, rather more commonplace than ordinary, for Minnie's nose was tilted upwards, and her mouth had a rakish grin. Neither was there anything to suggest the poetic spirit in Minnie's address on these occasions.

"Mornin', Tins. 'Ow's cows?" said Minnie blithely.

Whereupon Milk-o would retort wittily:

"Mornin', Slops. Why don't you wash your fice?"

To Minnie the milkman was always "Tins," just as the butcher was "Bones," and the policeman "Boots."

These knew nothing of Minnie's romantic temperament; that was a secret hugged to her own heart, a consolation for her lone moments, a source of delicious imaginings in the hour before sleep at night, or for the brooding daylight hours spent over mechanical tasks, when her mind could drift from the peeling of potatoes or the ironing of sheets to the abounding realms of fancy, where there were spuds and sheets were undreamed of, but where gallant youths of exceeding beauty wooed Minnie with astounding ardour, or where Min., transformed into a dainty damsel apparelled to reduce Mrs. Solomon in all her glory to a mere frump, was whirled in a gorgeous motor of brown and gold through immeasurable Edens, her wealthy and handsome saturnine adorer at her elbow, the chauffeur, scarcely less beautiful, dying at his wheel of a secret passion for his gentle mistress, who, alas! has no eyes for any man but the dark, brooding devil of a duke by her side.

This secret romanticism made Minnie somewhat particular about the kind of family she permitted herself to be engaged to. You never found Minnie Trigg in dull, drab, commonplace families.

"I got no use fer them dead-an'-alive people, where the ole man's got whiskers, an' the ole woman's got the 'ump, an' nothin's ever doin', week-days or Sundays. I'd rather be where the boss comes 'ome on his ear re'lar Wensdees, an' the missus plays tattoos on his crumpet with the corffee cups. I would that. I'm all fer the eventful life, I am."

Miss Trigg was quite content with the Scarlets. Mr. Arthur Scarlet was a good-looking man, a prospering architect, with a great ambition to revolutionise Australian taste; and Mrs. Arthur was a slim, girlish, little woman, with floating hair the colour of a narcissus, large, grey, infantile eyes, and all the sentimental ideals of a spoilt only daughter.

Minnie could not live in a family without taking an interest in its affairs. Within a week of accepting service under Mr. Scarlet's roof she knew more about the Scarlet menage than the master dreamed of. This was not an unusual experience with Minnie. It not uncommonly happens with other  domestics, I believe. Miss Trigg knew, for instance, that Mr. Lionel Bindlow was much fonder of Mrs. Scarlet than Mr. Scarlet would have deemed advisable in a friend of the family. She knew, too, that Mr. Bindlow called Mrs. Scarlet "Nance" when they were alone together, and addressed her formally as Mrs. Scarlet in the presence of her husband.

It was the discovery of this significant variation that first awoke Minnie's concern. Minnie was now twenty-two. She had been a servant since she was thirteen, and, as she sometimes assured her friends, she "knew a bit."

"You carn't 'ave lived in dozens iv fam'lies without pickin' up here an' there a bit, mostly badness," said Minnie; and Minnie knew to the point of conviction that when a frequent visitor, young, good-looking, masculine, and with them "mischievous eyes," calls the pretty mistress by her Christian name on the sly, "there's tubs of fun a-comin' of it."

Minnie liked Mrs. Ssarlot, and she liked Mr. .Scarlet. "There's stacks o' toil an' trouble," she said, "an' th' missus is one o' them sort that can't turn their 'ands to anythink without makin' it worse than it ivbs ; but she 'treats a girl sort, o' sisterly, same ez if she was a fuller creature, anyhow, takin' a kind hit iv interest in you an' yours, an' that counts with me more an' jools and precious stones."

So if Miss Trigg were a trifle assiduous in keeping an eye on developments when Mr. Bindlow was " 'angin' round," the action must not be put down to vulgar curiosity. She discovered that Mrs. Scarlet had been weeping one afternoon after Bindlow left, and concluded that the plot was thickening.

Minnie found, too, that Mr. Scarlet was not always informed of his friend Lionel's afternoon visits, and one afternoon she heard an eloquent scrap of protestation in the drawing room.

"You are wrong, Lionel— wrong, wrong, wrong! I do love my husband."

Lionel Bindlow, to the ordinary observer a rather nice-looking, aimless sort of boy, with money perhaps, and no wholesome means of occupying himself, was to Minnie the blackhearted and wicked villain of the piece, bent upon luring the beautiful, misguided, neglected wife from her allegiance. Doublod over the front rail of the Royal gallery, she had seen many such at their despicable machinations, and had loathed them all with the proper loathing of a humble but honest servant girl.

Minnie knew perfectly well what would happen unless Providence intervened to save Mrs. Scarlet from her folly. The villain would lure her away; there would he a feverish career of gilded luxury, tempered with remorse, then the villain would desert her (villains always do), and she would die in a black cloak in a London snow storm.

Many tears were shed by Minnie over this fearful prospect on her faithful pillow at night, for of late she had ceased to be the heroine of her own romances, having given pretty Nancy Scarlet the star part, contenting herself with a subordinate but important post as the faithful maid who clings to her missus through all her vicissitudes, and eventually restores her to happiness, or keeps her company when perishing in the conventional snow storm.

Miss Trigg was worrying over the plot. Would she drop Mr. Scarlet a hint?

"How's a gel t' go an' do it?" she asked herself again and again. "She can't up an' give it to him straight. 'Say, Ned, yer missus has dreams iv goin' gay with one what shall be nameless, 'septin' that his eyes is mortal wicked an' black, an' his initials is L. B.' Beware iv the same.' "

Minnie shook her head lugubriously over the idea. "That 'ud just raise mad cats," she mused. "An' it's a chicken to a cheese-mite, he wouldn't believe me, an' would take an' tumble me neck over knickers into the back lane, with a fortnight's wages in lieu. Then where 'ud things be? The villain 'ud 'ave it all his own way, an' the hero would come 'ome one fine evenin' t' find a note on the drorin'-room furniture t' say all was over atween them, and she was gone t' one what wouldn't never neglect her fer a dusty office an' shabby ole plans an' specifications."

Certainly, that would never do. Minnie kept on thinking, and Lionel Bindlow continued to call, and Mrs. Scarlet grew paler and thinner, and there were traces of worry in her face that her stupid hushand could not see.

"That's 'ow it is," said Minnie over her sweeping. " 'Arf the time it's the dilly fat'eadedness of 'usb'ands wot's the cause of it all. One wouldn't believe a 'uman bein' could be as fat-'eaded as 'usbands is, goin' about with mud in their eyes an' cotting-wool in their ears, seein' nothin', hearin' nothin', their 'eads full of mashed pertater brains, their bloomin' 'earts ez cold ez if put t' Iceep in refrigerators like lumps iv mutton. Oh! I'm sick iv the indjitiosity iv 'usbands!"

Minnie swiped at the cat in the fury of her emotion, and the indignant animal fled over the pot plants, destruction in her tracks.

It was true Mr. Scarlet was neglecting his wife. A trying period in matrimonial history had been reached. They were about five years' wed, and a transitionary stage had iieen reached— the stage when the fiery lover is tailing off into the staid husband. Mrs. Scarlet was aware of it, and called it the death of love. Scarlet, if seriously admonished, would have been amazed; he would have denied that there was any falling off in his love for his sweet little wife; but if pressed might have been brought to admit that he got into the way of expecting her to take it for granted.

His professional interests were very absorbing just now. Nance knew he loved her; they were very comfortable— why worry over trifles? Why explode unnecessary amatory fireworks?

Minnie had an occasional idea of making a confidante of Constable Don Holwell; but despite her admiration for Constable Don Holwell's fine figure she had no great respect for his perspicacity.

"Police intelligence?" she said. "Pooh ! I won't 'ave it at any price. I've knowed heaps iv policemen in my day, most of them all right Johns in their way, but never 'ave I knowed one with a great 'ead on 'im like that Sherlock 'Olmes. Don, he's good enough t' run dow a stealer of doormats, or t' put it across one iv the push, an' he's a good-looker, an' fair dilly about me; but I couldn't trust him with a delikit case like this. If he married brains he'd make a boshter detective; but as he is, he's just common Cop, bless his 'eart !"

So the assistance of Constable Holwell was not called in at this stage, and Mr. Scarlet received no hints, and the plot thickened without Minnie getting a chance of putting a finger in.

There were developments, she was conscious of that much; but she did not realise how far they had gone till the climax was upon her.

Mr. Scarlet was supervising the building of a picture theatre in a provincial town. He was away for two days, and at twelve on the night after his departure Minnie Trigg was still awake, absorbed in a pathetic plot, when a sound from the front of the house disturbed her. Minnie, who had always lively anticipations concerning handsome young burglars, was out of bed in an instant. There was a light under her mistress's door. Minnie trusted herself to apply a sympathetic eye to the keyhole. She saw her mistress, fully dressed, busily engaged packing a portmanteau.

Minnie knocked on the door. A startled look possessed Mrs. Scarlet's pretty, troubled face. She stood irresolute for a moment, then moved to the window, and made a hasty signal.

Minnie knocked again. "Is anythin' wrong, Mrs. Scarlet ?" she asked. "I thought I 'eard somethin'."

"It is all right, Minnie," replied her mistress carelessly. "I was moving about, but I am going to bed again." And the light was switched off.

But Minnie did not go back to bed. She stole to the drawing room window, and saw a male figure cross the garden and take cover in the summer-house.

Then Miss Trigg went back to her room. She jumped into a skirt and jacket, crept out by the back door, and passed a motor purring softly in the shade of the pepper trees at the corner.

Minnie found Constable Don Holwell, and took him into custody.

"Quick!" she said. "I want you to do somethin' for me."

"Is anything wrong,?" asked the officer.

"Nothin' much. But will you arrest a man for my sake?"

"Will I what!"

"Well, he's hidin' in our summer-house. Arrest, him, run him in, charge him with' any ole thing, but don't mix our name up in it."

"Here, my girl, what's the game?"

I know not what persuasion Minnie used, but a few minutes later, to the great consternation of the man lurking in Scarlet's summer-house, a helmet shone in the doorway, and a sccond later the intruder was in the hands of the law.

"What are you doing here, me beauty?" asked Constable Holwell.

The man protested. He was there to do no harm. The constable was making a terrible mistake.

"Mistake or no," said the Law, "I'll risk it. Come on easy, or I'll shift the summerhouse with your head, me lad."

Mr. Lionel Bindlow elected to go easily. When the constable charged him with drunkenness, abusive language, and resisting the police, he made no protest. He couldn't. When he appeared before the court next day he accepted the situation, and paid the fine, although he had never been drunk in his life. Anything was possible but to have to explain his position in Scarlet's summer-house at half-past midnight.

Lionel had an interview with Mrs. Scarlet a few hours later. Minnie gathered that it was stormy. He left, looking furious, and Miss Trigg had so contrived as to hear sufficient of the interview to be satisfied that Mrs. Scarlet had gained time for repentance.

When Scarlet finished the big job he had in hand, he took his wife to Sydney for a long holiday. They came back looking radiant, and Minnie gave them the nicest lunch she could concoct, feeling like the fairy godmother.

"I'll never get over wondering, what that man was doing in your summer-house, Minnie Trigg," says Constable Holwell.

"What's a gel t' do, Boots," Minnie retorts, "wid the bad devils iv men lurkin' in all corners t' carry her off in motor cars?"

Then the constable scrapes his jaw, and says sadly: "Never will I forgive myself for not fetchin' him a clip or two with me stick, the bla'guard."

___________

4: That Parson

A. E. Dingle

Ayward Edward Dingle, 1874-1947

The Red Book Magazine, Dec 1915

The author sailed for 22 years, and was shipwrecked 5 times. He was bylined variously as Capt. Dingle, A. E. Dingle, or "Sinbad".

CAPTAIN JOHN WARDLE has the reputation of being a good, square, easy-going old salt, and his mates have no kick against him аз a shipmate; but let somebody mention the Parson to him, and overboard go peace and quiet.

"There's a reason. It happened in the year of the gold rush in Western  Australia. Like every other windjammer, our bark, the Lady Elsie, lost three-parts of the fo'c's'le crowd while discharging, and the remainder while loading, and our sailing had been delayed owing to scarcity of men.

By dint of scouring the drums of Albany, offering double wages, and taking pot luck, the Old Man got together a mob of self-styled seamen, whose sole claim to the title lay in the possession of the full number of arms and legs. He turned them over to me, remarking with a grin:

"There you are, Mister Mate, a reg'lar man-o'-war's crew. They're a bit short on looks, but they're plenty long on language. Don't let 'em shirk; that kind'll thrive on hard work."

Rawle, the second mate, came along and looked 'em over. His remarks matched my own ideas to a hair.

"Perish me everlasting pink, Mister Digby, I haven't heard of a fire at the jail, have you? If the Old Man expects us to lick that crowd of huskytoughs into shipshape, I'm going ashore to buy a gun, or a heavier set of knuckles. That bunch spells trouble."

I felt that way myself. But we were lucky to get a complement of any kind, and the best had to be made of a bad job.

We had a passenger. At the last minute, the Agent sent word to the Old Man that he had sold his berth to the Reverend Arthur Stewart, a parson from the diggings, going home for a rest. Passengers were rare enough with us to be welcome when we did get one.

WORKING the bark out kept us busy for a while, and nobody had much leisure in which to weigh up the Parson. Вut when t'gall'nts'ls were sheeted home and spanker hauled out, I left my station for'ard and joined the Skipper on the poop, to be introduced to the reverend gentleman.

"Mister Digby," said the Skipper, "I want you to meet the Reverend Mister Stewart. Parson, shake hands with Mister Digby, my chief mate."

The Parson held out a hand like a ham, with an unctuous "How fare you, Brother?" and I got my first good look at him. He was a queer duck, that's a fact, and I didn't feel drawn towards him. Tall beyond the average, and built like: the Great Pyramid, all corners; a clean-shaven face, furrowed with deep lines; his eyes were hidden by a big pair of blue glasses, and he carried a huge, green-lined, white sun umbrella. For all the expression on his face, he might have been carved in wood, or stuffed and mummified. His voice was deep as the ocean, a reverberating rumble that searched out every cranny of the ship. The tough-looking fo'c's'le crowd, at their various jobs about the decks, were plainly tickled at the Parson's appearance. He soon noticed the fact, and showed resentment in queer fashion. Turning to the Skipper, he pulled from an inside pocket a packet of papers, and selecting an official-looking blue document, read the contents aloud. As his voice rolled out in approved pulpit style, he shot dark glances at our jail-birds in the waist. The paper read:

FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS REWARD!

For information leading to the capture of Archibald Sloss, or his delivery into custody, dead or alive, the above reward will be paid.

Then followed a list of Sloss' crimes, embracing every offense in the penal code, from picking pockets to murder and arson. As the Parson thundered out the list of heinous crimes standing to Sloss' credit, he fairly shot his words at the crew, more than one of the new men growing uncomfortable under the fire.

When he had finished, the Reverend Arthur Stewart folded the paper and gave the Old Man a little straight talk. Waving the big umbrella with a large gesture, he pointed forward and rumbled :

"Му very dear friend,— brother, may I say?— it grieves me greatly to see your fine ship in the grip of evil men. The Devil is ever on the watch to take advantage of human frailties, and it would seem, brother, that he has sent his servants into your service for your undoing. It is a bad crew you have, and if I may presume to say so, lt behooves you to keep strict vigil, lest we be undone."

The Skipper snickered behind his hand. He asked with a twinkle in his eye:

"You aint afraid of our little flock of jail-birds, are you, Parson? Maybe you think one of 'em might be Archie Sloss. Is that it?"

"Friend, hast ever heard of the bow shot at a venture?" The Parson produced again his blue notice. "Listen, while I read the description of Sloss. And watch keenly, while I read, yonder big, bewhiskered, evil-visaged ruffian."

He pointed, as he spoke, to the toughest-looking lamb of our tough flock, Charley Wango. He read:

" 'Height, five feet ten inches—' Brother, that man is just two inches short of six feet. 'Heavily built—' Friend, he is a very whale for size. 'Weight, about two hundred pounds—' Verily, that man weighs neither more nor less than two hundredweight. 'Black hair and heavy beard—' Captain, note that seaman: a proper gorilla. "Еуеs, black—' Mister Mate, saw you ever eyes of blacker shade? "Ап old scar under left eye—' Doubtless there is such a scar under those whiskers !"

The Skipper and I exchanged looks. We had, of necessity, shipped a crowd of wasters, and expected to have some trouble with them. But here was a possibility we had overlooked. To my mind, one thing only seemed incongruous in connecting Wango with the bushranger. Sloss had spent somewhere round thirty years in jail. He was a burglar, cattle-lifter, bushranger and, the notice said, murderer. He could never have spent time enough at sea in his busy life of law-dodging to become a square-rigger sailor. And Wango was, of the whole crew, the solitary sailorman worthy the name. He was a deep-water-man from the hump of his huge-muscled shoulders to the hooks of his gnarled fingers. The Parson might be right or wrong, but all agreed that Wango, as well as the rest, would bear watching.

About the Parson himself, opinions were divided. Rawle called him just a plain, sanctimonious humbug, with a tile loose. I put him down a great, hulking loafer, who was too lazy to work, and would have been a labor agitator if he had not been a skypilot. Captain Wardle took our conjectures as a huge joke. Said he: "To hear you fellows talk, one would think you never shipped a bunch of hard cases in the Colonies before. Next thing, you'll be telling me that our reverend friend is a detective looking for this fellow Sloss. Forget it, boys. The sky-pilot's all to the good, and you'll have your hands full licking them farmers for'ard into shape, without bothering about bushrangers."

HE was right. Everything pointed that way. Our troubles began that night in the Second Mate's watch, when the jibs needed trimming. That was about the simplest operation to be performed in a square-rigger, and Rawle never left the poop, singing out the order and sending the watch for'ard. The breeze was fresh, and we were sailing full-and-bye, so when the bunch of double-left-legged tailors laid hold on halliards and down-hauls, instead of sheets, it was but a few seconds before the bark was flat-aback, and in a devil of a tangle.

It needed all hands to snug things again, and the Old Man seized the opportunity to point a few remarks. But he didn't get really mad until a chorus of derision broke in on his remarks. Then he started.

"Laugh at me, will you? I'll make you laugh, you wooden soldiers!" he yelled, dancing. "Just grin in daylight, so 's I can see who it is, and ГЇЇ break your hearts deep-water fashion. You'll sweat blood and holystone the spots. 'You'll wish yourselves back on the breakwater. That'll do the watch; go below, you runaway convicts!"

The Skipper's words fired a mine. Out of the blackness whipped a voice like the baying of a huge mastiff. A bulky form followed the voice, and Wango stood at the foot of the poopladder, shaking a brawny fist up at the Skipper.

"Them names don't go with me, Guv'nor! I aint no convict, an' no bleedin' hombre is goin' to tag me for one. If you calls me a name like that again I'll smash yer ugly face in, skipper or no skipper!"

An approving rumble: from the crowd greeted Wango's speech. Other voices chimed in, and matters looked ugly. Captain Wardle, cursing as I never before heard him, dived below for his gun. The situation was on a taut line. Getting no response from aft, the crowd on the deck below grew noisier and bolder. One or two of the boldest set foot on the ladder. I slipped on my brass knuckles, quietly advising Rawle to do the same, But before matters, reached a climax a deep voice boomed out on the night, and the Parson emerged from the companionway. His night get-up was in accordance with his day rig. He wore a suit of onward-Christian-soldiers pajamas ; his feet were cased in bed-socks ; and— he sported a nightcap! Не looked queerer than ever. He advanced to the rail, raised one great hand as if addressing a camp-meeting, and thundered:

"Children,— for ye act as children,— refrain from this unseemly demonstration. Presume not to disobey the authority of your lawful commander, in whose keeping ye are. Withdraw, I beseech you, to your several places, and try not the forbearance of your officers, or verily will vengeance be swift to visit you."

Wardle came up from below in time to catch the howl that greeted the Parson's speech, and to hear the tremendous basso of Wango snarl in angry reply:

"Go below an' keep yer mealy mouth shut, you tub-thumping bush-Baptist. Who are you to butt in on ship's business? Keep yer nose out, or you'll get it pulled!"

With a fine gesture of horror at such brazen wickedness, the Parson turned to the Skipper, who stood at his elbow fingering his revolver, and exclaimed:

"Of a verity, Brother Wardle, the lot of a seafarer is hard. May you find in your heart forbearance towards these poor men, who are, alas! in degradation as deep as are the poor wretches in the chain-gangs of the prison hulks."

WHAT reply. Wardle would have made, or what move he had in mind, I shall never know. At the Parson's mention of "chain-gang," Wango roared like a shot gorilla:

"Chain-gang now, is it! That's the second time I'vе been called jail-bird. Come down here, you pulpit-pounding son of a loobra! Parson or no parson, I'll kick seven-bells out о" you, you smug-faced devil's spawn! Come down here!" And a wad of slushy waste took the Reverend Arthur Stewart fair on the mouth.

The Parson went. Ripping out a snappy expletive that sounded astonishingly like "—— your soul, you black-faced cow-son!" the Reverend vaulted over the rail in a bound, and landed with a crunch on the top of Wango. The Skipper, Rawle and I stood aghast. "It was dark, and for a moment the crowd was as surprised as we. There, somewhere on the deck, were two giants, fighting like beasts; one we had almost condemned as an escaped murderer; the other we knew as a meek and lowly shepherd of souls. But as for distinguishing them by the remarks passing between them—it was absolutely and hopelessly impossible.

Then the crowd started to take a hand; and we woke up. The Skipper daren't use his gun, in the blackness, for fear of hitting the passenger. Curtly bidding us follow, Captain Wardle snatched a pin from the mizzen-pinrail and jumped down the ladder.

The fight surged over and around the struggling, swearing forms of the Parson and Wango, snarling and biting like tigers at grips. The order of the ruddy proboscis and the decoration of the somber lamp got dealt out with extraordinary impartiality, and every man in the ship, except the man at the wheel, was dealing 'em out.

In the thick of the fracas, the mob was split asunder as by an explosion, and the Parson staggered to his feet with a yell of triumph. Wango lay still. All hands quit hammering each other for a moment, as the Parson bellowed forth in his most unctuous tones:

"We smote them, yea, hip and thigh we smote them, and their pride was humbled in the dust. Misguided men, cease this unseemly brawling, and let peace descend upon this vessel again. Captain, I beg you have this poor broken sinner carried tenderly to his bed. I fear he may be grievously stricken."

The Skipper called for a lamp and bent over Wango. What he saw caused him to straighten up with a grunt of surprise. The carpenter was called, and Wango was put in irons. The Parson mildly objected, but the Skipper had seen sufficient.

"Throw a bucket of water over him," he ordered, "аnd drop him down the fore-peak. We'll see to him to-morrow."

At breakfast on the following morning, the Skipper broached a subject which was destined to set the whole ship's company by the ears. The Parson sat at the foot-of the table. He had left his glasses off for the first time, and he looked resplendent with one eye shut tight, a crushed-strawberry nose, and an ear that hung to his figure-head only by the aid of a cross-hatching of adhesive tape.

When the steward had disappeared, the Skipper remarked:

"Now, gentlemen, what's your opinion on this fellow Wango? I think the Parson hit the mark when he hinted he might be Sloss, the convict. You saw how mad he got at mention of jail; and when I held the lamp to him I spotted a scar under his eye. Sloss has one. Wango fills the bill exactly. How's it strike you?"

The Parson fished out his blue goggles and put them оп. He arinounced with startling conviction:

"Brother, I do believe you're right. I've thought so since I first saw your ruffanly seaman. I'm a man of peace, Captain, and the presence of so dangerous a criminal alarms me. It's your duty, as a Christian man, to signal the first steamer you meet and transfer him." :

"I'm thinking you're right about the man," chimed in Rawle eagerly. *But why transfer him? Why not land him and claim the five hundred? Adelaide's all right, aint it, Cap'n? There you could touch that reward right away. What say you, Digby ?"

I was thinking hard along those lines myself. But we were carrying a good, hard nor'easter, and a windjammer can't afford to monkey with her power making a passage. I couldn't fancy the Old Man's starting on a thrash to windward of several hundred miles, unless absolutely sure of his man. And I wasn't so sure.

"The man fills the bill pretty closely, Skipper," I agreed. "It might pay you to land him. If it ain't him, it wouldn't pay, though. Any port you figure on will be to windward; we might lose a week, and then draw a blank. The Parson's right. Transfer him. If he's Sloss, the reward'll wait; if you're mistaken, you'll lose nothing."

The Reverend Arthur vigorously nodded approval Rawle shook his head. I confess, I hadn't a notion the Skipper would take the line he did.

He staggered all my ideas of running a wind-jammer homeward-bound.

"Listen," he said, screwing up his face until his eyes glinted like points of crystal, "there's five hundred of the best for the man who turns Sloss over. Wango's our man, and I'm hungry for that reward. Trans-ship him, and we may lose him. Were going to land him at Adelaide! Mister Digby, you'll kindly put the bark on the wind, port tack, as close as she'll lie... You'll get the course as soon as I've worked up the reckoning."

Wardle was skipper; lost time was his affair entirely. I started up the companion, when the Parson made an unexpected kick. He switched clear round like a dog-vane. His deep bass rumbled forth:

"But, Captain, it's a sinful waste of time to go so far out of your course. I'm a passenger, and I protest against unduly lengthening the voyage. I wish to see Australia no more. I have every reason for wishing to reach home speedily. Many ships will be met in your regular track. Besides, you're not really sure that your man is Archibald Sloss; you only surmise that. Hold your course, Brother Wardle, I beg of you. Your good chief officer will support me in this, I know."

Rawle and I looked at this strange Parson in surprise. Wardle was nettled at the interference with his business, but he admired his passenger too much to show it. He beamed indulgently as he replied:

"I think, Mister Stewart, you're over-anxious to get home, and that makes you impatient of delay. A moment ago you were as sure as I am that Wango is Sloss. You said so. Never mind, it'll make but a few days' difference anyway, and I'll promise you we'll crack on to make up for it, when we're rid of our man."

WITH the alteration in the course came black looks on the faces of the crew. It seemed to prove that we had a mob of real jail-birds aboard, who, like Wango, would not relish the sight of the coast again. And it was evident that the black looks were not confined to the men. The Parson became grouchy and stand-offish He kept to his short walk in the waist all day, never joining the mate of the watch on the poop. He barely spoke, except at meal-times. But the smile on the Skipper's face expanded as we crept to the nor'ard. He was already counting over those golden pieces.

But now began a series of accidents which gave all hands a full fare of trouble. We held the port tack all day, and in the first dog-watch Wardle sent up word to go about. The Parson was an interested spectator as I ordered:

"Ready "bout ship; let go jibsheets! Helm a-lee !"

The bark came up and hung shaking.

"Lee-sheets!" and a moment after, "Tacks and sheets! Mains'! haul!" And with the first heave, smash! went every hauling part, and we were in

trouble.

"Ah!" breathed the Parson, and I'll swear he rubbed his hands with joy. The Skipper bawled himself hoarse; the helmsman sweat blood, spinning the wheel up and down and clear over. It made no difference. Wheel tackles as well as braces were gone, cut through cleanly by a knife, to the last strand. Only the extra strain was needed to part the whole business.

Nobody knew how it happened; they wouldn't, least of all, those who had turned the trick. Wardle raved and swore, threatened irons, to no purpose. We could only keep keen watch against further mischief. I saw nothing during the remainder of my watch, and when I relieved Rawle at midnight he had nothing to report. All the same, the watch was not fifteen minutes old "before main-royal and t'gall'nt backstays parted with a twang, and away went the main-t'gallant-mast, broken off short in the cap.

This was serious. Not a soul had been seen to go aloft since dark, and what had been done to the main might also have been done to the fore. The ship was shortened down and run off the wind until the raffle was cleared up. Everybody on deck was up to the ears in trouble; when the Parson came on to the poop. He touched the Skipper on the arm.

"Captain," he croaked in solemn tones, "this travail is visited upon you to show you the error of your course. No good can come of turning back on your voyage. Resume your right and proper direction before an all-wise Providence further chastises you."

The Skipper nearly burst with the excess of his emotions. Не shook off the Parson's hand, stuck his fist under that worthy's already damaged nose, and howled:

"Confound all sky-pilots for Jonahs, anyway! And you along with 'em, Mister Reverend Stewart. You get to blazes off my poop, and mind your own bleedin' business, or maybe you'll get some more of what Black-whiskers gave you. This ship's going to Adelaide, you hear me?"

I expected to see the Parson launch out as he had at Wango, but he turned without a word and descended the ladder. Taking up his old station, in the light of a port under the break of the poop, he pulled out a huge sheath-knife and proceeded to whittle a pipeful of plug tobacco.

Shortened down as we had to be now, the thrash to the nor'ard loomed up formidably. Surely, I thought, Wardle will give it up now. But the Skipper stuck out his jaw and kept all on. He had recovered his good humor at breakfast next morning, and apologized to the passenger for his outburst of the night. The Parson rolled his eyes, threw up his hands, and droned:

"Му brother, I am a peaceable man and abhor strife. You were sore pressed, and there is no reproach in my heart for you. Yet I am constrained to say that Providence has set the elements of darkness to warring against your ship, to show you that Australia should be left behind. I will say no more, except to offer my poor services to watch for the tool appointed to compass your undoing."

"Thankee, Mister Stewart; that's very kind of you. Maybe you can see as far into the dark as I or my mates. If yow see anybody monkeying with the gear, why, don't wait to tell me; just sail in and give liim the same dose you handed Wango. Shake."

The day was spent in hard work, with all hands busy reeving off new rigging. Nobody could get in any dirty work in daylight,—we were sure of that. At eight bells in the evening I relieved Rawle, determined if any more funny business were tried Iwould be right there to see it. Two hours passed, and nothing out of the way happened. Then four bells struck, and before the "А115 well and lights burning bright" of the lookout had died away, far up in the shadows of the bellying canvas I heard the sharp crack and twang of a taut rope half parting. I awoke from thoughts of home and pay-day, and sent a searching glance aloft. The dark blur at the fore-topmast-head 'seemed overbulky for the main-t'gallant-stays'l,. I thought. Then followed a sharper crack, as the upper-fore-tops'l-sheet parted, and a scufiling and cursing as a heavy body stumbled, grabbing wildly at backstays to check a fall.

I ran along the lee side of the forerigging. At last I had got the cause of our troubles. At the foot of the mast I stopped, squinting aloft. -I saw a huge body lumbering downwards, clutching frantically at the sharpbraced yards, stirrups and foot-ropes. Then the world was blotted out. The falling body flattened.me to the deck like an avalanche.

I AWOKE in my own berth, with the Skipper bending over me, looking anxious.

"Bully boy," he cried, holding a caulker of virgin rum under my nose as my eyes opened. "Swig on that, and tell what happened. By cripes! I thought you were a gone coon."

"What happened!" I echoed, sore as a matador fresh from a mangling match with a bull. 'Nothin' happened, except the roof of th' universe fell in on me, Skipper. Who in blazes was that fell from aloft? If you've got him, you've got the rigging-ripper."

"Not yet, Mate. It was the poor Parson who fell on you. Не'd been aloft to look for the slasher. Mighty high he's paid for the privilege of watching, too."

"Oh, h—! That Parson!" I gasped. "The sanctimonious fool deserved to break his neck; he'd no business monkeying aloft in the dark. What's the damage to him?"

"Why, when I came on deck, you were flattened out to all eternity, and Mister Stewart was hoppin' round on one hoof, swearin' like a breakwater convict. I never heard such language in all my goin' fishing. He stopped it when he saw me, and apologized. He had a broken ankle, and it's lucky it wasn't his neck. We aint got our man, after all, and 'most all the gear from top to truck is cut from Assinoo to Zebedee!"

I was mad enough to think and say almost anything just then. I ripped out at the Skipper:

"That smug-faced duck of a skypilot is putting the ship bug-house, Cap'n, and I'm' blowed if I don't think he's a queer parson. I'vе had doubts about him ever since he blew off his mouth and sailed into Wango."

Wardle's eyes popped at my outburst. "What, now, Digby? You aint crazy with the shock, are you?"

"No, I'm not crazy," I retorted, "but between you and me, Skipper, I'll bet my pay-day the Parson's as likely to be Sloss himself as Wango is. I'm darned sorry he didn't bust himself to better effect, that's all."

"Slowly, Mate, slowly," cautioned the Skipper. "Youve had a bad knock, and it's peeved you. You mustn't air that kind of guff out loud. Нез a passenger, remember, and he got htirt trying to help us out of a mess."

"Help us out!" I snorted, disgustedly. "I believe he got us into the mess. And d'ye see the blasted great knife he packs? That was never meant for a 'baccy slicer. Good and handy for cutting rope! Who made the biggest kick about going north? Faugh! I don't like him."

Captain Wardle smiled indulgently, as at a peevish child. He turned to leave my cabin, saying:

"When you've got over the squashing out, Mate, you'll see different. Soon's you're fit, I'll take you to see our friend. I like him all the better since his tumble. Hes a man, anyhow, and if he uses man's talk at times, it only proves him more of a man. As for his knife, well— I carry a gun, dont I? Does that make me a pirate ?"

He went off on deck laughing at me. An old saying runs, "He laughs best who laughs last," and it was running through my fuddled head for hours after the Skipper left me. In my bones I felt it would prove true, too. In the afternoon watch I felt right again and went on deck. The Skipper was standing my watch. Аз soon as I appeared, he sent for Rawle to relieve the deck, and led me to the Parson's cabin. s

The Skipper effusively inquired after the wounded foot, and announced that I had come to assure the patient I had suffered no damage. But I saw the Parson was a bit shy of me, and for my life I couldn't resist trying a dig at him. He was smoking, as was the Skipper. I wasn't. So pulling out my pipe and plug, I remarked that I had left my knife in my room, and asked Mister Stewart for the loan of his. I wanted Wardle to see that big knife. I felt like a detective following a pet clue as he felt for the knife. He couldn't find it. І expected he wouldn't, but to make my, clue work out properly, the weapon ought to have been found on deck. And it hadn't been.

"I m sorry, Mister Digby," said Stewart; "I seem to have mislaid my knife.  It must have fallen from my pocket when I met with my accident, unless I mislaid it before going up the mast." Then, reaching a can of loose weed, he offered it to me. "Неге, this is a good smoke, friend."

All his exaggerated pulpit utterance had left him, and he was plainly uneasy. Wardle tried to rally him with clumsy sea witticisms, telling him no good had ever been known to come of a wind-jammer shipping a sky-pilot. It was no use. The Parson peered through the thick glass of his closed porthole for some minutes; then he turned to the Skipper again.

"Captain," he asked, "how near are we to the land? Do you still intend to make for Adelaide?"

"Why, surely, laughed Wardle. "As long as I've got. a stick standing Ill carry on now. I wouldn't let the dirty scum that's playing Cain with my rigging have the satisfaction of seeing me put about. You'll be glad, too, Mister Stewart, when we've landed that blackguard in the fore-peak. Не's at the bottom of all this. It's his mates trying to prevent me reaching port to land him. Try to rest now. We'll soon be bound home again."

Out on deck I couldn't refrain longer from giving the Skipper a piece of my mind. He asked me what I thought of the Parson now. I told him.

"Captain," I exploded wrathfully, "you're blind or wall-eyed in this act. I don't believe Wango is Sloss, any more than I am, or you are. All the mischief's been done since he's been locked up, hasn't it? Land him, or trans-ship him if you're bent on it, but ГЇЇ gamble my voyage's pay you'll take up no reward for your trouble. If I had to choose between Wango and this bushwhacker sailing under parson's colors to get that reward—why, d take the Parson for my end, that's all."

Then the Skipper got mad. He bristled like a porcupine at bay, and raved.

"See here, Mister Digby, you're forgetting your place, you hear me? Mind your business from now on, and keep your insulting remarks to yourself. I'm skipper of this bark, don't forget that. And Mister Stewart's a passenger, and my guest; don't forget that, either. Who are you, to class a gentleman of the cloth with a bloody ruffian like Sloss? Attend to the ship. If you hadn't been asleep half the time, them pirates for'ard couldn't have put us in the mess we're in."

I shut up, and went desperately to work putting the bark to rights. But strangely enough, there was no further breaking of gear. Not so much as a rope-yarn parted after the Parson's fall.

As we neared our port, my thoughts turned to Wango. Not for a moment now did I believe him to be Sloss; yet he fitted the published description of the bushranger to a dot. Nobody except the Skipper had seen a scar on his face, it's true, but that was hidden by the whiskers, most likely. When Rawle relieved the deck, I slipped below to the fore-peak to see Wango, and satisfy myself once for all In the gloomy little den, noisy with crashing cable and straining bulkheads, finding my man was difficult. А smell of tobacco and the glow of a burning pipe showed me his whereabouts, and assured me that his mates were looking after him. I went straight to the point.

"Wango, the Skipper believes you're Archie Sloss, the escaped convict, and we're putting in to Adelaide to land you. D'ye know it?"

Wango laughed gruffly.

"Yes, I know it. News like that travels far. He'll only be the loser of his time.  He's way off."

The man seemed sincere. I believed him. I wanted to.

"Well, Wango," I continued, "I'll tell you, I don't think with the Skipper myself. I'm in bad with him for telling him too plainly what I do think. But you fit the description too darned well for him. He saw the scar on your face when the Parson knocked you out, and that clinched the matter in his mind. Tell me why you got so mad when he mentioned jail, and if I can help you out of this mutiny mess, I will."

"Well, I s'pose I've got to face the mutiny gag, but I aint afraid o' the other business,' Wango said. "That's a joke. I skipped out o' a man-o'-war, that's the truth, though it's a long time ago; and every time I hear jail mentioned I think I'm spotted. That's why I went for the Skipper. And I took off at that big stiff of a Parson, because it was the ship's chaplain who made such a hell of my life that I was glad to clear out o' the navy. That's the truth. Me Archie Sloss! Gawd blimee, I like that."

He roared with grim enjoyment at the joke.

"So that's all, is it?" I remarked. "If you're not Sloss, when the police come aboard they'll know it. If my idea works out right, the Skipper won't press the mutiny charge against you, Wango. More likely he'll thank you for the decorations you put on his pet parson."

Mention of the Parson reminded me of something.

"I can't think how he managed to put you out, Wango," I said.

The big sailor took my hand and guided it to his throat, where my fingers traced a wicked, ragged tear, half healed.

"Sunk his teeth in there, Mister Digby. The bloody cannibal!"

"Good Lord!" I gasped, "what a devil of a parson."

RETURNING to the deck, I found Rawle and the Skipper watching a steamer astern, rapidly overhauling us. With the glass I saw she was a gunboat, flying a signal to us to heave-to. At our own halliards flew communication flags. We were both of a mind. In fifteen minutes the warship ranged alongside, and a cutter put off, filled with men.

"She seems to know what we've got for her," mused the Skipper. "Wonder how she got the news?"

The boat ran up under our lee quarter, and a smart lieutenant came over the side, accompanied by a stalwart sergeant of police апа-а file of bluejackets. They approached the Skipper, but he forestalled their query.

"Well, gentlemen, I wasn't exactly looking for the gunboat, but the police are welcome. I've got a haul. Archie Sloss is in irons in my fore-peak. I'd have landed him, but you see the mess I'm in aloft."

The officers smiled approvingly. "In irons, eh? Then you've done -some smart work, Captain. We've been looking for your bark ever since you left Albany, but hardly expected you'd be smart enough to discover our man. Bring him up; we'll relieve you of him."

Wango was brought up, handcuffed, and I watched the faces of the officers with interest. As I expected, there was no sign of recognition on either. . They looked mighty blank.

"Here he is, gentlemen," proudly announced Wardle, "аnd I'll thank you for a receipt for him. That five hundred reward will be mighty useful."

The policeman snorted: "You're way off the track, Captain. That's not Sloss. Is he the only stranger you have aboard?"

"That's all," said the puzzled Skipper.

"No passenger?"

"Why, yes, weve a passenger, the Reverend Arthur Stewart, a right decent man."

"Big fellow ?"

"Ye-s, quite sizable, but he couldn't be your man."

"We'll take a look at Mister Stewart, if you'll allow us, Captain," persisted the policeman.

Wardle ruffled up; he caught the grin on my face.

"You can't see him," he snapped. "Не laid up with a broken ankle, which he got trying to detect a rascal who was cutting up my rigging. He's very ill. I'll not have him disturbed."

"Trying to detect—! Why, Skipper, you must be thick! Come, Sergeant."

The Lieutenant moved towards the companionway, thrusting aside the Skipper as he weakly tried to bar the way.

"We'll take all responsibility, if your passenger makes any complaint— I believe he won't, though. "Where's his berth ?"

Wango was enjoying the fun. He had edged along aft until he was right with us, and when we followed the officers, he was well up. A rap on the Parson's door brought no response, and the handle was tried. The door was locked. А second summons to open getting no result, the Sergeant shouldered the wood,  -and we trooped inside.

The berth was empty!

"What's the joke, Captain?" demanded the officer, looking ugly. "I warn you not to obstruct us in the execution of our duty."

Wardle was dumbfounded. I slipped outside and looked around the saloon. The lazarette hatch was off.

"Did you leave the lazarette open, Skipper?" I asked,

"Lazarette? Of course I didn't," cried Wardle, scared now. "Ѕотеbody's down there with a light, and there's two kegs of powder—"

A muffled smash was heard below.

"Quick!" snapped the officer. "He'll do us yet. Move!"

The Sergeant dropped down the hatch, followed by the Lieutenant— Wardle and I close astern. I knew what blue funk meant the minute I landed. In the darkest corner of the dingy little store-room crouched the Parson. A sputtering tallow dip flare from the top of a case. With a short iron bar the Parson wrenched desperately at the head of a keg.

"Hands up, Sloss!" roared the Sergeant.

The head of the keg parted with a crash, and dropping the bar, Sloss snatched up the flaring dip.

"You fools! You bloody meddlers!" he yelled. "You'll never take me back. I'll blow the ship to glory!"

Like a bolt from a catapult, a heavy body drove between us, and launched itself straight at the fiendish figure with the flare. The dip was extinguished by the impact. The blackness could be felt. We needed no light to know that a terrific contest was going on near us. Rawle heard the racket, and hurried down with a closed lantern. The light shone upon two smashing, plunging furies, fighting like beasts among the ruins of a powder keg.

We moved forward in a body, but before a hand could reach the struggling pair, one man rose triumphant. It was Wango, handcuffs and all. I was nearest to him, and as he wiped blood from his mouth with the back of a hairy fist, he caught my eye, and grinned. It wasn't pretty, that grin.

"Tit for tat, Mister Digby. Me and him's quits now!" he whispered hoarsely in my ear. "I outed him for the count this time."

I didn't need the sight of the Parson's torn throat to know what he meant. Wango was quits.

The Sergeant slipped the bracelets on Sloss, and turned to Wardle.

"Now, Captain, we'll get your decent passenger on deck. I don't like these close quarters. Your Reverend Something-or-other is the man we're after. If it'll soothe your feelings at all, I'll say that I believe you were really ignorant of his identity."

AT the gangway, the Lieutenant added another morsel of comfort to the poor Skipper.

"Captain, I'm sorry I can't recommend you for the reward. You drew the wrong badger."

We watched the party go over the side and pull away for the gun-boat, while Wardle swore deeply and earnestly. He shook his fist at the disconsolate figure of the Parson, and spluttered impotently. His eyes stuck out like hat-pegs when the bo's'n walked aft and presented to him a huge sheath-knife, the Parson's knife.

"Found this stuck in the collar of the fore-top-mast back-stay, sir," said the bo's'n.

Wardle was speechless. I reminded him that Wango had saved the ship, and he was still in irons; the least we could do was to release him.

"To the devil with Wango, the Parson, and the whole darned business," he snarled. "Take the irons off and turn him to. We owe him that much, I s'pose. And Mister Digby, if you dare to mention the Parson in my hearing, or ever say to me 'I told you so', I'll break you, and send you for'ard along with Wango. D'ye hear? That Parson! Faugh!"

But Captain John Wardle was always a decent, square-dealing old sea-dog. After a few turns to windward, he called me over.

"Wango did decorate the Reverend pretty good, didn't he, Digby? Send him aft in the dog-watch, when I've cooled off. I owe him something for that!"

___________

5: The Crime of Miss Wilks

Capel Boake

Doris Boake Kerr, 1889-1944

Sun News-Pictorial (Melbourne) 25 Feb 1939

"MORE butter, Miss Wilks?"

Miss Wilks glanced timidly at her employer.

"No, thank you, Mrs. Allen," she said in her quiet, repressed voice.

Mrs. Allen smiled graciously. She had noticed a tendency in Miss Wilks to be extravagant with the butter, but she had curbed this by seeing that the dish was always placed at her own end of the table. She helped herself liberally, then gave a piece of cake to the dog which was lying curled on her lap.

"You might brush Sweetie's coat this afternoon," she said..

"Yes, Mrs. Allen," Miss Wilks answered meekly.

Mrs. Allen poured herself another, cup of tea. She had thick, freckled hands, and on her fingers she wore diamond rings. Among them was a large solitaire diamond which caught the light as her hand moved, and sparkled with a cold, fierce fire. Mrs. Allen was proud of this ring. She could not help boasting about it, even to her lady help.

"Three hundred pounds," she often said, "that's what Mr. Allen paid for it. A good investment, he said, you can always get your money back on diamonds. Three hundred pounds! Think of it!"

Miss Wilks did think of it. Often she would wake in the night and think of it. Three hundred pounds... If only she had three hundred pounds! That would make the future secure.

AND at the thought of the future she would feel the old familiar fear again. What would she do if the little gnawing pain she had sometimes became more than just a little gnawing pain? She wasn't afraid of death. All she asked was enough money to die comfortably and be buried decently.

"That's not much to ask," Miss Wilks would think, her greying hair spread out on the pillow, her sharp, pointed face turned to the window where the branch of a rose tree made a shadow against the blind. "That's not much to ask. Just to die comfortably and be buried decently."

Miss Wilks could see the diamonds now as Mrs. Allen raised the cup to her lips. It wasn't fair the way she showed off her rings, Miss Wilks thought fiercely. Only that morning. coming back from town in the tram, she had taken off her gloves and spread her hands out on her lap.

The sun had caught the diamonds and they had sparkled into many colors. A man sitting opposite had stared at them with such a queer, hungry expression. It was just as though he couldn't keep his eyes away from them. Miss Wilks knew how he felt. She had- felt like that herself. Three hundred pounds!

She caught her breath sharply.

"If you've quite finished," she heard Mrs. Allen say, "you may clear the table."

Miss Wilks had not finished, but she immediately rose. As she did so there was the sound of footsteps in the hall. The dog jumped down and began barking furiously. Miss Wilks winced. She had a constant headache and his shrill barking made it worse.

Mrs. Allen's daughter, Margaret, entered the room. She was a plump, pleasant-faced young woman, a more kindly edition of her mother.

"Hullo, mother," she said breezily. "Good afternoon, Miss Wilks."

"Good afternoon," Miss Wilks said in her quiet, repressed voice. She made no attempt to any further conversation, but gathered the dishes together on a tray and left the room.

Margaret stared after her. then seated herself in a chair near the window.

"I can stay only a few minutes." she said. "I've got to go into town and see about another maid. You're lucky to have Miss Wilks. I wish she would come to me."

Mrs. Allen did not reply to this. She had no intention of handing Miss Wilks over to her daughter. She was aware that she would find Miss Wilks extremely difficult to replace.

"How is John," she asked, "and the child

"They make a terrible lot of work," Margaret said discontentedly, "and now I haven't a girl in the house... I want to give a bridge party this week. Couldn't you lend me Miss Wilks, mother?"

"No, I could not," said Mrs. Allen firmly.

She called the dog, which jumped up on her knee. "Sweetums," she murmured, and stroked his soft head. The rings on her fingers sparkled. They reminded Margaret of another grievance.

"John says it's madness the way you wear those rings," she said suddenly. "It's a wonder they haven't been stolen. Why, they're not even insured!"

Mrs. Allen looked at her daughter coldly. She was an obstinate woman and she resented any interference.

"It's very kind of you and John to interest yourself in my affairs," she said stiffly, "but I prefer that you should mind your own business."

Margaret shrugged her shoulders. After all, it was her business, she thought. The rings would belong to her when her mother died, but one could not in decency say that. She rose to go and said goodbye, omitting her usual kiss to show her displeasure. Mrs. Allen, however, did not notice the omission.

"You might tell Miss Wilks as you go out," she said, "that I want Sweetie's coat brushed at once."

"Poor Miss Wilks," said Margaret bitingly, "is that one of her jobs, too?"

Miss Wilks was washing the dishes when she received the message. She dried her hands and brushed the dog's coat under the constant and irritable supervision of Mrs. Allen. Then she cooked the evening meal. When dinner was over she read to Mrs. Allen for an hour or so, then she took the dog for his usual run up and down the street.

It was a bleak night with a drizzling rain.

Miss Wilks shivered. Her coat was thin and she could feel the moisture from the pavement through the soles of her cheap shoes. She was glad to get inside again, thankful for the shelter even of Mrs. Allen's home.

She was tired when at last she went to bed, so tired that nothing mattered, not even the little gnawing pain or the thought of the uncertain future. She slept heavily and dreamlessly.

Some hours later she was awakened by furious barking and the sound of loud screams.

"Something's happened to Mrs. Allen," she thought.

She sprang out of bed. reached for her dressing gown and ran to her employer's room.

In the doorway she collided with the figure of a man. He thrust her aside roughly. She staggered and fell, but in falling tripped him also and they both sprawled on the floor. Half dazed by the shock. Miss Wilks scrambled to her feet. The man had already vanished.

"My rings," screamed Mrs. Allen. " My rings... my rings..."

Miss Wilks switched on the light. There was brandy in the room which Mrs. Allen kept in case of illness. Miss Wilks poured some into a glass and gave it to the hysterical woman. The dog had ceased barking and was whining round Miss Wilks's feet. She picked him up and put him on the bed.

"He came through the window and took my rings," Mrs. Allen sobbed. "I saw him at the dressing table with a torch in his hand. He took my rings. I saw him... He took my rings…"

Miss Wilks felt a sudden sharp pleasure that Mrs. Allen had lost her rings.

"I'll telephone for the police,  she said.

There was a telephone in the hall. She went outside and turned on the light. There on the floor, just beyond the door, lay the solitaire diamond ring. The man must have dropped it when he fell. Miss Wilks stared at it fiercely. Three hundred pounds! She stooped and picked it up.

"What are you doing, Miss Wilks?" Mrs. Allen called fretfully. "Why don't you ring for the police?"

"I'm looking for the telephone number," Miss Wilks said in her quiet. repressed voice.

She rang the police, and then rang Mrs. Allen's daughter, Margaret. The agitated Margarct. said she would be there immediately. Within a few minutes she stormed in followed by her husband.

The house was loud with the lamentations of Mrs. Allen and the reproaches of her daughter and son-in-law. When the police arrived they questioned Miss Wilks, but she shook her head feebly. She knew nothing... she had been awakened by screams... someone had knocked her down...

She looked dazed and ill. Margaret briskly took command of the situation.

"You'd better go to bed, Miss Wilks," she said. "I'll look after mother. You'll have to do the best you can at home, John," she added to her husband. "It's a good thing I managed to get a girl."

FOR TWO DAYS Miss Wilks lay in bed, unable to move, looked after, kindly and efficiently by Margaret. Had they caught him, she wondered? She was afraid to ask. Oh God, don't let them catch him. she prayed, don't let them catch him.

On the third day Miss Wilks forced herself to get up. She entered the diningroom just as Margaret and her mother were sitting down to lunch. Margaret fussed over her, drawing a chair up to the table, pouring her out a cup of tea and passing bread and butter.

Mrs. Allen had watched the hospitable activities of her daughter with acute resentment. It was quite time Margaret went home again she thought.

"I'm glad you've recovered, Miss Wilks," she said acidly. "You've had quite a nice rest."

Miss Wilks's thin face flushed a little, but she did not speak. Margaret looked at her mother indignantly.

"You seem to forget that Miss Wilks has had a very severe shock," she remarked.

"I didn't take to my bed," Mrs. Allen went on, ignoring her daughter, "though I suffered a severe shock. All my rings…"

"For Heaven's sake, mother," Margaret interrupted impatiently, "have we got to go through all that again? You wouldn't take John's advice or mine. Now they're gone and you'll never see them again. John says they'll take the diamonds out of the settings and dispose of them gradually. They can never be traced."

So that was how you did it. Miss Wilks thought. Somehow, when it was necessary, she would find a way. And the man who had made her future secure, he had gone and they would never find him, never... never… never…

Miss Wilks felt new life surge through her veins.

"Miss Wilks was very brave." Margaret went on, "if she hadn't come in when she did the thief might have taken your pearls as well. I wish to goodness you would insure them, mother."

Mrs. Allen did not reply. She glanced at Miss Wilks. Miss Wilks had helped herself to another piece of bread. In front of her was a dish of plum jam. Mrs. Allen thought Miss Wilks could very well do with that. Butter wasn't necessary with jam, but if she did not offer it, Margaret, in her officious way, might take it on herself to do so.

"May I pass you the butter. Miss Wilks?" she asked.

Miss Wilks hesitated. She loved butter. She felt she could never have enough of it, but the habits of a lifetime are difficult to break She knew that although Mrs. Allen offered it she did not expect her to take it. She put her hand to her breast and felt the hard touch of the ring where it rested against her skin Suddenly she felt confident and assured.

"Yes. I would like some more butter," she

Mrs. Allen stared. She could not believi she had heard aright.

Miss Wilks met her employer's gaze firmly

"Yes, please," she said.

There was a moment's pause. Mrs. Allen was defeated and she knew it.

"Pass Miss Wilks the butter, Margaret," she said at last.

"Thank you."

Miss Wilks helped herself liberally. Then she smiled. Margaret, watching her, remembered that she had never before seen Miss Wilks smile.

"I'm very fond of butter," she added.

_______________

6: Old Man Murtrie

Don Marquis

1878-1937

Collected in: Carter, and Other People, 1921

OLD MAN MURTRIE never got any fresh air at all, except on Sundays on his way to and from church. He lived, slept, cooked and ate back of the prescription case in his little dismal drug store in one of the most depressing quarters of Brooklyn. The store was dimly lighted by gas and it was always damp and suggested a tomb. Drifting feebly about in the pale and cold and faintly greenish radiance reflected from bottles and show cases, Old Man Murtrie with his bloodless face and dead white hair and wisps of whisker was like a ghost that has not managed to get free from the neighborhood of a sepulcher where its body lies disintegrating.

People said that Old Man Murtrie was nearly a hundred years old, but this was not true; he was only getting along towards ninety. The neighborhood, however, seemed a little impatient with him for not dying. Some persons suggested that perhaps he really had been dead for a long time, and did not know it. If so, they thought, it might be kind to tell him about it.

But Old Man Murtrie was not dead, any more than he was alive. And Death himself, who has his moments of impatience, began to get worried about Old Man Murtrie. It was time, Death thought, that he was dead, since he looked so dead; and Death had said so, both to God and to the Devil.

“But I don't want to garner him, naturally,” Death would say, “till I know which one of you is to have him. He's got to go somewhere, you know.”

God and Death and the Devil used to sit on the prescription counter in a row, now and then, and watch Old Man Murtrie as he slept in his humble little cot back there, and discuss him.

God would look at Old Man Murtrie's pale little Adam's Apple sticking up in the faint gaslight, and moving as he snored— moving feebly, for even his snores were feeble— and say, with a certain distaste:

“I don't want him. He can't get into Heaven.”

And the Devil would look at his large, weak, characterless nose;— a nose so big that it might have suggested force on any one but Old Man Murtrie— and think what a sham it was, and how effectually all its contemptible effort to be a real nose was exposed in Old Man Murtrie's sleep. And the Devil would say:

“I don't want him. He can't get into Hell.”

And then Death would say, querulously: “But he can't go on living forever. My reputation is suffering.”

“You should take him,” the Devil would say to God. “He goes to church on Sunday, and he is the most meek and pious and humble and prayerful person in all Brooklyn, and perhaps in all the world.”

“But he takes drugs,” God would say. “You should take him, because he is a drug fiend.”

“He takes drugs,” the Devil would admit, “but that doesn't make him a fiend. You have to do something besides take drugs to be a fiend. You will permit me to have my own notions, I am sure, on what constitutes a fiend.”

“You ought to forgive him the drugs for the sake of his piety,” the Devil would say. “And taking drugs is his only vice. He doesn't drink, or smoke tobacco, or use profane language, or gamble. And he doesn't run after women.”

“You ought to forgive him the piety for the sake of the drugs,” God would tell the Devil.

“I never saw such a pair as you two,” Death would say querulously. “Quibble, quibble, quibble!— while Old Man Murtrie goes on and on living! He's lived so long that he is affecting death rates and insurance tables, all by himself, and you know what that does to my reputation.”

And Death would stoop over and run his finger caressingly across Old Man Murtrie's throat, as the Old Man slept. Whereupon Old Man Murtrie would roll over on his back and moan in his sleep and gurgle.

“He has wanted to be a cheat all his life,” God would say to the Devil. “He has always had the impulse to give short weight and substitute inferior drugs in his prescriptions and overcharge children who were sent on errands to his store. If that isn't sin I don't know what sin is. You should take him.”

“I admit he has had those impulses,” the Devil would say to God. “But he has never yielded to them. In my opinion having those impulses and conquering them makes him a great deal more virtuous than if he'd never had 'em. No one who is as virtuous as all that can get into Hell.”

“I never saw such a pair,” Death would grumble. “Can't you agree with each other about anything?”

“He didn't abstain from his vices because of any courage,” God would say. “He abstained simply because he was afraid. It wasn't virtue in him; it was cowardice.”

“The fear of the Lord,” murmured the Devil, dreamily, “is the beginning of all wisdom.”

“But not necessarily the end of it,” God would remark.

“Argue, argue, argue,” Death would say, “and here's Old Man Murtrie still alive! I'm criticized about the way I do my work, but no one has any idea of the vacillation and inefficiency I have to contend with! I never saw such a pair as you two to vacillate!”

Sometimes Old Man Murtrie would wake up and turn over on his couch and see God and Death and the Devil sitting in a row on the prescription counter, looking at him. But he always persuaded himself that it was a sort of dream, induced by the “medicine” he took; and he would take another dose of his “medicine” and go back to sleep again. He never spoke to them when he waked, but just lay on his cot and stared at them; and if they spoke to him he would pretend to himself that they had not spoken. For it was absurd to think that God and Death and the Devil could really be sitting there, in the dim greenish gaslight, among all the faintly radiant bottles, talking to each other and looking at him; and so Old Man Murtrie would not believe it.

When he first began taking his “medicine” Old Man Murtrie took it in the form of a certain patent preparation which was full of opium. He wanted the opium more and more after he started, but he pretended to himself that he did not know there was much opium in that medicine. Then, when a federal law banished that kind of medicine from the markets, he took to making it for his own use. He would not take opium outright, for that would be to acknowledge to himself that he was an opium eater; he thought eating opium was a sin, and he thought of himself as sinless. But to make the medicine with the exact formula that its manufacturers had used, before they had been compelled to shut up shop, and use it, did not seem to him to be the same thing at all as being an opium eater. And yet, after the law was passed, abolishing the medicine, he would not sell to any one else what he made for himself; his conscience would not allow him to do so. Therefore, he must have known that he was eating opium at the same time he tried to fool himself about it.

God and the Devil used to discuss the ethics of this attitude towards the “medicine,” and Old Man Murtrie would sometimes pretend to be asleep and would listen to them.

“He knows it is opium all right,” God would say. “He is just lying to himself about it. He ought to go to Hell. No one that lies to himself that way can get into Heaven.”

“He's pretending for the sake of society in general and for the sake of religion,” the Devil would say. “If he admitted to himself that it was opium and if he let the world know that he took opium, it might bring discredit on the church that he loves so well. He might become a stumbling block to others who are seeking salvation, and who seek it through the church. He is willing to sacrifice himself so as not to hamper others in their religious life. For my part, I think it is highly honorable of him, and highly virtuous. No person as moral as that in his instincts can get into Hell.”

“Talk, talk, talk!” Death would say. “The trouble with you two is that neither one of you wants Old Man Murtrie around where you will have to look at him through all eternity, and each of you is trying to put it on moral grounds.”

And Old Man Murtrie kept on living and praying and being pious and wanting to be bad and not daring to and taking his medicine and being generally as ineffectual in the world either for good or evil as a butterfly in a hurricane.

But things took a turn. There was a faded-looking blonde woman with stringy hair by the name of Mable who assisted Old Man Murtrie in the store, keeping his books and waiting on customers, and so forth. She was unmarried, and one day she announced to him that she was going to have a child.

Old Man Murtrie had often looked at her with a recollection, a dim and faint remembrance, of the lusts of his youth and of his middle age. In his youth and middle age he had lusted after many women, but he had never let any of them know it, because he was afraid, and he had called his fears virtue, and had really believed that he was virtuous.

“Whom do you suspect?” asked Old Man Murtrie, leering at Mable like a wraith blown down the ages from the dead adulteries of ruined Babylon.

“Who?” cried Mable, an unlessoned person, but with a cruel, instinctive humor. “Who but you!”

She had expected Old Man Murtrie to be outraged at her ridiculous joke, and, because she was unhappy herself, had anticipated enjoying his astounded protests. But it was she who was astounded. Old Man Murtrie's face was blank and his eyes were big for a moment, and then he chuckled; a queer little cackling chuckle. And when she went out he opened the door for her and cocked his head and cackled again.

It gave Mable an idea. She reflected that he took so much opium that he might possibly be led to believe the incredible, and she might get some money out of him. So the next evening she brought her mother and her brother to the store and accused him.

Old Man Murtrie chuckled and... and admitted it! Whether he believed that it could be true or not, Mable and her people were unable to determine. But they made the tactical error of giving him his choice between marriage and money, and he chose matrimony.

And then Old Man Murtrie was suddenly seized with a mania for confession. God and Death and the Devil used to listen to him nights, and they wondered over him, and began to change their minds about him, a little. He confessed to the officials of his church. He confessed to all the people whom he knew. He insisted on making a confession, a public confession, in the church itself and asking for the prayers of the preacher and congregation for his sin, and telling them that he was going to atone by matrimony, and asking for a blessing on the wedding.

And one night, full of opium, while he-was babbling about it in his sleep, God and Death and the Devil sat on the prescription counter again and looked at him and listened to his ravings and speculated.

“I'm going to have him,” said the Devil. “Any one who displays such conspicuous bad taste that he goes around confessing that he has ruined a woman ought to go to Hell.”

“You don't want him for that reason,” said God. “And you know you don't. You want him because you admire the idea of adultery, and think that now he is worthy of a place in Hell. You are rather entertained by Old Man Murtrie, and want him around now.”

“Well,” said the Devil, “suppose I admit that is true! Have you any counter claim?”

“Yes,” said God. “I am going to take Old Man Murtrie into Heaven. He knows he is not the father of the child that is going to be born, but he has deliberately assumed the responsibility lest it be born fatherless, and I think that is a noble act.”

“Rubbish!” said the Devil. “That isn't the reason you want him. You want him because of the paternal instinct he displays. It flatters you!”

“Well,” said God, “why not? The paternal instinct is another name for the great creative force of the universe. I have been known by many names in many countries... they called me Osiris, the All-Father, in Egypt, and they called me Jehovah in Palestine, and they called me Zeus and Brahm... but always they recognized me as the Father. And this instinct for fatherliness appeals to me. Old Man Murtrie shall come to Heaven.”

“Such a pair as you two,” said Death, gloomily, “I never did see! Discuss and discuss, but never get anywhere! And all the time Old Man Murtrie goes on living.”

And then Death added:

“Why not settle this matter once and for all, right now? Why not wake Old Man Murtrie up and let him decide?”

“Decide?” asked the Devil.

“Yes,— whether he wants to go to Hell or to Heaven.”

“I imagine,” said God, “that if we do that there can be no question as to which place he would rather go to.”

“Oh, I don't know,” said the Devil. “Some people come to Hell quite willingly. I've been to Heaven myself, you know, and I can quite understand why. Are you afraid to have Old Man Murtrie make the choice?”

“Wake him up, Death, wake him up,” said God. “It's unusual to allow people to know that they are making their own decision— though all of them, in a sense, do make it— but wake him up, Death, and we'll see.”

So Death prodded Old Man Murtrie in the ribs, and they asked him. For a long time he thought it was only opium, but when he finally understood that it was really God and Death and the Devil who were there, and that it was really they who had often been there before, he was very much frightened. He was so frightened he couldn't choose.

“I'll leave it to you, I'll leave it to you,” said Old Man Murtrie. “Who am I that I should set myself up to decide?”

“Well,” said God, getting a little angry, perhaps, “if you don't want to go to Heaven, Murtrie, you don't have to. But you've been, praying to go to Heaven, and all that sort of thing, for seventy or eighty years, and I naturally thought you were in earnest. But I'm through with you... you can go to Hell.”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” moaned Old Man Murtrie.

“No,” said the Devil, “I've changed my mind, too. My distaste for Murtrie has returned to me. I don't want him around. I won't have him in Hell.”

“See here, now!” cried Death. “You two are starting it all over again. I won't have it, so I won't! You aren't fair to Murtrie, and you aren't fair to me! This matter has got to be settled, and settled to-night!”

“Well, then,” said God, “settle it. I've ceased to care one way or another.”

“I will not,” said Death, “I know my job, and I stick to my job. One of you two has got to settle it.”

“Toss a coin,” suggested the Devil, indifferently.

Death looked around for one.

“There's a qu-qu-quarter in m-m-my t-t-trousers' p-p-pocket,” stammered Old Man Murtrie, and then stuck his head under the bedclothes and shivered as if he had the ague.

Death picked up Murtrie's poor little weazened trousers from the floor at the foot of the cot, where they lay sprawled untidily, and shook them till the quarter dropped out.

He picked it up.

“Heads, he goes to Heaven. Tails, he goes to Hell,” said Death, and tossed the coin to the ceiling. Murtrie heard it hit the ceiling, and started. He heard it hit the floor, and bounce, and jingle and spin and roll and come to rest. And he thrust his head deeper under the covers and lay there quaking. He did not dare look.

“Look at it, Murtrie,” said Death.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” groaned Murtrie, shaking the cot.

But Death reached over and caught him by the neck and turned his face so that he could not help seeing. And Old Man Murtrie looked and saw that the coin had fallen with the side up that sent him to—

But, really, why should I tell you? Go and worry about your own soul, and let Old Man Murtrie's alone.

______________

7: A Game With Death

Mark Hellinger

1903-1947

Collected in: Moon Over Broadway, 1931

Prohibition in the USA was instituted in 1920 by the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, and repealed in 1933 by the 21st amendment.

IN YEARS gone by when it was legal for people to drink and nobody got half as soused as they do today, many saloon owners had a profitable sideline. They would pick out certain individuals who looked as though they were but two steps from the grave and insure their lives for several thousand dollars. The policies, of course, were payable to them.

A despicable thing. Certainly. But many saloon owners did it and they could see little harm in the trick. The unfortunates who were insured had but little time to live anyhow. The saloon owner then plied them with drinks free of charge. The insured man thus moved a little closer to his grave, and the saloon owner a little closer to his money.

Since prohibition descended upon us I haven't heard much about this racket. As a matter of fact, I didn't hear about it at all until recently, when the story that follows was related to me. I do not ask you to believe it. I merely recite it to you as a good yarn that is supposed to be true...

JOHN DOYLE was a very sick man. He lived on the lower East Side in a dingy tenement. He looked the typical bum.

About a year ago John Doyle visited a doctor. The doctor was in one of those hospital clinics maintained for poor people. A severe cough was worrying John. He dropped into the clinic one afternoon.

The doctor looked him over.

"If you live three months," he informed the down-and-outer, "I will be very much surprised. Are you a heavy drinker?"

Doyle admitted that he was. The doctor nodded.

"There is no medicine that can save you. If you can get any money, go to the mountains at once. That's the only advice I can give you."

John Doyle walked from the clinic. He bummed a quarter from one passerby and a dime from another. With the thirty five cents clenched in his fist, he hurried to his favorite speakeasy. Around eleven o'clock that night, the sick man was still in the speakeasy. He was drunk now. He had unfolded the tale of his sad condition to anyone who would listen. As they listened they bought him drinks.

The gentleman who supplied the spot with alleged liquor drifted in. He looked over at Doyle, who was swaying at the bar.

"Yesh, boys," he heard Doyle say. "I'm a goner in three months. In three months I'm a goner. Doct' saysh to me that I got to go away to live. I don't want to go 'way. I'm gonna die right here in li'l ole New York. Thass the place to die."

The bootlegger arched his eyebrows. Here was a great case for the old time insurance racket. He had worked with a phoney doctor before. Why not again?

He led Doyle to one side.

"Look here, bo," murmured the bootlegger. "I just heard you sayin' you ain't got long to live. Is that right?"

Doyle shook his head drunkenly.

"Thass right. Only got three months to go. Thass all. Maybe even less. Will you buy In" drink?"

The bootlegger tapped Doyle's arm.

"Listen, feller," he whispered, "Not only am I going to buy you plenty of drinks, but I'm goin' to give you a hundred bucks in the bargain. Here's how you can earn the century."

And the racketeer explained the old gag. Insurance to the extent of $8,000 was to be taken out in the name of John Doyle. A phoney doctor would give him a hurried examination, pass him through, and cut with the bootlegger when Doyle had gone to another world. The bootlegger, of course, would pay the premium.

"Shay," cried Doyle, "thass okey by me. I got nothin' to lose an' a hundred bucks to gain. Sure I'll do it, ole pal."

The two men shook hands. They agreed to meet on the morrow...

EVERYTHING went according to schedule. The gyping doctor looked at Doyle the following day and asked him how he felt.

"Fine," said Doyle.

"I'm glad to hear it," said the doctor. "Sign this paper, I find you in very good condition."

Doyle grinned. He was given his hundred dollars. The doctor grinned. The bootlegger grinned. Everybody was happy. And the quicker that John Doyle would die, the happier they all would be....

But fate has a queer way of shifting things around. The three months passed with John Doyle drinking more than ever. The cough was still with him but it was growing no worse. Four months passed. Five months.

The bootlegger was growing a trifle nervous. In addition to the $100 for Doyle, the premium on the policy had been more than $150.

Uncanny luck seemed to follow John Doyle. There was a fire in his tenement house one night. Two people were burned to death. Doyle wasn't there. He had stepped out of his bed and gone around the corner for a drink.

The bootlegger thought of slipping the man a little poison liquor. Nobody would ever know the difference. He would be found dead and people would all say he died just as they had expected. But the bootlegger felt he would wait a little longer before taking such a drastic step. After all, he couldn't linger much longer....

ONE SATURDAY NIGHT, Doyle stood in the familiar speakeasy. The joint was crowded. The register tinkled merrily. Men jostled one another in an effort to reach the bar. Doyle sat in a corner, his head in his hands.

Suddenly came loud voices.

"I ain't pushin' nobody."

"You were so. You was pushin' me."

"You're a dirty liar."

Doyle raised his head. He knew what was coming. He had heard too many of these arguments not to know. Maybe there would be trouble. Maybe not. Best thing to do was to get out fast.

He started for the door. The voices grew louder.

"Call me a liar, you dirty――. Call me that, will you? Call me―"

Another voice. Shrieking.

"For God's sake, fellers. Look out. He's got a gun!"

Fearful words. Doyle had reached the door. Before he could catch the knob the door was thrown open. It hit Doyle and he fell to the floor. A drunk staggered in. A shot rang out from the rear. The drunk fell to the floor with a bullet through his heart.

The drunk who had thrown open that door had saved John Doyle's worthless life. Doyle arose and glanced at the dead man's face. He whistled softly and staggered out into the night before the first policeman arrived.

The dead man was the bootlegger who had insured his life...

________________

8: The Crime Trust

Edgar Wallace

1875-1932

The Grand Magazine, Sep, Oct, Nov 1917

A very short series, just 3 stories, featuring Larry Loman

1: The Crime Trust

SIR GEORGE GRAYBORN leaned back in his chair and looked from the young man who sat at the other side of his desk to the notes on pulse, respiration, reflexes, et cetera, he had scribbled on his pad.

"Well?" Larry Loman's tone was a little truculent.

"My dear sir," said Sir George slowly, "yours is a very peculiar case, and I hardly know what to advise you."

"Do you think I am going mad?" asked the young man with a certain cheerfulness.

He took a gold cigarette case from his pocket and carefully extracted and lit a cigarette.

"I suppose I shan't horrify your subsequent patients?"

Sir George smiled.

"No, you won't horrify them, and you can't horrify me. I recognize in you a unique specimen of the human race apart from being a very interesting case, and I am grateful to the circumstances which brought you here at all."

"It was rather a fluke," laughed Larry, "Everybody knows— that is to say, everybody who is interested in me— that my memory has been going all wrong, and, knowing this, some unknown friend had sent me a copy of your work on 'Mnemotechny.' "

The physician inclined his head.

"I had heard of you, of course," he said politely. "In our profession one is obliged to keep in touch with current happenings."

"Honestly, Sir George," interrupted the young man, growing serious of a sudden, "is there anything radically wrong with me?"

The physician nodded.

"Yes and no," he said. "I gather that somewhere in your wanderings you have struck a very bad malaria patch."

"That is right," nodded the other; "up in the Aruwimi country, four years ago. I contracted there all kinds of' fever. Is there any symptom of malaria?"

"No," said the other carefully, "not especially, but your mental condition is one which frequently follows either a bad fever or a bad bout of nerves."

"You can cut out all the nerve theories," said the young man with decision, "and put it down to fever. The only thing I am worried about is this." He leaned over the table and emphasized each point by tapping a little tattoo upon the immaculate blotting pad of the consultant. "I am up to my eyes in work— serious and dangerous work. I want all my wits about me because I have a tricky crowd to deal with. Now, if I am not responsible for my actions— — "

"Believe me," said Sir George, "you will always be responsible for your actions. The only thing is— you will not remember everything you do. You are suffering from periodic amnesia, which does not seem to be merely an instance of amnesic aphasia. You will find from time to time whole periods, probably for four or five hours, of your day wiped out of your recollection."

"You mean to say that I shall wake up one fine morning and forget what happened the previous evening?"

Sir George nodded.

"And more than that. You may go out one day and retain a perfect recollection of what you do until, say, twelve o'clock. You will be able to recall vividly everything that happened from four o'clock onward, but the period between twelve and four, or whatever time the attack occupies, will be an absolute blank. It may last for four, five, or six hours. It may even last a day. You will be perfectly rational— just as rational as you are now— but whatever the period is will be blotted entirely from your recollection."

He rose, walked to his bookcase, and took down a small skull, and, placing it upon the writing table, picked up a pencil and traced an irregular patch upon the whitened bones.

"Behind here," he said, "is what is known as 'Brochia's Convolution,' that department of the brain which has to deal with memory. A portion of that convolution in your head is diseased."

"That sounds rather alarming," said the young man, with a frown.

"It is not quite so alarming as it sounds, because it need not be a chronic disease, and it is quite possible, by a course of treatment, to restore yourself to a normal state. See me after every bad lapse. You ought, of course, to take a holiday."

"That is impossible," said the young man, shaking his head; "wholly impossible! If you assure me that I shan't make a fool of myself during the period of lapse—"

"I can only assure you that you will be normal," said the professor, "and if you are liable to make a fool of yourself in normal moments you will certainly be just as foolish. It will only be in your recollection of happenings that you will fail— especially of those happenings which begin with some event of an exciting character. You probably experience a curious, buzzing noise in your ears, and that is about your last recollection before your mind goes blank? I thought so. I suggest that you should carry with you a small notebook, and acquire the habit of jotting down from hour to hour a little diary of impressions, engagements, et cetera."

Larry shook his head as he rose to go.

"That also is impossible," he said. "I dare not keep written records— especially of this case."

"I will not be so indiscreet as to inquire what the 'case' is," said Sir George with a little smile as he led the way to the door.

"That's the dickens of it!" said Larry ruefully. "Not that it is a secret," he added quickly. "Even Harley Street has heard of 'The Trust.'"

The physician raised his eyebrows.

"Surely you aren't a believer in the existence of a romantic robber band?" he said. "I thought it was a newspaper fabrication. They seem to credit every crime, where the perpetrator is not brought to justice, to that organization."

"I not only 'believe,'" said the other emphatically, "but I know, and unfortunately I am the only man who has all the strings of the counter-work in my hand. I told you I could not keep records, and I will explain why. How many times do you think my bureau has been burgled? Six times in four months! Every document I have has been read and reread. Even the record office of the department has not escaped attention. I tell you, The Trust is a very real organization which has bought up the services of every professional criminal in England. Look at the crime tables in the commissioner's annual report. A fifty-percent decrease of serious burglaries in point of numbers, an eight- percent decrease of ladder larcenies, a ninety-per-cent decrease in big-gang forgeries. Why? Because the report only shows convictions, and those men are no longer caught. They are in the service of The Trust. They get more money than they ever made before. The job is made safer, and if they are caught they don't have to make a collection among their friends to secure a third-rate lawyer; they have the best legal advice that money can buy. Goddard, the burglar, was defended by an ex-attorney general at the Winchester Assizes the other day, and the fees must have run into a thousand pounds! If they are sent to prison, their wives are in receipt of a handsome separation allowance. Do you wonder that The Trust is recruiting the best men in the business? We are fighting the combine, and we ought to beat it— if my infernal memory had not started playing tricks!"

He threw out his hands in a gesture of despair.

"It is tragic; I am on the very edge of discovery! In a month I should drive a wedge into the gang as would split it from top to bottom— and I'll do it yet!"

"Yours is the kind of case that the unspeakable Stinie is always touting for," said Sir George, and, seeing that his words conveyed no meaning to the visitor, he went on: "Stinie is a doctor of sorts; I have had no opportunity of testing his ability. He holds a foreign degree which is not accepted here, but I must say, qualified or not, he is running one of the best nursing homes in London and he professes to make a specialty of cases like yours."

There was a discreet knock at the door, and Sir George's butler entered with a card on a tray. The specialist took up the card and adjusted his pince-nez. His eyebrows went up, and he uttered an exclamation of surprise.

"Talk of the devil—" he said. "Here is the very man! Would you like to see him?"

"Not professionally," said Larry hastily.

"I wonder what he wants? This is the first time he has come to me. Ask the gentleman in."

The butler departed, and returned in a few seconds, ushering in a stout man immaculately dressed. He had large dark eyes and stiff, upstanding hair and a mustache that gave evidence of consistent and careful training.

"Ah, Sir George, you will pardon me," he said, speaking with the slightest foreign accent, "I desire you to see one of my patients."

He bowed to Larry, who returned the salutation.

"It is not possible," said the newcomer with an exaggerated shrug, "that I should ask you for a consultation, since I am not recognize' in this country, but if you would be so kind and good to see a most unfortunate fellow with nerve, I should be happy."

All the time he was speaking to the physician his eyes were fixed upon Larry with a blank stare. Sir George hesitated and made what to Larry was an extremely lame excuse. Then followed an animated discussion on the one part, somewhat cold and unresponsive on the other. The little man now devoted the whole of his attention to the doctor, and pleaded, cajoled, smiled, was desolate, and did not remain still a single second.

"A persistent beggar," said Sir George after he had gone. "What do you think of him?"

"I have met the type before," said Larry carelessly. "Now I am afraid I must go."

He passed into the sunshine of Harley Street, a little disconcerted, but by no means alarmed. His car was waiting unattended, and he cranked it up, and Sir George, watching from the study window, saw him disappear in an evil-looking cloud of smoke.

Larry had a flat near Berkeley Square, and thither he drove, his mind occupied with the interview.

He brought his car to a standstill and jumped out.

"Has anybody called?" he asked the liveried porter.

"Yes, sir; a gentleman came about five minutes ago."

Larry nodded, and stepped into the elevator.

The man who sprawled in a big club chair in Larry's sitting room, sucking reflectively at the end of a rank cigar, was stout and unshaven. His dress was untidy, his thin hair unkempt, a faint discoloration under one eye suggested a recent injury, and the scarred and shiny knuckles of the hand— by no means cleanly— which removed the cigar stump, confirmed its owner's pugnacity.

"Ah, Croop," said Larry, walking across the room and throwing open the windows, "you're on time. Throw that cigar away and help yourself to something that smells less like a burning soap factory."

The man sat up with a grin, and, pitching the stump into the fireplace, fumbled in the box which his host offered.

"Now," said Larry, "what have you got to tell me? By the way, when did you come out of prison?"

"The last time? Months ago," said Mr. Croop proudly. "I'm straight now, Mr. Loman; got a job lookin' after a boxin' booth. There ain't much money in it, but, as I ses, 'honesty,' I ses, 'is the best policy.' I could make pots of stuff, Mr. Loman; I'm the kind of feller The Trust wants. Look at that!" He held out his grimy paw triumphantly.

"That's the 'and that drew the finest five-pun notes that was ever put on the market; ten years I got for it."

Larry nodded. He was perched on the window seat, and was eying his visitor with interest.

"You're the finest forger in the world," he admitted.

The gratified Mr. Croop purred. "Praise from Sir 'Erbert—"

"Hubert," corrected Larry. "That's all right, Croop. Now I want you to look at this."

He took a note from his wallet and passed it across to the man, who rose with a grunt from his seat and crossed to the window.

"Phony," he said. "Bank of Chilagua; very difficult to draw, owin' to the cross hatchin' under the number, but it's phony all right."

"Why are you so sure it's a forgery?"

Mr. Croop smiled.

"Wrong shade of green," he said. "I've got a wonderful eye for color, Mr. Loman."

"You're quite right," said the detective, replacing the note in his case. "Fortunately there are not as yet many in circulation. You said just now," he went on, "that you could join The Trust, and you suggested that they would welcome you."

"That's right, sir," said Mr. Croop. "I'd get all the money I wanted."

"Why don't you join?" asked Larry.

Mr. Croop smiled. "'Honesty,' as I've said before—"

"Cut all that out," said Larry briefly, "and listen to the story of your misspent life. You don't join because you daren't. You told me just now you had ten years for forgery. How long did you serve?"

The man hesitated.

"You served one," said Larry; "the other nine years were remitted for services rendered. In other words, you turned State's evidence and convicted a brother forger, a man named Goul, and the reason you don't join The Trust is because Goul is out and already a member of it."

As he was speaking the man's face had grown a dirty white, and he dropped his eyes sullenly to the floor.

"That is why, when you offered to give me some information about the forgeries, I sent for you," Larry went on. "What do you know?"

"I know it is Goul's work," said. Mr. Croop doggedly, "and I know Goul has been seen about town lookin' like a bookmaker who had found a mug. Now, Mr. Loman," he said with vigor, "I can bring you to the man who supplied the plates for Goul. What is it worth? It isn't only the plates; it's the place they were delivered," he added. "You might get the whole crowd."

"Don't you know where they went?"

The man shook his head.

"When can I meet your friend?"

"You can meet him to-day, sir."

Larry thought for a moment, then took up his hat.

"Come on!" he said.

He opened the drawer of his desk and took out a revolver, which he slipped into his hip pocket.

"And you'll want it, I think," said Mr. Croop profoundly.

They went down in the elevator together, and strolled out onto the sunny pavement before the block, while the hall porter telephoned to the garage for Larry's car.

"I can tell you a lot, sir," said Croop earnestly, "but you will have to get me out of the country. The Trust is working these forgeries, but that is only a little thing. Why, sir, do you know—"

Larry heard a noise like "klock!" and something hit the wall behind him.

"A pistol with a Maxim silencer," said Larry's brain automatically.

He looked round quickly, and in that second took in a view of the street. There was a nurse walking on the other side of the road. There were two furniture men standing before an open door, resting over a large settee, which they were evidently moving in. There was a closed motor car a little way along the street, a butcher's boy....

"Klock!"

The muffled report was followed by a thud.

"That's done me," said the voice of Croop faintly.

He lurched against Larry and slipped in a huddled heap on the ground, and Larry, looking down, knew that the man was dead. He knelt down by the side of the murdered man, tearing open his waistcoat, and his hand was on the man's heart when he felt a curious buzzing and knew that the period of lapse had begun.

"Anyway, I know what is happening," said Larry, "and I shall remember this."

He was sitting before his dressing table, his head in his hands. He was dimly conscious that something had happened and that he had been through a remarkable experience. He knew that it was night, because he could see the shadow which the electric light cast upon the table. And something had happened— something remarkable.

The period of lapse had passed, and he was remembering things— Croop's white face, the pistol shot. He raised his head slowly, and caught the reflection of his face in the mirror before him, then leaped up with a cry. He was dressed in a Pierrot costume, a big white ruff was about his neck, a close-fitting black skullcap was on his head, and his face was whitened save for two straight black lines that represented his eyebrows and the carmine red of his lips. He saw something else. His left hand was enclosed in a thin handcuff, and a gaping steel link told him that in some way he had broken loose from detention.

He ran to the bell and pressed it, and almost immediately the door opened and his servant came in with a large tray bearing some cold meat, a bottle of wine, bread, cheese, and salad. The man put down the tray with an imperturbable face.

"How long have I been in, Wilkes?" asked Larry steadily.

"Half an hour," said the man.

"Did I come like— this?"

"Yes, sir," said the man gravely.

"Did I come alone?"

"Yes, sir," said the man. "I paid the cabman."

"Did I tell you where I had been?" asked Larry carelessly.

"To a fancy-dress ball, sir," said the man.

"Is that so?" said Larry. "Thank you, Wilkes; that will do."

When the man had gone he locked the door and slipped off the costume. He was fully dressed underneath, save for his coat. From the bureau he took a bunch of keys and released himself from the handcuff. With the aid of a towel and some cold cream, he removed the grease paint from his face, washed, and returned to his bedroom. He gathered that he had come straight to his bedroom with that object. He felt in his pockets for some clew. In his waistcoat pocket he found a small cartridge shell, recently fired, evidently from a Browning pistol. He recalled everything up to the death of Croop. After that his mind was a blank.

The cartridge shell he had evidently picked up somewhere, and he guessed that it was from this shell that the fatal bullet had been fired. That was something to begin with. The rest of his pockets revealed nothing. He had no money. His wallet was gone, as also was his coat, and he smiled as he remembered Sir George's suggestion that he should keep notes. His jaw ached a little, as though he had had a blow.

"'Curiouser and curiouser,'" quoted Larry.

He examined the Pierrot dress, and found a little tab behind the neck with the name of a well-known theatrical costumier, and a number, and went to the telephone. He knew it was useless calling up the costume shop, which would be closed at this hour, but fortunately the costumier was found at his private address.

"A Pierrot's costume?" he replied. "Yes, I have sent out several in the past few days, and I lent half a dozen this morning to an amateur Pierrot troupe that was entertaining some sick people. There ought to be a number attached to it."

"One-five-six," said Larry.

"That's it," came the prompt answer. "It was issued this morning, and it stands for fifteenth of the sixth. We always date our costumes because we charge for hire according to the time they are kept. They were lent to a man named Weatherby, of 63 Elgin Square, Bayswater."

Larry waited long enough to eat a hasty supper and change before he was in the street again.

The name of Mr. Weatherby, of Elgin Square, did not appear in the telephone book, but in a quarter of an hour a taxicab deposited the young man before a very gloomy house which had been divided up into maisonettes. Mr. Weatherby had not come home, explained the servant who answered his ring. Would he see Mrs. Weatherby?

Larry went upstairs to the ornate little drawing-room and introduced himself to a stout, pleasant lady. She confessed that she was the veritable wife of Mr. Weatherby, and regretted that that gentleman was not at home to receive him, and requested information on the reason for the visit.

"I am expecting him at any minute now," she said. "You know, he is a member of an amateur Pierrot troupe, and he and some of his friends are giving an entertainment at a nursing home."

"Do you know where?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," said the lady frankly, "though he did tell me."

There was a tinkle of the bell.

"That's him!" said Mrs. Weatherby, and went down to meet her lord, returning with an unhappy-looking man who greeted Larry with a sad smile.

"You are the police, I suppose?" he said.

"I am something like that," said Larry cautiously.

Mr. Weatherby turned to his wife.

"You don't know what trouble I've had this evening," he said. "Have they got him?" he asked the young man.

"I don't know yet," replied Larry more cautiously than ever.

"What has happened?" asked Mrs. Weatherby in alarm.

Her husband chuckled, seated himself, pulled out his pipe, charged and lighted it before he replied.

"It is the rummest go I've ever known. I will tell you the whole story, and I suppose you will want the complete yarn from beginning to end?"

Larry nodded.

"Me and a few friends," began Mr. Weatherby, "occasionally give little entertainments to the hospitals and nursing homes, and we had arranged to give one this evening. When we got to the place— Doctor Stinie's nursing home— you have probably heard of it?"

"Yes, yes," said Larry eagerly.

"Well, when we got there they gave us a room to dress and change in, and all the patients who were up were brought into the big dining hall downstairs. They gave us a dinner to start with. While we were at dinner there was a great rumpus. It appears that a dangerous lunatic that they had in one of the rooms next to the one we were dressing in had made his escape. He was so dangerous," said Mr. Weatherby impressively, "that there were guards in the corridors downstairs to prevent his getting away. This fellow, being, like all lunatics, a bit cunning, had broken away from his strait-jacket or whatever fastened him down, had sneaked into our room, dressed himself up as a Pierrot, and passed the guard. They thought it was one of our chaps, and didn't attempt to stop him."

"Do you know how the lunatic got into the building?" asked Larry.

Mr. Weatherby smiled.

"It is curious you should ask that," he said. "I am a bit of a detective myself, to tell you the truth, and I inquired of one of the patients. The lunatic escaped from another home, according to Doctor Stinie, and was only lured to Stinie's place this afternoon by a pretty nurse whom he saw in the street and followed. They'd never have got him then only she led the way up to a ward. He followed her up, and, seeing nothing but, as he thought, sick men lying in the beds, he ventured into the room. The moment he did so the men in the beds, who were attendants, jumped up and got him. One of the patients saw the struggle through the door, and, according to him, the lunatic half killed one man."

In a flash Larry had remembered the innocent-looking nurse who had been on the other side of the road when Croop was killed. He must have crossed in search of some clew and have found the cartridge shell near where she had been standing and followed her.

"Thank you," he said.

He went to the nearest telephone office and rang for a treasury number. At a quarter to eleven that night Stinie's nursing home was surrounded, and Larry, armed with the authority of the law, entered the building to find, however, that both Doctor Stinie and his pretty nurse had disappeared half an hour before the arrival of the police.

In a locked room, soberly inscribed, "Electrical Generating Room. Strictly Private," Larry discovered two very beautiful printing presses and a number of half-finished notes. More important, he found a man lying on one of the beds suffering from a broken ankle and a badly contused face.

Him Larry recognized.

"Mr. Goul, I presume?" he said pleasantly. "I shall want you for felony. How did you get your injuries?"

"A nice question to come from you!" said Mr. Goul with indignation.

Larry shook his head.

"I wish I could remember all that happened," he said regretfully.

2: The Affair Of The Stokehole

LARRY LOMAN, of the Criminal Intelligence Department, was called to a conference at headquarters, and went with a certain sense of disappointment and irritation, though there was no reason for a display of either of those emotions, for both his chief and the secretary of state, responsible for his department, had nothing but encouragement for him.

"You are not going to smash the Crime Trust in a day," said the chief commissioner for special services.

"I suppose there is no doubt about there being a Crime Trust?" asked the minister dubiously. "It seems such an extremely melodramatic idea, the sort of thing one reads in sensational stories."

"It is a very good idea from the criminal's point of view," said the commissioner quietly; "he has no worry. He is well supported, whether he is in prison or out. He is always excellently defended, and if he is convicted his unknown employers will take his case to the court of criminal appeal— if there is the slightest chance of a sentence being reduced or a trial being quashed. The man who brought together all these expert criminals— and the trust has no use for any other— was a genius. Could anything be neater than to run a forging plant in a nursing home, where all the rooms except two or three were occupied by genuine patients, and all the staff except the principal and a few of his friends were genuine nurses and doctors? How are things shaping, Larry?"

Larry Loman, his elbows on the table, his face between his hands, shook his head.

"We have settled the forgeries," he said a little hopelessly, "but the other departments of the trust are in full swing, and very successfully so."

"For example—" said the chief commissioner.

"The kidnapping and holding to ransom of Lord Frethermore's heir."

"I wanted to see you about that," said the minister; "do you think it is the work of the trust?"

"I am certain of it," said Larry emphatically. "Look at the price they are asking— sixty thousand pounds! Nobody but the trust would dare do it. Nobody but the trust has the organization which would enable them to carry out a scheme of that importance."

"There is terrible trouble about the kidnapping," said the minister. "I have brought you here to take you off the trust and put you on to that."

Larry laughed. "You can safely retain me on the trust work," he said dryly. "All the bad crimes that will be committed in this country during the next twelve months will bear the indelible hall mark of that organization."

"You know the circumstances of the kidnapping?" asked the commissioner.

Larry nodded. "The boy was out with his nurse in Regents Park. The nurse found herself in conversation with a lady who suddenly turned faint and had to be assisted to one of the garden chairs. When the nurse looked round, the child had gone, and a motor car was seen driving off in the adjoining roadway. No number of the car seems to have been taken. By the time the nurse had found a policeman the fainting lady had also disappeared."

"Lord Frethermore is distracted," said the minister. "He has seen me twice this morning. He had a letter from the gang; here it is."

He passed the epistle across the table. It was typewritten on thick notepaper, and ran:

I am holding your son to ransom and am demanding three hundred thousand francs for his release. The money must be paid in thousand-franc notes and delivered to a messenger, who will be a perfectly innocent agent in the matter. The method of the boy's restoration will be sent to you if you advertise your agreement in the Times.

The Knight of Industry.

"The trust!" said Larry confidently. "They have used that signature before. From what I have heard, the gentleman who is at the head of the business attends his 'board meetings' in complete armor, with lowered visor."

"Theatrical nonsense!" growled the minister.

"It is neither theatrical nor nonsensical," said Larry calmly. "In the first place he is protected against a chance pistol shot from a traitor or a hidden policeman, and he is so completely disguised that neither his face nor his figure is observable. I will take this letter, if I may." He folded it up and put it in his pocket. "I have an appointment with my specialist."

"How is the memory trouble?"

Larry made a grimace. "I haven't had a recurrence for over a week."

"Who is your doctor?" asked the minister. "Grayborn? A clever fellow. A man who has won the first place in his profession by sheer industry. Ten years ago a struggling practitioner, up to his eyes in debt through an extravagant wife. To-day, I suppose, he is making more money than any other man in his profession. The fees he charges me are prodigious— prodigious!"

"You are not making Larry very happy," smiled the commissioner, but Larry was incapable of further depression that morning.

He was ushered into the consulting room, and the specialist, without delay, went through the formal examination which Sir George Grayborn always gave to his patients.

"I think you're all right," said the doctor. "You have had no further sudden lapses of memory?"

"None," said Larry.

"Avoid excitement. I know it is a foolish thing to ask you, but remember that any undue excitement will produce that extraordinary lapse and blot out hours of memory from your life. Amnesia is a queer disease."

"Don't I know it," said Larry ruefully. "It is a nightmare to me every time I realize that all the things that happen to me after four may be completely forgotten until I recover my memory at eight. I live in dread of that little buzz in the ear which tells that memory is 'ringing off.'"

"Where are you going this afternoon?" asked the physician suddenly.

"Nowhere in particular," said Larry after a moment's thought.

"A little social recreation would not do you any harm," said Sir George. "I am going to a garden party at Regent Gardens; it is on behalf of the 'Home for Factory Girls.' Will you join me there?"

Larry had made no plans for that afternoon, and it was a rule of his life that when he had no plans he was prepared to be guided by any fortuitous development that day might bring forth.

"I will join you," he said.

"The ticket will cost you a guinea, and I will put it on my bill, which, by the way, will not be heavy," he said, looking over his shoulder as he unlocked a little cupboard behind his desk.

"You are a thought reader among other things, Sir George."

The physician did not reply. He handed the gilt-edged pasteboard to his patient.

"I will meet you at half past four," he said, "near the band stand."

Dressing for the function, Larry came to the conclusion that he might have done worse than accept the invitation. If one of his extraordinary memory lapses came on, he would have the advantage of his doctor's society and the observation which Sir George might make, and, what was no less important, the data he might supply as to what Larry did while in the dubious enjoyment of one of his periodical fits of oblivion. He dressed himself with care, for Larry was something of a dandy and was one of the best-dressed men in town. From his varnished boots, with their white, well-fitting spats, to the top of his glossy silk hat he might have stood as a model for the beaus of the world. He seldom went abroad unarmed, and now, as a final touch to his toilet, he dropped a revolver into his hip pocket. The result did not please him, for the bulge of the weapon showed under the well-cut morning coat.

He took out the revolver, and replaced it with a little Browning, with no great improvement. He put the Browning on the table. It was against his best instincts to go out without some kind of weapon, and he pulled open drawer after drawer, and finally selected a short and what was more to the purpose, flat hunting knife in its sheath. In a rough-and-tumble it might be more useful even than firearms.

He drove to the gardens, and found, as he approached the entrance, such a block of taxicabs and private motor cars that he descended and walked the rest of the distance on foot. He crushed through the turnstiles, and was immediately pounced upon by a bevy of beautiful brigands with tickets for side shows and badges and flags and refreshment vouchers.

He parted meekly with his money, and as soon as he could make his way free of the crowd he wandered to the part of the garden which he knew would be unfrequented.

It was a glorious summer day. The hot June sun was tempered by a cooling breeze, and in the bosky sidewalks, with their high hedges of flowering shrubs, he found a certain restfulness and comfort. He passed a small telephone box placed there, as an inscription informed him, for the convenience of visitors, and he marveled at the foresight and intelligence which had induced the organizers to place this very necessary connecting link with the outside world in so quiet and retiring a spot. It would be useful when he wanted to call his car.

He strolled on slowly, for he knew the path would soon turn him back to the crush, and then suddenly he saw a girl ahead of him. She was dressed in white, and her back was turned toward him. She was evidently selling something, for she had a little tray before her. He debated the question as to whether he would return, but curiosity got the better of him. Here evidently was a kindred soul who also wished to get free from the madding throng. He was walking past her when she spoke.

"Won't you buy a little rose?" said a sweet voice.

He turned round and looked her in the face, and something buzzed in his ears and memory stopped.

He knew his memory was returning, yet the sensation was as though he was beginning life at its very commencement and that all existence must date from this moment. He felt a strong wind in his face, and he knew his hands were grasping something rough and hard.

Then he realized he was sitting on a stone ledge. He looked down, and, strong as were his nerves, he nearly swooned. Then he looked back into the black, yawning chasm behind him. How had he got here? In the name of Heaven, how had he got here?

He was sitting on the top of a high chimney stack, a hundred and fifty feet above the level of the ground. He was dressed in his shirt and his trousers. He wore neither collar nor coat. His varnished boots were split and scratched, his white spats were black. He looked at his hand. It was covered with soot, and he gathered that his face was in no better state.

He had recovered something of his presence of mind, something of the coolness which he knew he had displayed through all this lapse of hours, even though the sudden consciousness of his position had temporarily shaken his confidence and nerve. He crawled back to the black funnel of the stack and looked down. He had evidently come up that way, for inside the stack, as far as eye could see down, were iron rungs firmly fixed in the masonry.

At the worst, he could go down that way again, he thought, but even as this method of escape occurred to him a thick cloud of smoke billowed up from the depths. He crept round to the other side of the parapet, and what he found brought comfort. Apparently the chimney had at some period been under repair, and there was a scaffolding here and a ladder which ran at an alarming angle to join a further ladder, which, so far as he could see by lying flat on his face and looking ever the edge, continued to the foot of the stack. He shuddered at the thought of making the descent by this method, but, bracing himself up, he swung his legs over the platform, felt for the rungs of the ladder, and began his descent.

He was halfway down before it occurred to him that some of the sections of the ladder might not be in place. It evidently had been up for a considerable time, and one rung he touched was so rotten that his foot crashed through it. Fifty feet from the ground, he did indeed find that a short length had either fallen or been pulled from its place, but by letting himself slowly down till his feet touched the top of the next section, he was able, by grasping the staples which still remained in the brickwork, to make the rest of the descent in safety.

It was not until he had reached the ground that he realized that all the time he had been carrying the knife in his hand. He carefully examined the blade, but it afforded him no clew. Possibly a careful search of the buildings would assist him. He was evidently in the yard of a disused factory. Rusty old railway lines, overgrown by weeds, discarded machine parts in the same condition, and a general air of desolation pervaded the yard, which was enclosed by a high brick wall. He looked up at the chimney, which was now sending out thick smoke. Somebody must be here, he thought, and he moved cautiously. If only he could remember what had happened in the last few hours!

He heard the whir of a motor car, and, crouching down behind a slag heap, he saw a car carrying three people pass along the factory roadway and disappear behind some low buildings, which he judged were somewhere near the gate. In this supposition he was right, for a little while later he heard the clang of the gate as it closed.

He waited for five minutes, but there was no further sign of life. The smoke was thinning, and was now but a white, tenuous mist that floated from the top of the chimney. He had already identified the building by a heap of discarded tins bearing the label of the "Boscombe Enamel Company," a derelict firm that had been out of business for many years.

There were a number of sheds, all deserted, some of them padlocked and some windowless. He reached what was evidently the engine house without being challenged. The smoke must come from the stokehole, and to the stokehole he made his way. The fire doors were hot, and the big furnace was still filled with a red, glowing mass. He picked up an iron rake and poked about the inside, and presently pulled out a small metal bracket of a familiar shape. In its pristine days it had been part of a telephone transmitter. He raked again, and drew up pieces of red-hot wire and the metal part of a telephone receiver, and shook his head. They meant nothing to him.

Leading from the stokehole was a steel door, which he pushed and which yielded under his touch. He found himself in a small room with walls of whitewashed brick. It had been newly swept, and there was a table and chair which were free from dust.

"Somebody has been here in the last half hour," said Larry to himself, and stepped stealthily forward to the next door. He listened, for he thought he heard voices. He gently pressed the door, and it opened. Somebody was speaking within.

"I'll bet you'll be glad to see his nibs again, won't you?"

The reply was so faint that Larry could not hear it.

"Well," said the voice, "if you are a good boy they'll let you go to-morrow. An' if you ever see me in the street don't you recognize me, d'ye hear? Because, if you do, I'll cut your throat, d'ye see what I mean?"

Larry balanced his knife in his hand, pushed the door open, and walked into the room. A man in his shirt sleeves was confronting a small and tearful boy, who sat upon what was evidently his bed.

Larry's heart gave a thump, for he recognized in the child the heir of the Frethermores. The man did not hear Larry's entrance, but something in the boy's frightened look— for Larry in his coating of soot was a terrifying sight— made the man spin round. As he did the detective closed in on him and dropped the point of his knife against the lower button of the guard's waistcoat.

"Hands up!" said Larry. "And quick!"

The man's hands went up. He shot a sidelong glance at a table, and, following his eyes, Larry saw the revolver and sprang for it.

"I think you know me," said the young man. "I am Mr. Loman, of the criminal intelligence department, and I am going to take you into custody on a charge of kidnapping."

"It's a cop," said the man. "But don't be so certain you are going to get a conviction, old friend."

"Not so much of the 'old friend,'" said Larry.

"I have seen your prisoner," said the commissioner the next morning, "and he has undergone at the hands of two experienced police officers something approaching the immoral and reprehensible third degree of the U.S.A., which we so often condemn, but which is not without its uses. Would you like me to reconstruct your remarkable story?"

"I wish you would, sir," said Larry earnestly. "I have been puzzling my brains over the matter, and I cannot for the life of me recall one single instant between half past four in the afternoon and eight o'clock that same night."

"Then stand by for a little wholesome reconstruction," said the commissioner. "I thought it would be an easy matter, because I had taken the precaution of having you shadowed by one of the best men at Scotland Yard, but he was unable to tell me a great deal, and I have the most important part of the story from the fellow you took in the works. You were seen to go into the shrubbery at twenty-five minutes to five, and you were followed at a respectful distance by the officer. You were seen to speak to a lady selling flowers, to pass your hand across your forehead, as though you were a little stunned, and then something seemed to occur to you; probably you recognized the girl, and you came striding back the way you had come and met Sergeant Jackson, whom you dispatched with orders to find Sir George Grayborn at the band stand. Evidently you were aware that the phase of forgetfulness was closing in upon you. You then turned back, and the sergeant, over his shoulder, saw you go into the telephone box. Why you went there is conjectural. I suggest that you intended to telephone for your car."

Larry nodded. He remembered that he had had that intention.

"The rest of the story is told by our prisoner as far as he witnessed it, or was able to learn the particulars from those who participated. You had no sooner entered the telephone box than two men sprang from the shrubbery and slammed the door, shutting you in. You will probably remember, if you saw it in the course of your wanderings, that it was without windows and that the interior was specially padded to make it soundproof."

"I noticed that," said Larry, "as I passed the box the first time."

"The moment the door closed on you you were helpless. The other men who were waiting in the shrubbery came out, lifted the box on their shoulders, and you were passed out of the gate, placed on a waiting motor lorry, and driven off. It was a very neat trick, and possibly, even if you had not gone in of your own accord, you would have been lured to that part of the garden and induced to enter the box.

"I suggest that finding yourself stifling, you remembered your knife and cut through the padding and the thin wood, and, having secured air vents, you awaited developments. You were taken to the old factory, my young friend, and this is where our kidnapping prisoner offers firsthand testimony.

"At a quarter past six in the afternoon the lorry came in, and the box was carried into the stokehole, which was already filled with an assortment of shavings, wood, and coal, and you and your box were thrust in. You must have realized your awful predicament and have set to work desperately to cut your way out. To escape through the steel door of the furnace was impossible, and I suggest that you squeezed your way along the little tunnel which leads to the chimney shaft, and that, minus your coat and hat and all unnecessary impedimenta, you climbed the interior of the stack and would probably have made a good descent, in fact, the same descent that you did make, even had you not recovered consciousness of the immediate past. I have had the works raided, and there is no doubt that this place has been hired and fitted up with the object of carrying out an extensive scheme of kidnapping. Frethermore's child says that he had been there and treated kindly since the day he was whisked off."

"The whole theory fits together," said Larry, "and I have no doubt that you are right."

"I am certain I am right," said the commissioner quietly. "I myself have been in the stokehole and have rescued—"

He rose and went to a cupboard, opened it, and took out a battered and shapeless object.

"Your stovepipe hat, Larry—"

Larry looked at the relic and laughed. "Also there were the marks of your toes against the soot in the interior of the stack, bits of the lock of the telephone box, and several other et ceteras."

Larry was thinking hard.

"The girl who sold roses," he said suddenly; "it was she."

"What?" demanded the commissioner.

"Something about her face. Something that reminded me of—"

The commissioner nodded.

"Yes, she was in it," he said quietly. "Our prisoner said she came back to the factory and went on her knees to the rascal in charge of the cremation and begged him to spare you."

"I think when I meet her," said Larry,— "and I know I have met her— the Crime Trust will be very nearly on its last legs."

3: The Cure

THE FIRM NAME of Lewis Plink & Gothmeyar is not unknown in the city of London. There are parts of Brazil and the Argentine where it is a household word, and the palatial offices of the firm in Commissioner Street, Johannesburg, automatically testify to the consideration in which this great financial house is held.

Mr. Lewis Plink will best be remembered as the gentleman who presented Wesbury Cathedral with a service of gold plate far exceeding in value the ratable property of the city of Wesbury, and also as the owner of the steam yacht Hermada, which was faster than the fastest destroyer of the period and was furnished with a luxury beside which the furnishing of a millionaire's suite on an Atlantic liner was a Bloomsbury drawing-room.

Mr. Plink had many interests and his businesses many ramifications, which is natural, since it is not only impossible for a billionaire to keep all his eggs in one basket, but to confine his storage to baskets at all.

On the night of the thirtieth of June, a police constable of "C" division, who was making his round of Oxford Street, Covent Garden, discovered a door leading to the business premises occupied by John Wallington, Limited, printers, had been forced, and that, in the language of the police, an entrance had been effected. Summoning a comrade, he proceeded to make investigations. The door gave onto a little yard, a ladder was against a small building used as an ink store, a skylight had been forced, and through this one of the diligent officers of the law lowered himself, while his friend kept watch outside.

Thanks to the intelligent employment of rubber soles by the officers of "C" division, the policeman was able to surprise a wholly unauthorized visitor in the act of rummaging the manager's desk, and after a short struggle he was secured and conveyed to Vine Street police station.

It happened that Larry Loman, of the criminal intelligence department, was in the station when the prisoner arrived, discussing with the inspector one of the minor crimes which had been obviously committed by that extraordinary corporation which was subsequently known to the newspapers as the Crime Trust.

The conversation was suspended while the prisoner was pushed into the steel dock and the usual interrogation took place.

"Name?"

A little hesitation, then: "Brown— Thomas Brown."

"Age?"

"Thirty-three."

"Occupation?"

"Laborer."

"Where do you live?"

Again hesitation; then defiantly: "The Fritz Hotel."

"None of your nonsense," said the station sergeant. "Where do you live?"

"Rowton House, Kings Cross."

One of the divisional C. I. D. men had strolled in, and the prisoner caught his eye.

"Hello, Terence!" said the detective.

"You've made an error," replied the prisoner haughtily.

"His name is Terence Brien," explained the detective; "he is an old lag. He had five years for burglary at the Chelmsford Assizes in 1904. What have you been up to, Terence— the old game?"

"Never mind about the old game," growled the prisoner, and then, with an air of triumph: "You are not going to have it so easy this time, Mr. Busy; I shall have the best counsel that money can buy. I've got friends, I have."

Larry came forward, for now he was the most interested member of the audience.

"Would you like us to communicate with your friends?" he asked.

The man looked at him suspiciously.

"No, thank you, Mr. Loman," he grinned. "I know you, sir. You are not going to get any information out of me."

"You are working for the trust," said Larry. "Tell me why you went to Wallington's."

"Find out," said the man defiantly.

That Larry intended doing, and after the man had been removed to a cell he went back to the robbed office. The policeman had evidently disturbed the man before he had got very far with his work. Only a few packages of paper had been taken from the desk, and these were mainly invoices awaiting dispatch and correspondence of the previous day between the firm and its customers which had not yet been filed.

Pending the arrival of a representative of the firm, Larry took the liberty of examining the contents of the desk. One thing that had struck him from the first was the care with which the desk had been opened, and probably this had accounted for the length of time the man had taken, because he had obviously had the greater part of an hour. This fact was discovered by inquiries of a caretaker who lived opposite the works and who thought he had seen the flash of an electric lamp an hour before the burglary was discovered.

The drawer of the desk had not been forced, but it had been picked with great care. The documents taken from the drawer had not been scattered, but had been carefully placed on the top of the desk, and evidently the man had instructions to replace all that he had removed in as near as possible the same position and order as they had been when he found them. The very last package Larry removed from the desk was a registered envelope, the wax seal of which had been broken, probably by the official of the firm on the previous day. It contained a typewritten list of names and addresses running to many pages, and each sheet had been typed upon the letter-heading of Lewis Plink & Gothmeyar. It was four o'clock before a representative of the burgled firm arrived.

"Yes," he said, "that list came yesterday from Mr. Plink. We do all his private printing, and we are sending out cards of invitation for his daughter's marriage."

"Do you send out the cards?"

The representative nodded.

"The lists come direct to us. We print a separate card for each guest; that is to say, we alter the name with every impression. This is a practice of Mr. Plink when he is giving a particularly important party."

The object of the burglary was very clear to Larry. It was to obtain that list of names, and it had been committed by the order of the trust. Why was the list required? He knew Lewis Plink by reputation as an immensely wealthy man, and he remembered reading in a newspaper that the wedding presents had been valued at a fabulous sum, the present from the father of the bride taking some unusual shape. What it was he could not remember except that it was something bizarre and uncommon.

A search through the file of his papers revealed both the object of the burglary and the larger objective of the trust. Mr. Plink was a man of original views, and if they lacked something in taste they made up for the deficiency in tangible value. The bride, who was dowered with her weight in gold, had evidently fired the great financier's imagination, and Miss Louisa Plink was to receive as a wedding present her weight in treasury notes.

Larry opened a safe in which he kept a supply of ready money, took his letter scales, and weighed an ounce. He discovered that it took thirty-two treasury notes to turn the balance. If Miss Plink was an ordinarily healthy girl, she would weigh one hundred twenty-six pounds— that was one thousand and eight ounces— so that he dowry would amount to something like one hundred and sixty thousand pounds or eight hundred thousand dollars, which, in negotiable money, was a prize well worth securing. He looked at his watch. It was nearly seven o'clock, and he realized that he had had no sleep that night. He snatched three hours' rest; then, after a bath and a change, he made his way to the city office of Plink & Gothmeyar. Mr. Plink was a jovial little man, very bald, and very human.

Larry, who had been ushered in almost immediately, was waved to a seat and pressed to a cigar almost in one motion.

"Yes, it is perfectly true," said Mr. Plink, with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat; "the money is at Cateby Court at this minute. It is being looked after with the other presents, and I do not think you need have any fear. I have two private detectives there day and night."

"Have you added to the list of your guests?" asked Larry.

Mr. Plink nodded.

"I sent along one new name this morning— Miss Cuthbert."

"A friend of yours?"

Mr. Plink hesitated.

"Well, not exactly a friend, but the friend of a friend," he said. "I am not at liberty to talk about her, but I can only tell you that the lady is of unimpeachable character, who has been known to my friend— whose name I am not for the moment permitted to give— for many years."

"That seems all right," said Larry after a pause. "And now I want you to add another to your list."

"You mean yourself?"

Larry nodded.

"With all the pleasure in life," said Mr. Plink, and pressed his bell. "The wedding is to-morrow afternoon at two o'clock, and the dinner is at seven. I shall expect you, Mr."— he looked at the card again— "Mr. Loman."

It was Larry's day for consulting his doctor, he remembered with a little grimace as he came into the street. He had grown to like Sir George Grayborn, and his gesture of repugnance was less dictated by an objection to the eminent nerve specialist than an indication of his resentment that he had to consult a doctor at all. He secretly hoped that Sir George would be out, but the great man, as it happened, was spending the afternoon at home, an unusual circumstance.

"I am glad you came in; I was getting bored," said Sir George, smiling pleasantly and rising to shake hands with his visitor. "Well, how is your amnesia?"

"I have not had an attack for over a week," said Larry cheerfully, and the elder man nodded.

"There will come a time when these curious lapses of yours will pass away forever," he said. "Yours is a very interesting case, about the third that I have met with in my professional career. I have, of course, had any number of patients who have lost their memory, but your peculiar disease is rather unusual." He was sitting at his table, fingering a pencil. "Your case is this— that at awkward hours of the day, without any warning save a faint buzzing sensation in your head, your memory fails. For three or four hours you are totally incapable of remembering anything which happened before the lapse began, though you are guided by a subconscious knowledge of previous happenings. At the end of your four hours you recover your memory, but now you cannot remember what happened during the period of lapse. That, I think, is your case."

Larry nodded.

"A very awkward and disagreeable complaint," smiled Sir George, "but we will pull you through." He reached out a hand and gripped the other's wrist, looking at his watch the while. "Pulse normal," he turned Larry's face to the window, "pupils react to light. Hold out your hand." Larry obeyed. "No tremors. Close your eyes. No swaying."

He applied one or two other tests, all of which were apparently satisfactory.

"You have no organic disease at all. Beyond this strange loss of memory, which is inconvenient without being dangerous, you are in perfect health. Now, tell me, what are you going to do for the next two or three days?"

Larry explained the engagement he had just made. The old man lifted his eyebrows.

"So you are going to sit in the shadow of Midas, too," he said.

"Are you going?" asked Larry in surprise.

"I attend Mr. Plink in a professional capacity," said the other dryly, "but a man more innocent of nerve I have never met. These functions amuse me. I shall probably see you there. I am glad I am going," he added after a moment's thought. "I am rather keen on seeing you while this fit of lost memory is on you. I nearly saw you the other day, and I have been vexed that I missed the opportunity."

Larry saw him the next afternoon on the platform of Charing Cross, which was thronged with Mr. Plink's guests. The millionaire had hired a special train to carry his friends to Chislehurst, and Larry and the doctor traveled down together.

"By the way, who are those young gentlemen?" asked the doctor just before the train drew out, indicating two silk-hatted young men who were strolling along the platform in laughing conversation, swinging their canes carelessly. "I know most of the people here, but I cannot place these."

"And I am afraid I cannot enlighten you," said Larry. He might have substituted "won't" for "can't", but in all matters affecting the service he was a most reticent man, and the two immaculate youths who were strolling aimlessly from carriage to carriage in search of a seat were men of his own department.

The train was met at Chislehurst by a fleet of motor cars, and the guests were whisked off to Mr. Plink's magnificent home. Larry and the professor traveled together in the same car.

"He is not a bad little fellow," said Sir Gorge. "I have known him for a number of years, and, in fact, I have been a sort of confidential adviser to the family. He is hopelessly rich, which is against him, and he has sufficient sense not to interfere with his really delightful chateau, which was built by the Duc de Lieven, who accompanied Napoleon III. into exile."

It was, indeed, a beautiful house, and if the interior was a little more ornate than the delicate lines of the architect had led the visitor to expect, that was pardonable.

Larry immediately sought an interview with Mr. Plink, and found him in his big study. To Larry's surprise, he discovered Sir George already on the spot ensconced in a deep armchair, smoking a reflective cigarette. He looked up with an amused smile as Larry entered.

"You know my friend, Sir George Grayborn," said Mr. Plink, indicating the other with a wave of his hand.

Larry nodded.

"I have no secrets from Sir George."

"Nor have I, unfortunately," smiled Larry.

"We have been friends for ten years," said Mr. Plink. "He attended my poor wife— help yourself to a cigar— you weren't so prosperous in those days, Sir George."

"Prosperity is a relative term," said the specialist. "I was perhaps happier then than I am now."

"Naturally, naturally," said the sympathetic Mr. Plink, "'it is rather curious, now that I come to think of it," he went on reflectively; "the first time I met you we had the very same accident, which we are trying to avoid now."

He looked up with a broad grin at the young police officer.

"Do you mean a robbery?" said Larry quickly.

Mr. Plink nodded.

"I lost the finest pearl necklace that has ever been seen in this country," he said with a certain amount of satisfaction— for it was a pleasure to Mr. Plink to be magnificent even in his losses. "It was taken from this study," he went on, "worth one hundred and fifty thousand pounds; disappeared in the twinkling of an eye. Do you remember, Sir George?"

Sir George nodded. "Now you mention the matter, I do remember."

"How did it occur?" asked Larry. "I don't remember hearing anything about it."

Mr. Plink shook his head.

"It was probably before your time, and it was a very simple matter. Somebody just opened the safe, took the pearls, relocked the safe— and there you are!"

"Is this the safe?" asked Larry curiously, and walked up to a massive steel structure in the corner of the room.

"You bet your life it isn't!" said Mr. Plink decisively. "I've had that safe changed. Do you remember, Sir George," he asked, "I changed it on your recommendation? There is not another like it in Europe."

He went to the door, rapidly twisted the combination, turned the handle, and the great steel door swung open.

Larry looked inside. There was nothing inside save a strong canvas sack, which was sewn at the top and bore a label in one corner.

"You can guess what this is," beamed Mr. Plink. "It is my present to my daughter. I am not showing it with the other wedding presents. I am taking no risks."

"Are you guarding the safe?"

"Night and day," replied Mr. Plink. "Did you see a man watching outside when you came in? Well, when we go out he will come back."

"An interesting safe," said Sir George.

He got up from his chair, walked to the big deposit, and twiddled the handle under the amused eyes of the millionaire.

"Nobody but myself knows the combination word," he smiled; "no other person in the world can open it."

They talked a little while before Larry made his adieux. He went back to the grounds, where the guests were promenading, and rejoined them. Here he was introduced to a very healthy and substantial Miss Plink, thoroughly enjoying all the attention she attracted and wholly self-possessed.

Larry did not attend the ceremony an hour later. He made a brief examination of the house and grounds. He found the detective on duty before the safe and two more in charge of the wedding presents, which had been displayed in the morning room, and saw nothing to arouse his suspicion.

It was an hilarious wedding breakfast. Everybody was in the best of spirits, only Larry, conscious that trouble of some kind was brewing, was anxious, alert, and observant.

"You are very thoughtful, Mr. Loman," chided his partner. "I believe you are nervous."

He smiled at the girl at his side a little ruefully.

"You are nearer the truth than you imagine, Lady Valentine," he said. "I am generally nervous when I cannot see everybody at the table. I wish Mr. Plink had been a little less magnificent in the way of table decorations."

He pointed to an elaborate silver center piece smothered with fruit and flowers, and Lady Valentine Curtenleigh beckoned a waiter.

"Oh, please don't!" protested Larry.

"Mr. Plink and I are old friends," she laughed. "You see, father and Mr. Plink are partners." She made a little grimace. "We dukes must live, you know, Mr. Loman— there!"

The center piece was with difficulty removed.

"Now I hope you will be less distrait," she went on. "If I had only known—  Why, what are you frowning at?"

Larry's frown was one of perplexity. Sitting opposite to him was a girl with a pale, clear skin and deep, thoughtful eyes.

"Who is that?" he whispered.

"That?" echoed his companion. "I was told her name, but I have forgotten. Oh, I have it— Miss Cuthbert! She is a friend of Sir George Grayborn's."

Where had he seen her before? That they had met he knew, but where? Suddenly the girl caught his eyes, and her face went a little whiter. She stared for a second, then turned her head away abruptly. Who was she? Where had he seen her before? He puzzled his brain to supply an answer, and hardly noticed that Mr. Plink had begun his speech.

"Now I want to ask a few friends to accompany me, my daughter, and her husband to my holy of holies," said the jovial voice of Mr. Plink, "to present a little present which is perhaps— er— er— unique in the history of wedding presents."

There was a little gust of laughter, a rattling of knife handles, a dozen fresh young voices raised in laughing protest, demands from familiar friends that the presentation should be public and that "Leah's" weight should be made known, and then the little party made the best of their way from the room.

Mr. Plink, his new son-in-law, his daughter, Sir George Grayborn, and Larry were the five who assembled in the study.

The detective was an interested spectator on the fringe of the group.

Mr. Plink twisted the combination and swung open the safe.

"Good God!" he gasped, for the safe was empty.

The detective swore that he had not left the room and that no person had entered since Mr. Plink and his guest had gone out.

"It is impossible that the safe could have been tampered with," said the troubled Mr. Plink; "it is fitted on a solid concrete foundation, and, as you see, it is possible to get round it."

Larry had made a most careful examination of the exterior. There were no signs of jimmy or blowpipe, no indication at all that the safe had been forced. He examined the interior, and found nothing that gave the slightest clew. The detective in charge was a well-known sergeant of the C.I.D., who had been in the service for twenty years, whose word could be relied upon and who was absolutely trustworthy.

"I can't understand it," said Larry.

He paced the garden, the professor at his side.

"What have you done?" asked Sir George.

"I have wired to London naturally, and the commissioner is coming down. Who is that lady?" he asked, suddenly catching sight of an isolated figure ahead.

"You mean Miss Cuthbert?" said Sir George. "She is an old friend of mine. I knew her father."

"Will you introduce me?" asked Larry.

Sir George hesitated, but only for a moment, and he walked toward the girl, spoke to her, and returned by her side.

"I have an idea I met you somewhere. By Jove! Wasn't it in the Botanical Gardens? You were selling roses."

She did not smile. Her eyes were fixed upon his.

"I remember, too," she said simply.

"Now that is very curious. I—" He suddenly put his hand to his head.

Sir George was eying him keenly.

"What is the matter?" he asked.

"I'm afraid this infernal attack, of mine is coming on," said Larry.

"Do you hear the noise in your head?"

Larry nodded.

The three stood without movement, save that once or twice Larry passed his hand wearily across his eyes.

"How are you?" asked Sir George after a while.

"I am all right, I think," said Larry cheerfully.

The physician took from his pocket a tortoise-shell penknife.

"Do you see this?"

"I see it very well," said Larry.

Sir George replaced the knife in his pocket.

"What did I show you just now?"

A look of bewilderment came into Larry's face.

"You didn't show me anything."

"Didn't I show you a penknife?"

"You didn't show me anything," said Larry in surprise.

The physician took his arm and signaled to the girl, and they walked toward a small plantation which stood in one corner of the ground.

"Sit down," said Sir George, and Larry obeyed. "I am going to tell you something which will interest you," he said slowly. "It gives me a remarkable sense of satisfaction to tell you this, because I know that everything I say will be forgotten three seconds after I have spoken. You may, in your present condition, be capable of continuous action, but you are wholly incapable of recalling words or impressions."

He waited a few minutes.

"What did I just tell you?" he asked.

"I'm blessed if I know," replied Larry. "Did you speak to me?"

The professor nodded to the girl, who was watching the detective with anxiety and fear.

"You are looking for the head of a great criminal organization," said Sir George. "It will interest you to know that I am that head." Again he paused. "Do you remember what I said?"

Larry shook his head.

"I heard you say nothing," he replied.

"Good!" smiled Sir George. "It will also interest you to learn that, although I am an excellent physician, the world refused to recognize my qualities until I had stolen sufficient money to establish myself as a great specialist; now it also recognizes me as a great organizer of crime. How do you imagine for the first three years of my struggle, laden down with debt, without friends, I managed to keep up my Harley Street house?"

"Father, be careful!" cried the girl in terror.

Sir George smiled again.

"He remembers nothing, my dear, and he will remember less," he added significantly, and his thin lips were hard.

"Father, you told me you would not—"

"My life depends upon ridding myself of this man," said Sir George. "Do you know what it means to me if I am detected?"

"Do nothing desperate," she pleaded.

"Perhaps you are right," he said softly. "We shall have our reward, dear; I have already booked our passage for Buenos Aires. I have done with the organization after this."

He turned again to Larry, who still sat cross-legged on the grass.

"You wonder how this last thing was done. I will tell you, and it will be amusing to watch you struggling after clews in three or four hours' time when you recover your power of sequent thought. The safe, as our friend Plink tells you, was supplied at my suggestion about a year after I began my criminal career. It was made by an American criminal who died in this country and whom I attended. It was placed in Plink's house by my own workmen, and for nine years I have been watching for a chance of a coup. Plink thinks that it has a solid steel and concrete foundation, but you would discover that the steel foundation, at any rate, is literally a hollow sham. If you turn the combination handle six times to the left, the floor of the safe turns, and all that is on the floor is precipitated to a little chamber immediately beneath. The bag of notes is still in the safe. One month every year I spend a vacation at this place while Plink is abroad. There will be no difficulty in recovering those notes. And now," said the professor, looking at his watch, "I must take you back."

Larry rose from the grass, dusted himself carefully, and obediently followed the professor from the wood.

AT FIVE-THIRTY that evening the commissioner arrived and interviewed Larry. He found that young officer, his head in his hands, in Mr. Plink's study, and with him was Sir George Grayborn.

"I am afraid our young friend has had one of those wretched lapses," said Sir George to the commissioner.

"When did this happen?" asked the latter. "After or before the robbery?"

"After," said Sir George. "In fact, I was with him when it occurred and have practically been with him ever since."

"Are you feeling better now, Larry?" asked the commissioner kindly.

"Oh, I'm feeling very fit," said Larry. "Will you excuse me?"

With a little nod, he walked out of the room.

The commissioner shook his head as he looked after him.

"Will he never be cured?"

"Oh, yes," replied the professor. "One of these days he will have the buzzing in his head and no more."

"You mean that it will not be followed by this extraordinary lapse of memory?"

"Just so," said Sir George, and then, as if a thought struck him, he walked to the door, threw it open, and called: "Loman!"

Larry was at the other end of the passage, and turned at the sound of his name.

"Tell my daughter I want her, will you?"

"Your daughter?" said Mr. Plink in surprise.

"Right!" cried the voice of Larry.

"Your daughter?" said Mr. Plink again.

"Yes," said Sir George quietly.

He paced the room, his head on his breast, his hands thrust deep into his trousers pockets, but offered no further explanation.

There was a tap at the door, and "Miss Cuthbert" came in.

"Do you want me, Sir George?" she asked.

"Just one moment, dear."

He drew her into a window recess.

"Take this," he said in a low voice. He handed her a bulky pocketbook. "You will find a car waiting at the end of the drive; I had it here in case of trouble. Tell Jackson to go straight to Dover. You will be in time to catch the Continental boat. If you don't hear from me, make your way to Switzerland; your passport is inside. Stay at the villa until I come. Whether it is for weeks or years, you must wait."

"Father!" she faltered.

"Do as I tell you. There is enough money there to last you for a year but you have authority to draw on my account in the Bank of Geneva for all the money you require." He stooped and kissed her lightly on the forehead "Go!" he ordered.

She hesitated a moment, and walked quickly from the room. She was descending the broad steps which led from the terrace to the grounds when she passed Larry. He favored her with a little nod and a queer, half-pitying smile.

"I shall want to see you in about half an hour, Miss Cuthbert," he said, "if you would be so kind as to come to the study."

She made no reply, and Larry walked thoughtfully into the house.

Sir George was expecting him, and had braced himself for the interview.

"You know why I have come, Sir George," said Larry quietly.

"I think I can guess," said the other.

"I am going to take you into custody on a charge of felony."

The commissioner stared from one to the other.

"What does it mean?"

"It means," said Sir George, "that I have made one great mistake and that your assistant is a very excellent actor. I think I am right in saying that for once the 'buzz' came, but you did not lose your memory."

"How did you know?" asked Larry quickly.

"You remembered that Miss Cuthbert was my daughter," said the head of the Criminal Trust and put out his wrists for the handcuffs.

"It was a clever move," said the commissioner. "Although it was fairly easy for a man who maintained a system of espionage to discover you had this wretched disease— from what I gather you are now cured— and to get into touch with you. By the way, have you traced the girl?"

Larry shook his head.

"I am not after the girl," he shortly. "I have jailed the rest of the gang, and that is enough for me."

_________________

9: The Return

Sherwood Anderson

1876-1941

The Century Magazine May 1925

EIGHTEEN YEARS. Well, he was driving a good car, an expensive roadster, he was well clad, a rather solid fine-looking man, not too heavy. When he had left the Middle-Western town to go live in New York City he was twenty-two, and now, on his way back there, he was forty. He drove toward the town from the east, stopping for lunch at another town ten miles away.

When he went away from Caxton, after his mother died, he used to write letters to friends at home, but after several months the replies began to come with less and less frequency. On the day when he sat eating his lunch at a small hotel in the town ten miles east of Caxton he suddenly thought of the reason, and was ashamed. "Am I going back there on this visit for the same reason I wrote the letters?" he asked himself. For a moment he thought he might not go on. There was still time to turn back.

Outside, in the principal business street of the town, people were walking about. The sun shone warmly. Although he had lived for so many years in New York, he had always kept, buried away in him somewhere, a hankering for his own country. All the day before he had been driving through the eastern Ohio country, crossing many small streams, running down through small valleys, seeing the white farmhouses set back from the road, and the big red barns.

The elders were still in bloom along the fences, boys were swimming in a creek, the wheat had been cut, and now the corn was shoulder-high. Everywhere the drone of bees; in patches of woodland along the road a heavy, mysterious silence.

Now, however, he began thinking of something else. Shame crept over him. "When I first left Caxton, I wrote letters back to my boyhood friends there, but I wrote always of myself. When I had written a letter telling what I was doing in the city, what friends I was making, what my prospects were, I put, at the very end of the letter, perhaps, a little inquiry. 'I hope you are well. How are things going with you?' Something of that sort."

The returning native— his name was John Holden— had grown very uneasy. After eighteen years it seemed to him he could see, lying before him, one of the letters written eighteen years before when he had first come into the strange Eastern city. His mother's brother, a successful architect in the city, had given him such and such an opportunity: he had been at the theater to see Mansfield as Brutus, he had taken the night boat upriver to Albany with his aunt; there were two very handsome girls on the boat.

Everything then must have been in the same tone. His uncle had given him a rare opportunity, and he had taken advantage of it. In time he had also become a successful architect. In New York City there were certain great buildings, two or three skyscrapers, several huge industrial plants, any number of handsome and expensive residences, that were the products of his brain.

When it came down to the scratch, John Holden had to admit that his uncle had not been excessively fond of him. It had just happened that his aunt and uncle had no children of their own. He did his work in the office well and carefully, had developed a certain rather striking knack for design. The aunt had liked him better. She had always tried to think of him as her own son, had treated him as a son. Sometimes she called him son. Once or twice, after his uncle died, he had a notion. His aunt was a good woman, but sometimes he thought she would rather have enjoyed having him, John Holden, go in a bit more for wickedness, go a little on the loose, now and then. He never did anything she had to forgive him for. Perhaps she hungered for the opportunity to forgive.

Odd thoughts, eh? Well, what was a fellow to do? One had but the one life to live. One had to think of oneself.

Botheration! John Holden had rather counted on the trip back to Caxton, had really counted on it more than he realized. It was a bright summer day. He had been driving for days over the mountains of Pennsylvania, through New York State, through eastern Ohio. Gertrude, his wife, had died during the summer before, and his one son, a lad of twelve, had gone away for the summer to a boys' camp in Vermont.

The idea had just come to him. "I'll drive the car along slowly through the country, drinking it in. I need a rest, time to think. What I really need is to renew old acquaintances. I'll go back to Caxton and stay several days. I'll see Herman and Frank and Joe. Then I'll go call on Lillian and Kate. What a lot of fun, really!" It might just be that when he got to Caxton, the Caxton ball team would be playing a game, say with a team from Yerington. Lillian might go to the game with him. It was in his mind faintly that Lillian had never married. How did he know that? He had heard nothing from Caxton for many years. The ball game would be in Heffler's field, and he and Lillian would go out there, walking under the maple trees along Turner Street, past the old stave factory, then in the dust of the road, past where the sawmill used to stand, and on into the field itself. He would be carrying a sunshade over Lillian's head, and Bob French would be standing at the gate where you went into the field and charging the people twenty-five cents to see the game.

Well, it would not be Bob; his son perhaps. There would be something very nice in the notion of Lillian's going off to a ball game that way with an old sweetheart. A crowd of boys, women and men, going through a cattle gate into Heffler's field, tramping through the dust, young men with their sweethearts, a few gray-haired women, mothers of boys who belonged to the team, Lillian and he sitting in the rickety grandstand in the hot sun.

Once it had been— how they had felt, he and Lillian, sitting there together! It had been rather hard to keep the attention centered on the players in the field. One couldn't ask a neighbor, "Who's ahead now, Caxton or Yerington?" Lillian's hands lay in her lap. What white, delicate, expressive hands they were! Once— that was just before he went away to live in the city with his uncle and but a month after his mother died— he and Lillian went to the ball field together at night. His father had died when he was a young lad, and he had no relatives left in the town. Going off to the ball field at night was maybe a risky thing for Lillian to do— risky for her reputation if any one found it out— but she had seemed willing enough. You know how small-town girls of that age are?

Her father owned a retail shoe store in Caxton and was a good, respectable man; but the Holdens— John's father had been a lawyer.

After they got back from the ball field that night— it must have been after midnight— they went to sit on the front porch before her father's house. He must have known. A daughter cavorting about half the night with a young man that way! They had clung to each other with a sort of queer, desperate feeling neither understood. She did not go into the house until after three o'clock, and went then only because he insisted. He hadn't wanted to ruin her reputation. Why, he might have—  She was like a little frightened child at the thought of his going away. He was twenty-two then, and she must have been about eighteen.

Eighteen and twenty-two are forty. John Holden was forty on the day when he sat at lunch at the hotel in the town ten miles from Caxton.

Now, he thought, he might be able to walk through the streets of Caxton to the ball park with Lillian with a certain effect. You know how it is. One has to accept the fact that youth is gone. If there should turn out to be such a ball game and Lillian would go with him, he would leave the car in the garage and ask her to walk. One saw pictures of that sort of thing in the movies— a man coming back to his native village after twenty years; a new beauty taking the place of the beauty of youth— something like that. In the spring the leaves on maple trees are lovely, but they are even more lovely in the fall— a flame of color; manhood and womanhood.

After he had finished his lunch John did not feel verycomfortable. The road to Caxton— it used to take nearly three hours to travel the distance with a horse and buggy, but now, and without any effort, the distance could be made in twenty minutes.

He lit a cigar and went for a walk not in the streets of Caxton, but in the streets of the town ten miles away. If he got to Caxton in the evening, just at dusk, say, now—

With an inward pang John realized that he wanted darkness, the kindliness of soft evening lights. Lillian, Joe, Herman, and the rest. It had been eighteen years for the others as well as for himself. Now he had succeeded, a little, in twisting his fear of Caxton into fear for the others, and it made him feel somewhat better; but at once he realized what he was doing and again felt uncomfortable. One had to look out for changes, new people, new buildings, middle-aged people grown old, youth grown middle-aged. At any rate, he was thinking of the other now; he wasn't, as when he wrote letters home eighteen years before, thinking only of himself. "Am I?" It was a question.

An absurd situation, really. He had sailed along so gaily through upper New York State, through western Pennsylvania, through eastern Ohio. Men were at work in the fields and in the towns, farmers drove into towns in their cars, clouds of dust arose on some distant road, seen across a valley. Once he had stopped his car near a bridge and gone for a walk along the banks of a creek where it wound through a wood.

He was liking people. Well, he had never before given much time to people, to thinking of them and their affairs. "I hadn't time," he told himself. He had always realized that, while he was a good enough architect, things move fast in America. New men were coming on. He couldn't take chances of going on forever on his uncle's reputation. A man had to be always on the alert. Fortunately, his marriage had been a help. It had made valuable connections for him.

Twice he had picked up people on the road. There was a lad of sixteen from some town of eastern Pennsylvania, working his way westward toward the Pacific coast by picking up rides in cars— a summer's adventure. John had carried him all of one day and had listened to his talk with keen pleasure. And so this was the younger generation. The boy had nice eyes and an eager, friendly manner. He smoked cigarettes, and once, when they had a puncture, he was very quick and eager about changing the tire. "Now, don't you soil your hands, Mister; I can do it like a flash," he said, and he did. The boy said he intended working his way overland to the Pacific coast, where he would try to get a job of some kind on an ocean freighter, and that, if he did, he would go on around the world. "But do you speak any foreign languages?" The boy did not. Across John Holden's mind flashed pictures of hot Eastern deserts, crowded Asiatic towns, wild half-savage mountain countries. As a young architect, and before his uncle died, he had spent two years in foreign travel, studying building in many countries; but he said nothing of this thought to the boy. Vast plans entered into with eager boyish abandon, a world tour undertaken as he, when a young man, might have undertaken to find his way from his uncle's house in East Eighty-first Street downtown to the Battery. "How do I know— perhaps he will do it," John thought. The day in company with the boy had been very pleasant, and he had been on the alert to pick him up again the next morning; but the boy had gone on his way, had caught a ride with some earlier riser. Why hadn't John invited him to his hotel for the night? The notion hadn't come to him until too late.

Youth, rather wild and undisciplined, running wild, eh? I wonder why I never did it, never wanted to do it.

If he had been a bit wilder, more reckless— that night, that time when he and Lillian— "It's all right being reckless with yourself, but when some one else is involved, a young girl in a small town, you yourself lighting out"— He remembered sharply that on the night, long before, as he sat with Lillian on the porch before her father's house his hand— It had seemed as though Lillian, on that evening, might not have objected to anything he wanted to do. He had thought— well, he had thought of the consequences. Women must be protected by men, all that sort of thing. Lillian had seemed rather stunned when he walked away, even though it was three o'clock in the morning. She had been rather like a person waiting at a railroad station for the coming of a train. There is a blackboard, and a strange man comes out and writes on it, "Train Number 287 has been discontinued"— something like that.

Well, it had been all right, everything had been all right.

Later, four years later, he had married a New York woman of good family. Even in a city like New York, where there are so many people, her family had been well known. They had connections.

After marriage, sometimes, it is true, he had wondered. Gertrude used to look at him sometimes with an odd light in her eyes. That boy he picked up in the road— once during the day when he said something to the boy, the same queer look came into his eyes. It would be rather upsetting if one knew that the boy had purposely avoided him next morning. There had been Gertrude's cousin. Once, after his marriage, John heard a rumor that Gertrude had wanted to marry that cousin, but of course he had said nothing to her. Why should he have? She was his wife. There had been, he had heard, a good deal of family objection to the cousin. He was reputed to be wild, a gambler and drinker.

Once the cousin came to the Holden apartment at two in the morning, drunk and demanding that he be allowed to see Gertrude, and she slipped on a dressing-gown and went down to him. That was in the hallway of the apartment, downstairs, where almost any one might have come in and seen her. As a matter of fact, the elevator boy and the janitor did see her. She had stood in the hallway below talking for nearly an hour. What about? He had never asked Gertrude directly, and she had never told him anything. When she came upstairs again and had got into her bed, he lay in his own bed trembling, but remained silent. He had been afraid that if he spoke he might say something rude; better keep still. The cousin had disappeared. John had a suspicion that Gertrude later supplied him with money. He went out West somewhere.

Now Gertrude was dead. She had always seemed very well, but suddenly she was attacked by a baffling kind of slow fever that lasted nearly a year. Sometimes she seemed about to get better, and then suddenly the fever grew worse. It might be that she did not want to live. What a notion! John had been at the bedside with the doctor when she died. It was at night, and as the boy was asleep, he was not called. There was something of the same feeling he had had that night of his youth when he went with Lillian to the ball field, an odd sense of futility, of inadequacy. There was no doubt that in some subtle way both women had accused him.

Of what? There had always been, in some vague, indefinable way, a kind of accusation in the attitude toward him of his uncle, the architect, and of his aunt. They had left him their money, but— —  It was as though the uncle had said, as though Lillian during that night long ago had said— —

Had they all said the same thing, and was Gertrude his wife saying it as she lay dying? A smile. "You have always taken such good care of yourself, haven't you, John dear? You have observed the rules. You have taken no chances for yourself or the others." She had actually said something of that sort to him once in a moment of anger.

ii

IN THE small town ten miles from Caxton there wasn't any park to which a man could go to sit. If one stayed about the hotel, some one from Caxton might come in. "Hello, what are you doing here?" It would be inconvenient to explain: "I didn't want to go to Caxton in the daylight. I want the kindliness of evening light for myself and the people I may see there."

John Holden's boy— he was but twelve— one might say his character had not begun to form yet. One felt in him sometimes a sort of unconscious and casual selfishness, an unawareness of others, a rather unhealthy sharpness about getting the best of others. It was a thing that should be corrected in him and at once. John Holden had got himself into a small panic. "I must write him a letter at once. Such a habit gets fixed in a boy and then in the man, and it cannot later be shaken off. There are such a lot of people living in the world! Every man and woman has his own point of view. To be civilized, really, is to be aware of the others, their hopes, their gladnesses, their disillusionments in life."

John Holden was now walking along a residence street of a small Ohio town composing in fancy a letter to his son in the boys' camp up in Vermont. He was a man who wrote to his son every day. "I think a man should," he told himself. "One should remember that now the boy has no mother."

He had come to an outlying railroad station. It was neat, with grass and flowers growing in a round bed in the very center of a lawn. Some man, the station agent and telegraph operator perhaps, passed him and went inside the station. John followed him in. On the wall of the waiting room there was a framed copy of the timetable, and he stood studying it. A train went to Caxton at five. Another train came from Caxton and passed through the town he was now in at seven-forty-three, the seven-nineteen out of Caxton. The man in the small business section of the station opened a sliding panel and looked at him. The two men just stared at each other without speaking, and then the panel was slid shut again.

John looked at his watch. Two-twenty-eight. At about six he could drive over to Caxton and dine at the hotel there. After he had dined, it would be evening, and people would be coming into the main street.

The seven-nineteen would come in. When John was a lad, sometimes, he, Joe, Herman, and often several other lads climbed on the front of the baggage- or mail-car and stole a ride to the very town he was now in. What a thrill, crouched down in the gathering darkness on the platform as the train ran the ten miles, the car rocking from side to side! When it got a little dark, in the fall or spring, the fields beside the track were lighted up when the fireman opened his fire-box to throw in coal. Once John saw a rabbit running along in the glare of light beside the track. He could have reached down and caught it with his hand. In the neighboring town the boys went into saloons and played pool and drank beer. They could depend upon catching a ride back home on the local freight that got to Caxton at about ten-thirty. On one of the adventures John and Herman got drunk, and Joe had to help them into an empty coal car and later get them out at Caxton. Herman got sick, and when they were getting off the freight at Caxton, he stumbled and came very near falling under the wheels of the moving train. John wasn't as drunk as Herman. When the others weren't looking, he had poured several of the glasses of beer into a spittoon. In Caxton he and Joe had to walk about with Herman for several hours, and when John finally got home, his mother was still awake and was worried. He had to lie to her. "I drove out into the country with Herman, and a wheel broke. We had to walk home." The reason Joe could carry his beer so well was because he was German. His father owned the town meat market, and the family had beer on the table at home. No wonder it did not knock him out as it did Herman and John.

There was a bench at the side of the railroad station, in the shade, and John sat there for a long time— two hours, three hours. Why hadn't he brought a book? In fancy he composed a letter to his son and in it he spoke of the fields lying beside the road outside the town of Caxton, of his greeting old friends there, of things that had happened when he was a boy. He even spoke of his former sweetheart, of Lillian. If he now thought out just what he was going to say in the letter, he could write it in his room at the hotel over in Caxton in a few minutes without having to stop and think what he was going to say. You can't always be too fussy about what you say to a young boy. Really, sometimes, you should take him into your confidence, into your life, make him a part of your life.

It was six-twenty when John drove into Caxton and went to the hotel, where he registered, and was shown to a room. On the street as he drove into town he saw Billy Baker, who, when he was a young man, had a paralyzed leg that dragged along the sidewalk when he walked. Now he was getting old; his face seemed wrinkled and faded, like a dried lemon, and his clothes had spots down the front. People, even sick people, live a long time in small Ohio towns. It is surprising how they hang on.

John had put his car, of a rather expensive make, into a garage beside the hotel. Formerly, in his day, the building had been used as a livery-barn. There used to be pictures of famous trotting and pacing horses on the walls of the little office at the front. Old Dave Grey, who owned racehorses of his own, ran the livery-barn then, and John occasionally hired a rig there. He hired a rig and took Lillian for a ride into the country, along moonlit roads. By a lonely farmhouse a dog barked. Sometimes they drove along a little dirt road lined with elders and stopped the horse. How still everything was! What a queer feeling they had! They couldn't talk. Sometimes they sat in silence thus, very near each other, for a long, long time. Once they got out of the buggy, having tied the horse to the fence, and walked in a newly cut hayfield. The cut hay lay all about in little cocks. John wanted to lie on one of the hay-cocks with Lillian, but did not dare suggest it.

At the hotel John ate his dinner in silence. There wasn't even a traveling salesman in the dining room, and presently the proprietor's wife came and stood by his table to talk with him. They had a good many tourists, but this just happened to be a quiet day. Dull days came that way in the hotel business. The woman's husband was a traveling man and had bought the hotel to give his wife something to keep her interested while he was on the road. He was away from home so much! They had come to Caxton from Pittsburgh.

After he had dined, John went up to his room, and presently the woman followed. The door leading into the hall had been left open, and she came and stood in the doorway. Really, she was rather handsome. She only wanted to be sure that everything was all right, that he had towels and soap and everything he needed.

For a time she lingered by the door talking of the town.

"It's a good little town. General Hurst is buried here. You should drive out to the cemetery and see the statue." He wondered who General Hurst was. In what war had he fought? Odd that he hadn't remembered about him. The town had a piano factory, and there was a watch company from Cincinnati talking of putting up a plant. "They figure there is less chance of labor trouble in a small town like this."

The woman went, going reluctantly. As she was going along the hallway she stopped once and looked back. There was something a little queer. They were both self-conscious. "I hope you'll be comfortable," she said. At forty a man did not come home to his own home town to start— —  A traveling man's wife, eh? Well! well!

At seven-forty-five John went out for a walk on Main Street and almost at once he met Tom Ballard, who at once recognized him, a fact that pleased Tom. He bragged about it. "Once I see a face, I never forget. Well! Well!" When John was twenty-two Tom must have been about fifteen. His father was the leading doctor of the town. He took John in tow, walked back with him toward the hotel. He kept exclaiming: "I knew you at once. You haven't changed much, really."

Tom was in his turn a doctor, and there was about him something— —  Right away John guessed what it was. They went up into John's room, and John, having in his bag a bottle of whiskey, poured Tom a drink, which he took somewhat too eagerly, John thought. There was talk. After Tom had taken the drink he sat on the edge of the bed still holding the bottle John had passed to him. Herman was running a dray now. He had married Kit Small and had five kids. Joe was working for the International Harvester Company. "I don't know whether he's in town now or not. He's a trouble-shooter, a swell mechanic, a good fellow," Tom said. They drank again.

As for Lillian, mentioned with an air of being casual by John, he, John, knew of course that she had been married and divorced. There was some sort of trouble about another man. Her husband married again later, and now she lived with her mother, her father, the shoe merchant, having died. Tom spoke somewhat guardedly, as though protecting a friend.

"I guess she's all right now, going straight and all. Good thing she never had any kids. She's a little nervous and queer; has lost her looks a good deal."

The two men went downstairs and, walking along Main Street, got into a car belonging to the doctor.

"I'll take you for a little ride," Tom said; but as he was about to pull away from the curb where the car had been parked, he turned and smiled at his passenger. "We ought to celebrate a little, account of your coming back here," he said. "What do you say to a quart?"

John handed him a ten-dollar bill, and he disappeared into a near-by drug store. When he came back he laughed.

"I used your name all right. They didn't recognize it. In the prescription I wrote out I said you had a general breakdown, that you needed to be built up. I recommended that you take a teaspoonful three times a day. Lord! my prescription book is getting almost empty." The drug store belonged to a man named Will Bennett. "You remember him, maybe. He's Ed Bennett's son; married Carrie Wyatt." The names were but dim things in John's mind. "This man is going to get drunk. He is going to try to get me drunk, too," he thought.

When they had turned out of Main Street and into Walnut Street they stopped midway between two street lights and had another drink, John holding the bottle to his lips, but putting his tongue over the opening. He remembered the evenings with Joe and Herman when he had secretly poured his beer into a spittoon. He felt cold and lonely. Walnut Street was one along which he used to walk, coming home late at night from Lillian's house. He remembered people who then lived along the street, and a list of names began running through his head. Often the names remained, but did not call up images of people. They were just names. He hoped the doctor would not turn the car into the street in which the Holdens had lived. Lillian had lived over in another part of town, in what was called "the Red House District." Just why it had been called that John did not know.

iii

THEY DROVE silently along, up a small hill, and came to the edge of town, going south. Stopping before a house that had evidently been built since John's time, Tom sounded his horn.

"Didn't the fair-ground use to stand about here?" John asked. The doctor turned and nodded his head.

"Yes, just here," he said. He kept on sounding his horn, and a man and woman came out of the house and stood in the road beside the car.

"Let's get Maud and Alf and all go over to Lylse's Point," Tom said. He had indeed taken John into tow. For a time John wondered if he was to be introduced. "We got some hooch. Meet John Holden; used to live here years ago." At the fair-ground, when John was a lad, Dave Grey, the livery-man, used to work out his racehorses in the early morning. Herman, who was a horse enthusiast, who then dreamed of some day becoming a horseman, came often to John's house in the early morning, and the two boys went off to the fair-ground without breakfast. Herman had got some sandwiches made of slices of bread and cold meat out of his mother's pantry. They went 'cross-lots, climbing fences and eating the sandwiches. In a meadow they had to cross there was heavy dew on the grass, and the meadow larks flew up before them. Herman had at least come somewhere near expressing in his life his youthful passion: he still lived about horses; he owned a dray. With a little inward qualm John wondered. Perhaps Herman ran a motor truck.

The man and woman got into the car, the woman on the back seat with John, the husband in front with Tom, and they drove away to another house. John could not keep track of the streets they passed through. Occasionally he asked the woman, "What street are we in now?" They were joined by Maud and Alf, who also crowded into the back seat. Maud was a slender woman of twenty-eight or thirty, with yellow hair and blue eyes, and at once she seemed determined to make up to John. "I don't take more than an inch of room," she said, laughing and squeezing herself in between John and the first woman, whose name he could not later remember.

He rather liked Maud. When the car had been driven some eighteen miles along a gravel road, they came to Lylse's farmhouse, which had been converted into a roadhouse, and got out. Maud had been silent most of the way, but she sat very close to John, and as he felt cold and lonely, he was grateful for the warmth of her slender body. Occasionally she spoke to him in a half-whisper. "Ain't the night swell! Gee! I like it out in the dark this way."

Lylse's Point was at a bend of the Samson River, a small stream to which John as a lad had occasionally gone on fishing excursions with his father. Later he went out there several times with crowds of young fellows and their girls. They drove out then in Grey's old bus, and the trip out and back took several hours. On the way home at night they had great fun singing at the top of their voices and waking sleeping farmers along the road. Occasionally some of the party got out and walked for a ways. It was a chance for a fellow to kiss his girl when the others could not see. By hurrying a little, they could later easily enough catch up with the bus.

A rather heavy-faced Italian named Francisco owned Lylse's, and it had a dance hall and dining room. Drinks could be had if you knew the ropes, and it was evident the doctor and his friends were old acquaintances. At once they declared John should not buy anything, the declaration, in fact, being made before he had offered. "You're our guest now; don't you forget that. When we come sometime to your town, then it will be all right," Tom said. He laughed. "And that makes me think. I forgot your change," he said, handing John a five-dollar bill. The whiskey got at the drug store had been consumed on the way out, all except John and Maud drinking heartily. "I don't like the stuff. Do you, Mr. Holden?" Maud said and giggled. Twice during the trip out her fingers had crept over and touched lightly his fingers, and each time she had apologized. "Oh, do excuse me!" she said. John felt a little as he had felt earlier in the evening when the woman of the hotel had come to stand at the door of his room and had seemed reluctant about going away.

After they got out of the car at Lylse's, he felt uncomfortably old and queer. "What am I doing here with these people?" he kept asking himself. When they had got into the light, he stole a look at his watch. It was not yet nine o'clock. Several other cars, most of them, the doctor explained, from Yerington, stood before the door, and when they had taken several drinks of rather mild Italian red wine, all of the party except Maud and John went into the dance hall to dance. The doctor took John aside and whispered to him. "Lay off Maud," he said. He explained hurriedly that Alf and Maud had been having a row and that for several days they had not spoken to each other, although they lived in the same house, ate at the same table, and slept in the same bed. "He thinks she gets too gay with men," Tom explained. "You better look out a little."

The woman and man sat on a bench under a tree on the lawn before the house, and when the others had danced, they came out, bringing more drinks. Tom had got some more whiskey. "It's moon, but pretty good stuff," he declared. In the clear sky overhead stars were shining, and when the others were dancing, John turned his head and saw across the road and between the trees that lined its banks the stars reflected in the water of the Samson. A light from the house fell on Maud's face, a rather strikingly lovely face in that light, but when looked at closely, rather petulant. "A good deal of the spoiled child in her," John thought.

She began asking him about life in the city of New York.

"I was there once, but for only three days. It was when I went to school in the East. A girl I knew lived there. She married a lawyer named Trigan, or something like that. You didn't know him, I guess."

And now there was a hungry, dissatisfied look on her face.

"God! I'd like to live in a place like that, not in this hole! There hadn't no man better tempt me." When she said that she giggled again. Once during the evening they walked across the dusty road and stood for a time by the river's edge, but got back to the bench before the others had finished their dance. Maud persistently refused to dance.

At ten-thirty, all of the others having got a little drunk, they drove back to town, Maud again sitting beside John. On the drive Alf went to sleep. Maud pressed her slender body against John's, and after two or three futile moves to which he made no special response, she boldly put her hand into his. The second woman and her husband talked with Tom of people they had seen at Lylse's. "Do you think there's anything up between Fanny and Joe? No; I think she's on the square."

They got to John's hotel at eleven-thirty, and bidding them all good night, he went upstairs. Alf had awakened. When they were parting, he leaned out of the car and looked closely at John. "What did you say your name was?" he asked.

John went up a dark stairway and sat on the bed in his room. Lillian had lost her looks. She had married, and her husband had divorced her. Joe was a trouble-shooter. He worked for the International Harvester Company, a swell mechanic. Herman was a drayman. He had five kids.

Three men in a room next John's were playing poker. They laughed and talked, and their voices came clearly to John. "You think so, do you? Well, I'll prove you're wrong." A mild quarrel began. As it was summer, the windows of John's room were open, and he went to one to stand, looking out. A moon had come up, and he could see down into an alleyway. Two men came out of a street and stood in the alleyway, whispering. After they left, two cats crept along a roof and began a love-making scene. The game in the next room broke up. John could hear voices in the hallway.

"Now, forget it. I tell you, you're both wrong." John thought of his son at the camp up in Vermont. "I haven't written him a letter today." He felt guilty.

Opening his bag, he took out paper and sat down to write; but after two or three attempts gave it up and put the paper away again. How fine the night had been as he sat on the bench beside the woman at Lylse's! Now the woman was in bed with her husband. They were not speaking to each other.[Pg 38]

"Could I do it?" John asked himself, and then, for the first time that evening, a smile came to his lips.

"Why not?" he asked himself.

With his bag in his hand he went down the dark hallway and into the hotel office and began pounding on a desk. A fat old man with thin red hair and sleep-heavy eyes appeared from somewhere. John explained.

"I can't sleep. I think I'll drive on. I want to get to Pittsburgh and as I can't sleep, I might as well be driving." He paid his bill.

Then he asked the clerk to go and arouse the man in the garage, and gave him an extra dollar. "If I need gas, is there any place open?" he asked, but evidently the man did not hear. Perhaps he thought the question absurd.

He stood in the moonlight on the sidewalk before the door of the hotel and heard the clerk pounding on a door. Presently voices were heard, and the headlights of his car shone. The car appeared, driven by a boy. He seemed very alive and alert.

"I saw you out to Lylse's," he said, and, without being asked, went to look at the tank. "You're all right; you got 'most eight gallons," he assured John as he climbed into the driver's seat.

How friendly the car, how friendly the night! John was not one who enjoyed fast driving, but he went out of the town at very high speed. "You go down two blocks, turn to your right, and go three. There you hit the cement. Go right straight to the east. You can't miss it."

John was taking the turns at racing speed. At the edge of town some one shouted to him from the darkness, but he did not stop. He hungered to get into the road going east.

"I'll let her out," he thought. "Lord! It will be fun! I'll let her out."

__________

10: The Dreams in the Witch-House

H. P. Lovecraft

1890-1937

Weird Tales July 1933

WHETHER the dreams brought on the fever or the fever brought on the dreams Walter Gilman did not know. Behind everything crouched the brooding, festering horror of the ancient town, and of the moldy, unhallowed garret gable where he wrote and studied and wrestled with figures and formulæ when he was not tossing on the meager iron bed. His ears were growing sensitive to a preternatural and intolerable degree, and he had long ago stopped the cheap mantel clock whose ticking had come to seem like a thunder of artillery. At night the subtle stirring of the black city outside, the sinister scurrying of rats in the wormy partitions, and the creaking of hidden timbers in the centuried house, were enough to give him a sense of strident pandemonium. The darkness always teemed with unexplained sound— and yet he sometimes shook with fear lest the noises he heard should subside and allow him to hear certain other, fainter noises which he suspected were lurking behind them.

He was in the changeless, legend-haunted city of Arkham, with its clustering gambrel roofs that sway and sag over attics where witches hid from the King's men in the dark, olden days of the Province. Nor was any spot in that city more steeped in macabre memory than the gable room which harbored him— for it was this house and this room which had likewise harbored old Keziah Mason, whose flight from Salem Jail at the last no one was ever able to explain. That was in 1692— the jailer had gone mad and babbled of a small white-fanged furry thing which scuttled out of Keziah's cell, and not even Cotton Mather could explain the curves and angles smeared on the gray stone walls with some red, sticky fluid.

Possibly Gilman ought not to have studied so hard. Non-Euclidean calculus and quantum physics are enough to stretch any brain; and when one mixes them with folklore, and tries to trace a strange background of multi-dimensional reality behind the ghoulish hints of the Gothic tales and the wild whispers of the chimney-corner, one can hardly expect to be wholly free from mental tension. Gilman came from Haverhill, but it was only after he had entered college in Arkham that he began to connect his mathematics with the fantastic legends of elder magic. Something in the air of the hoary town worked obscurely on his imagination. The professors at Miskatonic had urged him to slacken up, and had voluntarily cut down his course at several points. Moreover, they had stopped him from consulting the dubious old books on forbidden secrets that were kept under lock and key in a vault at the university library. But all these precautions came late in the day, so that Gilman had some terrible hints from the dreaded Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred, the fragmentary Book of Eibon, and the suppressed Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt to correlate with his abstract formulæ on the properties of space and the linkage of dimensions known and unknown.

He knew his room was in the old Witch-House— that, indeed, was why he had taken it. There was much in the Essex County records about Keziah Mason's trial, and what she had admitted under pressure to the Court of Oyer and Terminer had fascinated Gilman beyond all reason. She had told Judge Hathorne of lines and curves that could be made to point out directions leading through the walls of space to other spaces beyond, and had implied that such lines and curves were frequently used at certain midnight meetings in the dark valley of the white stone beyond Meadow Hill and on the unpeopled island in the river. She had spoken also of the Black Man, of her oath, and of her new secret name of Nahab. Then she had drawn those devices on the walls of her cell and vanished.

Gilman believed strange things about Keziah, and had felt a queer thrill on learning that her dwelling was still standing after more than 235 years. When he heard the hushed Arkham whispers about Keziah's persistent presence in the old house and the narrow streets, about the irregular human tooth-marks left on certain sleepers in that and other houses, about the childish cries heard near May-Eve and Hallowmass, about the stench often noted in the old house's attic just after those dreaded seasons, and about the small, furry, sharp-toothed thing which haunted the moldering structure and the town and nuzzled people curiously in the black hours before dawn, he resolved to live in the place at any cost. A room was easy to secure; for the house was unpopular, hard to rent, and long given over to cheap lodgings. Gilman could not have told what he expected to find there, but he knew he wanted to be in the building where some circumstance had more or less suddenly given a mediocre old woman of the Seventeenth Century an insight into mathematical depths perhaps beyond the utmost modern delvings of Planck, Heisenberg, Einstein, and de Sitter.

He studied the timber and plaster walls for traces of cryptic designs at every accessible spot where the paper had peeled, and within a week managed to get the eastern attic room where Keziah was held to have practised her spells. It had been vacant from the first— for no one had ever been willing to stay there long— but the Polish landlord had grown wary about renting it. Yet nothing whatever happened to Gilman till about the time of the fever. No ghostly Keziah flitted through the somber halls and chambers, no small furry thing crept into his dismal eyrie to nuzzle him, and no record of the witch's incantations rewarded his constant search. Sometimes he would take walks through shadowy tangles of unpaved musty-smelling lanes where eldritch brown houses of unknown age leaned and tottered and leered mockingly through narrow, small-paned windows. Here he knew strange things had happened once, and there was a faint suggestion behind the surface that everything of that monstrous past might not— at least in the darkest, narrowest, and most intricately crooked alleys— have utterly perished. He also rowed out twice to the ill-regarded island in the river, and made a sketch of the singular angles described by the moss-grown rows of gray standing stones whose origin was so obscure and immemorial.

GILMAN'S ROOM was of good size but queerly irregular shape; the north wall slanting perceptibly inward from the outer to the inner end, while the low ceiling slanted gently downward in the same direction. Aside from an obvious rat-hole and the signs of other stopped-up ones, there was no access— nor any appearance of a former avenue of access— to the space which must have existed between the slanting wall and the straight outer wall on the house's north side, though a view from the exterior showed where a window had been boarded up at a very remote date. The loft above the ceiling— which must have had a slanting floor— was likewise inaccessible. When Gilman climbed up a ladder to the cobwebbed level loft above the rest of the attic he found vestiges of a bygone aperture tightly and heavily covered with ancient planking and secured by the stout wooden pegs common in Colonial carpentry. No amount of persuasion, however, could induce the stolid landlord to let him investigate either of these two closed spaces.

As time wore along, his absorption in the irregular wall and ceiling of his room increased; for he began to read into the odd angles a mathematical significance which seemed to offer vague clues regarding their purpose. Old Keziah, he reflected, might have had excellent reasons for living in a room with peculiar angles; for was it not through certain angles that she claimed to have gone outside the boundaries of the world of space we know? His interest gradually veered away from the unplumbed voids beyond the slanting surfaces, since it now appeared that the purpose of those surfaces concerned the side he was already on.

The touch of brain-fever and the dreams began early in February. For some time, apparently, the curious angles of Gilman's room had been having a strange, almost hypnotic effect on him; and as the bleak winter advanced he had found himself staring more and more intently at the corner where the down-slanting ceiling met the inward-slanting wall. About this period his inability to concentrate on his formal studies worried him considerably, his apprehensions about the mid-year examinations being very acute. But the exaggerated sense of hearing was scarcely less annoying. Life had become an insistent and almost unendurable cacophony, and there was that constant, terrifying impression of other sounds— perhaps from regions beyond life— trembling on the very brink of audibility. So far as concrete noises went, the rats in the ancient partitions were the worst. Sometimes their scratching seemed not only furtive but deliberate. When it came from beyond the slanting north wall it was mixed with a sort of dry rattling; and when it came from the century-closed loft above the slanting ceiling Gilman always braced himself as if expecting some horror which only bided its time before descending to engulf him utterly.

The dreams were wholly beyond the pale of sanity, and Gilman felt that they must be a result, jointly, of his studies in mathematics and in folklore. He had been thinking too much about the vague regions which his formulæ told him must lie beyond the three dimensions we know, and about the possibility that old Keziah Mason— guided by some influence past all conjecture— had actually found the gate to those regions. The yellowed county records containing her testimony and that of her accusers were so damnably suggestive of things beyond human experience— and the descriptions of the darting little furry object which served as her familiar were so painfully realistic despite their incredible details.

That object— no larger than a good-sized rat and quaintly called by the towns-people "Brown Jenkin"— seemed to have been the fruit of a remarkable case of sympathetic herd-delusion, for in 1692 no less than eleven persons had testified to glimpsing it. There were recent rumors, too, with a baffling and disconcerting amount of agreement. Witnesses said it had long hair and the shape of a rat, but that its sharp-toothed, bearded face was evilly human while its paws were like tiny human hands. It took messages betwixt old Keziah and the devil, and was nursed on the witch's blood, which it sucked like a vampire. Its voice was a kind of loathsome titter, and it could speak all languages. Of all the bizarre monstrosities in Gilman's dreams, nothing filled him with greater panic and nausea than this blasphemous and diminutive hybrid, whose image flitted across his vision in a form a thousandfold more hateful than anything his waking mind had deduced from the ancient records and the modern whispers.

Gilman's dreams consisted largely in plunges through limitless abysses of inexplicably colored twilight and bafflingly disordered sound; abysses whose material and gravitational properties, and whose relation to his own entity, he could not even begin to explain. He did not walk or climb, fly or swim, crawl or wriggle; yet always experienced a mode of motion partly voluntary and partly involuntary. Of his own condition he could not well judge, for sight of his arms, legs, and torso seemed always cut off by some odd disarrangement of perspective; but he felt that his physical organization and faculties were somehow marvelously transmuted and obliquely projected— though not without a certain grotesque relationship to his normal proportions and properties.

The abysses were by no means vacant, being crowded with indescribably angled masses of alien-hued substance, some of which appeared to be organic while others seemed inorganic. A few of the organic objects tended to awake vague memories in the back of his mind, though he could form no conscious idea of what they mockingly resembled or suggested. In the later dreams he began to distinguish separate categories into which the organic objects appeared to be divided, and which seemed to involve in each case a radically different species of conduct-pattern and basic motivation. Of these categories one seemed to him to include objects slightly less illogical and irrelevant in their motions than the members of the other categories.

All the objects— organic and inorganic alike— were totally beyond description or even comprehension. Gilman sometimes compared the inorganic matter to prisms, labyrinths, clusters of cubes and planes, and cyclopean buildings; and the organic things struck him variously as groups of bubbles, octopi, centipedes, living Hindoo idols, and intricate arabesques roused into a kind of ophidian animation. Everything he saw was unspeakably menacing and horrible; and whenever one of the organic entities appeared by its motions to be noticing him, he felt a stark, hideous fright which generally jolted him awake. Of how the organic entities moved, he could tell no more than of how he moved himself. In time he observed a further mystery— the tendency of certain entities to appear suddenly out of empty space, or to disappear totally with equal suddenness. The shrieking, roaring confusion of sound which permeated the abysses was past all analysis as to pitch, timbre or rhythm; but seemed to be synchronous with vague visual changes in all the indefinite objects, organic and inorganic alike. Gilman had a constant sense of dread that it might rise to some unbearable degree of intensity during one or another of its obscure, relentlessly inevitable fluctuations.

But it was not in these vortices of complete alienage that he saw Brown Jenkin. That shocking little horror was reserved for certain lighter, sharper dreams which assailed him just before he dropped into the fullest depths of sleep. He would be lying in the dark fighting to keep awake when a faint lambent glow would seem to shimmer around the centuried room, showing in a violet mist the convergence of angled planes which had seized his brain so insidiously. The horror would appear to pop out of the rat-hole in the corner and patter toward him over the sagging, wide-planked floor with evil expectancy in its tiny, bearded human face; but mercifully, this dream always melted away before the object got close enough to nuzzle him. It had hellishly long, sharp, canine teeth. Gilman tried to stop up the rat-hole every day, but each night the real tenants of the partitions would gnaw away the obstruction, whatever it might be. Once he had the landlord nail tin over it, but the next night the rats gnawed a fresh hole, in making which they pushed or dragged out into the room a curious little fragment of bone.

GILMAN DID NOT report his fever to the doctor, for he knew he could not pass the examinations if ordered to the college infirmary when every moment was needed for cramming. As it was, he failed in Calculus D and Advanced General Psychology, though not without hope of making up lost ground before the end of the term.

It was in March when the fresh element entered his lighter preliminary dreaming, and the nightmare shape of Brown Jenkin began to be companioned by the nebulous blur which grew more and more to resemble a bent old woman. This addition disturbed him more than he could account for, but finally he decided that it was like an ancient crone whom he had twice actually encountered in the dark tangle of lanes near the abandoned wharves. On those occasions the evil, sardonic, and seemingly unmotivated stare of the beldame had set him almost shivering— especially the first time, when an overgrown rat darting across the shadowed mouth of a neighboring alley had made him think irrationally of Brown Jenkin. Now, he reflected, those nervous fears were being mirrored in his disordered dreams.

That the influence of the old house was unwholesome he could not deny, but traces of his early morbid interest still held him there. He argued that the fever alone was responsible for his nightly fantasies, and that when the touch abated he would be free from the monstrous visions. Those visions, however, were of absorbing vividness and convincingness, and whenever he awaked he retained a vague sense of having undergone much more than he remembered. He was hideously sure that in unrecalled dreams he had talked with both Brown Jenkin and the old woman, and that they had been urging him to go somewhere with them and to meet a third being of greater potency.

Toward the end of March he began to pick up in his mathematics, though other studies bothered him increasingly. He was getting an intuitive knack for solving Riemannian equations, and astonished Professor Upham by his comprehension of fourth-dimensional and other problems which had floored all the rest of the class. One afternoon there was a discussion of possible freakish curvatures in space, and of theoretical points of approach or even contact between our part of the cosmos and various other regions as distant as the farthest stars or the trans-galactic gulfs themselves— or even as fabulously remote as the tentatively conceivable cosmic units beyond the whole Einsteinian space-time continuum. Gilman's handling of this theme filled every one with admiration, even though some of his hypothetical illustrations caused an increase in the always plentiful gossip about his nervous and solitary eccentricity. What made the students shake their heads was his sober theory that a man might— given mathematical knowledge admittedly beyond all likelihood of human acquirement— step deliberately from the earth to any other celestial body which might lie at one of an infinity of specific points in the cosmic pattern.

Such a step, he said, would require only two stages; first, a passage out of the three-dimensional sphere we know, and second, a passage back to the three-dimensional sphere at another point, perhaps one of infinite remoteness. That this could be accomplished without loss of life was in many cases conceivable. Any being from any part of three-dimensional space could probably survive in the fourth dimension; and its survival of the second stage would depend upon what alien part of three-dimensional space it might select for its re-entry. Denizens of some planets might be able to live on certain others— even planets belonging to other galaxies, or to similar dimensional phases of other space-time continua— though of course there must be vast numbers of mutually uninhabitable even though mathematically juxtaposed bodies or zones of space.

It was also possible that the inhabitants of a given dimensional realm could survive entry to many unknown and incomprehensible realms of additional or indefinitely multiplied dimensions— be they within or outside the given space-time continuum— and that the converse would be likewise true. This was a matter for speculation, though one could be fairly certain that the type of mutation involved in a passage from any given dimensional plane to the next higher plane would not be destructive of biological integrity as we understand it. Gilman could not be very clear about his reasons for this last assumption, but his haziness here was more than overbalanced by his clearness on other complex points. Professor Upham especially liked his demonstration of the kinship of higher mathematics to certain phases of magical love transmitted down the ages from an ineffable antiquity— human or pre-human— whose knowledge of the cosmos and its laws was greater than ours.

Around the first of April Gilman worried considerably because his slow fever did not abate. He was also troubled by what some of his fellow-lodgers said about his sleep-walking. It seemed that he was often absent from his bed, and that the creaking of his floor at certain hours of the night was remarked by the man in the room below. This fellow also spoke of hearing the tread of shod feet in the night; but Gilman was sure he must have been mistaken in this, since shoes as well as other apparel were always precisely in place in the morning. One could develop all sorts of aural delusions in this morbid old house— for did not Gilman himself, even in daylight, now feel certain that noises other than rat-scratching came from the black voids beyond the slanting wall and above the slanting ceiling? His pathologically sensitive ears began to listen for faint footfalls in the immemorially sealed loft overhead, and sometimes the illusion of such things was agonizingly realistic.

However, he knew that he had actually become a somnambulist; for twice at night his room had been found vacant, though with all his clothing in place. Of this he had been assured by Frank Elwood, the one fellow-student whose poverty forced him to room in this squalid and unpopular house. Elwood had been studying in the small hours and had come up for help on a differential equation, only to find Gilman absent. It had been rather presumptuous of him to open the unlocked door after knocking had failed to rouse a response, but he had needed the help very badly and thought that his host would not mind a gentle prodding awake. On neither occasion, though, had Gilman been there; and when told of the matter he wondered where he could have been wandering, barefoot and with only his nightclothes on. He resolved to investigate the matter if reports of his sleep-walking continued, and thought of sprinkling flour on the floor of the corridor to see where his footsteps might lead. The door was the only conceivable egress, for there was no possible foothold outside the narrow window.

AS APRIL ADVANCED, Gilman's fever-sharpened ears were disturbed by the whining prayers of a superstitious loom-fixer named Joe Mazurewicz, who had a room on the ground floor. Mazurewicz had told long, rambling stories about the ghost of old Keziah and the furry, sharp-fanged, nuzzling thing, and had said he was so badly haunted at times that only his silver crucifix— given him for the purpose by Father Iwanicki of St. Stanislaus' Church— could bring him relief. Now he was praying because the Witches' Sabbat was drawing near. May-Eve was Walpurgis Night, when hell's blackest evil roamed the earth and all the slaves of Satan gathered for nameless rites and deeds. It was always a very bad time in Arkham, even though the fine folks up in Miskatonic Avenue and High and Saltonstall Streets pretended to know nothing about it. There would be bad doings, and a child or two would probably be missing. Joe knew about such things, for his grandmother in the old country had heard tales from her grandmother. It was wise to pray and count one's beads at this season. For three months Keziah and Brown Jenkin had not been near Joe's room, nor near Paul Choynski's room, nor anywhere else— and it meant no good when they held off like that. They must be up to something.

Gilman dropped in at the doctor's office on the 16th of the month, and was surprized to find his temperature was not as high as he had feared. The physician questioned him sharply, and advised him to see a nerve specialist. On reflection, he was glad he had not consulted the still more inquisitive college doctor. Old Waldron, who had curtailed his activities before, would have made him take a rest— an impossible thing now that he was so close to great results in his equations. He was certainly near the boundary between the known universe and the fourth dimension, and who could say how much farther he might go?

But even as these thoughts came to him he wondered at the source of his strange confidence. Did all of this perilous sense of imminence come from the formulæ on the sheets he covered day by day? The soft, stealthy, imaginary footsteps in the sealed loft above were unnerving. And now, too, there was a growing feeling that somebody was constantly persuading him to do something terrible which he could not do. How about the somnambulism? Where did he go sometimes in the night? And what was that faint suggestion of sound which once in a while seemed to trickle through the confusion of identifiable sounds even in broad daylight and full wakefulness? Its rhythm did not correspond to anything on earth, unless perhaps to the cadence of one or two unmentionable Sabbat-chants, and sometimes he feared it corresponded to certain attributes of the vague shrieking or roaring in those wholly alien abysses of dream.

The dreams were meanwhile getting to be atrocious. In the lighter preliminary phase the evil old woman was now of fiendish distinctness, and Gilman knew she was the one who had frightened him in the slums. Her bent back, long nose, and shrivelled chin were unmistakable, and her shapeless brown garments were like those he remembered. The expression on her face was one of hideous malevolence and exultation, and when he awaked he could recall a croaking voice that persuaded and threatened. He must meet the Black Man, and go with them all to the throne of Azathoth at the center of ultimate chaos. That was what she said. He must sign the book of Azathoth in his own blood and take a new secret name now that his independent delvings had gone so far. What kept him from going with her and Brown Jenkin and the other to the throne of Chaos where the thin flutes pipe mindlessly was the fact that he had seen the name "Azathoth" in the Necronomicon, and knew it stood for a primal evil too horrible for description.

The old woman always appeared out of thin air near the corner where the downward slant met the inward slant. She seemed to crystallize at a point closer to the ceiling than to the floor, and every night she was a little nearer and more distinct before the dream shifted. Brown Jenkin, too, was always a little nearer at the last, and his yellowish-white fangs glistened shockingly in that unearthly violet phosphorescence. Its shrill loathsome tittering stuck more and more in Gilman's head, and he could remember in the morning how it had pronounced the words "Azathoth" and "Nyarlathotep."

In the deeper dreams everything was likewise more distinct, and Gilman felt that the twilight abysses around him were those of the fourth dimension. Those organic entities whose motions seemed least flagrantly irrelevant and unmotivated were probably projections of life-forms from our own planet, including human beings. What the others were in their own dimensional sphere or spheres he dared not try to think. Two of the less irrelevantly moving things— a rather large congeries of iridescent, prolately spheroidal bubbles and a very much smaller polyhedron of unknown colors and rapidly shifting surface angles— seemed to take notice of him and follow him about or float ahead as he changed position among the titan prisms, labyrinths, cube-and-plane clusters and quasi-buildings; and all the while the vague shrieking and roaring waxed louder and louder, as if approaching some monstrous climax of utterly unendurable intensity.

DURING THE NIGHT of April 19-20th the new development occurred. Gilman was half involuntarily moving about in the twilight abysses with the bubble-mass and the small polyhedron floating ahead, when he noticed the peculiarly regular angles formed by the edges of some gigantic neighboring prism-clusters. In another second he was out of the abyss and standing tremulously on a rocky hillside bathed in intense, diffused green light. He was barefooted and in his nightclothes, and when he tried to walk discovered that he could scarcely lift his feet. A swirling vapor hid everything but the immediate sloping terrain from sight, and he shrank from the thought of the sounds that might surge out of that vapor.

Then he saw the two shapes laboriously crawling toward him— the old woman and the little furry thing. The crone strained up to her knees and managed to cross her arms in a singular fashion, while Brown Jenkin pointed in a certain direction with a horribly anthropoid fore-paw which it raised with evident difficulty. Spurred by an impulse he did not originate, Gilman dragged himself forward along a course determined by the angle of the old woman's arms and the direction of the small monstrosity's paw, and before he had shuffled three steps he was back in the twilight abysses. Geometrical shapes seethed around him, and he fell dizzily and interminably. At last he woke in his bed in the crazily angled garret of the eldritch old house.

He was good for nothing that morning, and stayed away from all his classes. Some unknown attraction was pulling his eyes in a seemingly irrelevant direction, for he could not help staring at a certain vacant spot on the floor. As the day advanced, the focus of his unseeing eyes changed position, and by noon he had conquered the impulse to stare at vacancy. About two o'clock he went out for lunch, and as he threaded the narrow lanes of the city he found himself turning always to the southeast. Only an effort halted him at a cafeteria in Church Street, and after the meal he felt the unknown pull still more strongly.

He would have to consult a nerve specialist after all— perhaps there was a connection with his somnambulism— but meanwhile he might at least try to break the morbid spell himself. Undoubtedly he could still manage to walk away from the pull; so with great resolution he headed against it and dragged himself deliberately north along Garrison Street. By the time he had reached the bridge over the Miskatonic he was in a cold perspiration, and he clutched at the iron railing as he gazed upstream at the ill-regarded island whose regular lines of ancient standing stones brooded sullenly in the afternoon sunlight.

Then he gave a start. For there was a clearly visible living figure on that desolate island, and a second glance told him it was certainly the strange old woman whose sinister aspect had worked itself so disastrously into his dreams. The tall grass near her was moving, too, as if some other living thing were crawling close to the ground. When the old woman began to turn toward him he fled precipitately off the bridge and into the shelter of the town's labyrinthin waterfront alleys. Distant though the island was, he felt that a monstrous and invincible evil could flow from the sardonic stare of that bent, ancient figure in brown.

The southeastward pull still held, and only with tremendous resolution could Gilman drag himself into the old house and up the rickety stairs. For hours he sat silent and aimless, with his eyes shifting gradually westward. About six o'clock his sharpened ears caught the whining prayers of Joe Mazurewicz two floors below, and in desperation he seized his hat and walked out into the sunset-golden streets, letting the now directly southward pull carry him where it might. An hour later darkness found him in the open fields beyond Hangman's Brook, with the glimmering spring stars shining ahead. The urge to walk was gradually changing to an urge to leap mystically into space, and suddenly he realized just where the source of the pull lay.

It was in the sky. A definite point among the stars had a claim on him and was calling him. Apparently it was a point somewhere between Hydra and Argo Navis, and he knew that he had been urged toward it ever since he had awaked soon after dawn. In the morning it had been underfoot, and now it was roughly south but stealing toward the west. What was the meaning of this new thing? Was he going mad? How long would it last? Again mustering his resolution, Gilman turned and dragged himself back to the sinister old house.

MAZUREWICZ was waiting for him at the door, and seemed both anxious and reluctant to whisper some fresh bit of superstition. It was about the witch-light. Joe had been out celebrating the night before— it was Patriots' Day in Massachusetts— and had come home after midnight. Looking up at the house from outside, he had thought at first that Gilman's window was dark, but then he had seen the faint violet glow within. He wanted to warn the gentleman about that glow, for everybody in Arkham knew it was Keziah's witch-light which played near Brown Jenkin and the ghost of the old crone herself. He had not mentioned this before, but now he must tell about it because it meant that Keziah and her long-toothed familiar were haunting the young gentleman. Sometimes he and Paul Choynski and Landlord Dombrowski thought they saw that light seeping out of cracks in the sealed loft above the young gentleman's room, but they had all agreed not to talk about that. However, it would be better for the gentleman to take another room and get a crucifix from some good priest like Father Iwanicki.

As the man rambled on, Gilman felt a nameless panic clutch at his throat. He knew that Joe must have been half drunk when he came home the night before; yet the mention of a violet light in the garret window was of frightful import. It was a lambent glow of this sort which always played about the old woman and the small furry thing in those lighter, sharper dreams which prefaced his plunge into unknown abysses, and the thought that a wakeful second person could see the dream-luminance was utterly beyond sane harborage. Yet where had the fellow got such an odd notion? Had he himself talked as well as walked around the house in his sleep? No, Joe said, he had not— but he must check up on this. Perhaps Frank Elwood could tell him something, though he hated to ask.

Fever— wild dreams— somnambulism— illusions of sounds— a pull toward a point in the sky— and now a suspicion of insane sleep-talking! He must stop studying, see a nerve specialist, and take himself in hand. When he climbed to the second story he paused at Elwood's door but saw that the other youth was out. Reluctantly he continued up to his garret room and sat down in the dark. His gaze was still pulled to the southward, but he also found himself listening intently for some sound in the closed loft above, and half imagining that an evil violet light seeped down through an infinitesimal crack in the low, slanting ceiling.

That night as Gilman slept, the violet light broke upon him with heightened intensity, and the old witch and small furry thing, getting closer than ever before, mocked him with inhuman squeals and devilish gestures. He was glad to sink into the vaguely roaring twilight abysses, though the pursuit of that iridescent bubble-congeries and that kaleidoscopic little polyhedron was menacing and irritating. Then came the shift as vast converging planes of a slippery-looking substance loomed above and below him— a shift which ended in a flash of delirium and a blaze of unknown, alien light in which yellow, carmine, and indigo were madly and inextricably blended.

He was half lying on a high, fantastically balustraded terrace above a boundless jungle of outlandish, incredible peaks, balanced planes, domes, minarets, horizontal disks poised on pinnacles, and numberless forms of still greater wildness— some of stone and some of metal— which glittered gorgeously in the mixed, almost blistering glare from a polychromatic sky. Looking upward he saw three stupendous disks of flame, each of a different hue, and at a different height above an infinitely distant curving horizon of low mountains. Behind him tiers of higher terraces towered aloft as far as he could see. The city below stretched away to the limits of vision, and he hoped that no sound would well up from it.

The pavement from which he easily raised himself was of a veined, polished stone beyond his power to identify, and the tiles were cut in bizarre-angled shapes which struck him as less asymmetrical than based on some unearthly symmetry whose laws he could not comprehend. The balustrade was chest-high, delicate, and fantastically wrought, while along the rail were ranged at short intervals little figures of grotesque design and exquisite workmanship. They, like the whole balustrade, seemed to be made of some sort of shining metal whose color could not be guessed in the chaos of mixed effulgences, and their nature utterly defied conjecture. They represented some ridged barrel-shaped object with thin horizontal arms radiating spoke-like from a central ring and with vertical knobs or bulbs projecting from the head and base of the barrel. Each of these knobs was the hub of a system of five long, flat, triangularly tapering arms arranged around it like the arms of a starfish— nearly horizontal, but curving slightly away from the central barrel. The base of the bottom knob was fused to the long railing with so delicate a point of contact that several figures had been broken off and were missing. The figures were about four and a half inches in height, while the spiky arms gave them a maximum diameter of about two and a half inches.

When Gilman stood up, the tiles felt hot to his bare feet. He was wholly alone, and his first act was to walk to the balustrade and look dizzily down at the endless, cyclopean city almost two thousand feet below. As he listened he thought a rhythmic confusion of faint musical pipings covering a wide tonal range welled up from the narrow streets beneath, and he wished he might discern the denizens of the place. The sight turned him giddy after a while, so that he would have fallen to the pavement had he not clutched instinctively at the lustrous balustrade. His right hand fell on one of the projecting figures, the touch seeming to steady him slightly. It was too much, however, for the exotic delicacy of the metal-work, and the spiky figure snapped off under his grasp. Still half dazed, he continued to clutch it as his other hand seized a vacant space on the smooth railing.

But now his over-sensitive ears caught something behind him, and he looked back across the level terrace. Approaching him softly though without apparent furtiveness were five figures, two of which were the sinister old woman and the fanged, furry little animal. The other three were what sent him unconscious; for they were living entities about eight feet high, shaped precisely like the spiky images on the balustrade, and propelling themselves by a spider-like wriggling of their lower set of starfish-arms.

GILMAN AWAKED in his bed, drenched by a cold perspiration and with a smarting sensation in his face, hands and feet. Springing to the floor, he washed and dressed in frantic haste, as if it were necessary for him to get out of the house as quickly as possible. He did not know where he wished to go, but felt that once more he would have to sacrifice his classes. The odd pull toward that spot in the sky between Hydra and Argo had abated, but another of even greater strength had taken its place. Now he felt that he must go north— infinitely north. He dreaded to cross the bridge that gave a view of the desolate island in the Miskatonic, so went over the Peabody Avenue bridge. Very often he stumbled, for his eyes and ears were chained to an extremely lofty point in the blank blue sky.

After about an hour he got himself under better control, and saw that he was far from the city. All around him stretched the bleak emptiness of salt marshes, while the narrow road ahead led to Innsmouth— that ancient, half-deserted town which Arkham people were so curiously unwilling to visit. Though the northward pull had not diminished, he resisted it as he had resisted the other pull, and finally found that he could almost balance the one against the other. Plodding back to town and getting some coffee at a soda fountain, he dragged himself into the public library and browsed aimlessly among the lighter magazines. Once he met some friends who remarked how oddly sunburned he looked, but he did not tell them of his walk. At three o'clock he took some lunch at a restaurant, noting meanwhile that the pull had either lessened or divided itself. After that he killed the time at a cheap cinema show, seeing the inane performance over and over again without paying any attention to it.

About nine at night he drifted homeward and shuffled into the ancient house. Joe Mazurewicz was whining unintelligible prayers, and Gilman hastened up to his own garret chamber without pausing to see if Elwood was in. It was when he turned on the feeble electric light that the shock came. At once he saw there was something on the table which did not belong there, and a second look left no room for doubt. Lying on its side— for it could not stand up alone— was the exotic spiky figure which in his monstrous dream he had broken off the fantastic balustrade. No detail was missing. The ridged, barrel-shaped center, the thin radiating arms, the knobs at each end, and the flat, slightly outward-curving starfish-arms spreading from those knobs— all were there. In the electric light the color seemed to be a kind of iridescent gray veined with green; and Gilman could see amidst his horror and bewilderment that one of the knobs ended in a jagged break, corresponding to its former point of attachment to the dream-railing.

Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud. This fusion of dream and reality was too much to bear. Still dazed, he clutched at the spiky thing and staggered downstairs to Landlord Dombrowski's quarters. The whining prayers of the superstitious loom-fixer were still sounding through the moldy halls, but Gilman did not mind them now. The landlord was in, and greeted him pleasantly. No, he had not seen that thing before and did not know anything about it. But his wife had said she found a funny tin thing in one of the beds when she fixed the rooms at noon, and maybe that was it. Dombrowski called her, and she waddled in. Yes, that was the thing. She had found it in the young gentleman's bed— on the side next the wall. It had looked very queer to her, but of course the young gentleman had lots of queer things in his room— books and curios and pictures and markings on paper. She certainly knew nothing about it.

So Gilman climbed upstairs again in mental turmoil, convinced that he was either still dreaming or that his somnambulism had run to incredible extremes and led him to depredations in unknown places. Where had he got this outré thing? He did not recall seeing it in any museum in Arkham. It must have been somewhere, though; and the sight of it as he snatched it in his sleep must have caused the odd dream-picture of the balustraded terrace. Next day he would make some very guarded inquiries— and perhaps see the nerve specialist.

Meanwhile he would try to keep track of his somnambulism. As he went upstairs and across the garret hall he sprinkled about some flour which he had borrowed— with a frank admission as to its purpose— from the landlord. He had stopped at Elwood's door on the way, but had found all dark within. Entering his room, he placed the spiky thing on the table, and lay down in complete mental and physical exhaustion without pausing to undress. From the closed loft above the slanting ceiling he thought he heard a faint scratching and padding, but he was too disorganized even to mind it. That cryptical pull from the north was getting very strong again, though it seemed now to come from a lower place in the sky.

In the dazzling violet light of dream the old woman and the fanged, furry thing came again and with a greater distinctness than on any former occasion. This time they actually reached him, and he felt the crone's withered claws clutching at him. He was pulled out of bed and into empty space, and for a moment he heard a rhythmic roaring and saw the twilight amorphousness of the vague abysses seething around him. But that moment was very brief, for presently he was in a crude, windowless little space with rough beams and planks rising to a peak just above his head, and with a curious slanting floor underfoot. Propped level on that floor were low cases full of books of every degree of antiquity and disintegration, and in the center were a table and bench, both apparently fastened in place. Small objects of unknown shape and nature were ranged on the tops of the cases, and in the flaming violet light Gilman thought he saw a counterpart of the spiky image which had puzzled him so horribly. On the left the floor fell abruptly away, leaving a black triangular gulf out of which, after a second's dry rattling, there presently climbed the hateful little furry thing with the yellow fangs and bearded human face.

The evilly grinning beldame still clutched him, and beyond the table stood a figure he had never seen before— a tall, lean man of dead black coloration but without the slightest sign of negroid features; wholly devoid of either hair or beard, and wearing as his only garment a shapeless robe of some heavy black fabric. His feet were indistinguishable because of the table and bench, but he must have been shod, since there was a clicking whenever he changed position. The man did not speak, and bore no trace of expression on his small, regular features. He merely pointed to a book of prodigious size which lay open on the table, while the beldame thrust a huge gray quill into Gilman's right hand. Over everything was a pall of intensely maddening fear, and the climax was reached when the furry thing ran up the dreamer's clothing to his shoulders and then down his left arm, finally biting him sharply in the wrist just below his cuff. As the blood spurted from this wound Gilman lapsed into a faint.

HE AWAKED on the morning of the 22nd with a pain in his left wrist, and saw that his cuff was brown with dried blood. His recollections were very confused, but the scene with the black man in the unknown space stood out vividly. The rats must have bitten him as he slept, giving rise to the climax of that frightful dream. Opening the door, he saw that the flour on the corridor floor was undisturbed except for the huge prints of the loutish fellow who roomed at the other end of the garret. So he had not been sleep-walking this time. But something would have to be done about those rats. He would speak to the landlord about them. Again he tried to stop up the hole at the base of the slanting wall, wedging in a candlestick which seemed of about the right size. His ears were ringing horribly, as if with the residual echoes of some horrible noise heard in dreams.

As he bathed and changed clothes he tried to recall what he had dreamed after the scene in the violet-litten space, but nothing definite would crystallize in his mind. That scene itself must have corresponded to the sealed loft overhead, which had begun to attack his imagination so violently, but later impressions were faint and hazy. There were suggestions of the vague, twilight abysses, and of still vaster, blacker abysses beyond them— abysses in which all fixed suggestions were absent. He had been taken there by the bubble-congeries and the little polyhedron which always dogged him; but they, like himself, had changed to wisps of mist in this farther void of ultimate blackness. Something else had gone on ahead— a larger wisp which now and then condensed into nameless approximations of form— and he thought that their progress had not been in a straight line, but rather along the alien curves and spirals of some ethereal vortex which obeyed laws unknown to the physics and mathematics of any conceivable cosmos. Eventually there had been a hint of vast, leaping shadows, of a monstrous, half-acoustic pulsing, and of the thin, monotonous piping of an unseen flute— but that was all. Gilman decided he had picked up that last conception from what he had read in the Necronomicon about the mindless entity Azathoth, which rules all time and space from a curiously environed black throne at the center of Chaos.

When the blood was washed away the wrist wound proved very slight, and Gilman puzzled over the location of the two tiny punctures. It occurred to him that there was no blood on the bedspread where he had lain— which was very curious in view of the amount on his skin and cuff. Had he been sleep-walking within his room, and had the rat bitten him as he sat in some chair or paused in some less rational position? He looked in every corner for brownish drops or stains, but did not find any. He had better, he thought, sprinkle flour within the room as well as outside the door— though after all no further proof of his sleep-walking was needed. He knew he did walk— and the thing to do now was to stop it. He must ask Frank Elwood for help. This morning the strange pulls from space seemed lessened, though they were replaced by another sensation even more inexplicable. It was a vague, insistent impulse to fly away from his present situation, but held not a hint of the specific direction in which he wished to fly. As he picked up the strange spiky image on the table he thought the older northward pull grew a trifle stronger; but even so, it was wholly overruled by the newer and more bewildering urge.

He took the spiky image down to Elwood's room, steeling himself against the whines of the loom-fixer which welled up from the ground floor. Elwood was in, thank heaven, and appeared to be stirring about. There was time for a little conversation before leaving for breakfast and college; so Gilman hurriedly poured forth an account of his recent dreams and fears. His host was very sympathetic, and agreed that something ought to be done. He was shocked by his guest's drawn, haggard aspect, and noticed the queer, abnormal-looking sunburn which others had remarked during the past week. There was not much, though, that he could say. He had not seen Gilman on any sleep-walking expedition, and had no idea what the curious image could be. He had, though, heard the French-Canadian who lodged just under Gilman talking to Mazurewicz one evening. They were telling each other how badly they dreaded the coming of Walpurgis Night, now only a few days off; and were exchanging pitying comments about the poor, doomed young gentleman. Desrochers, the fellow under Gilman's room, had spoken of nocturnal footsteps shod and unshod, and of the violet light he saw one night when he had stolen fearfully up to peer through Gilman's keyhole. He had not dared to peer, he told Mazurewicz, after he had glimpsed that light through the cracks around the door. There had been soft talking, too— and as he began to describe it his voice had sunk to an inaudible whisper.

Elwood could not imagine what had set these superstitious creatures gossiping, but supposed their imaginations had been roused by Gilman's late hours and somnolent walking and talking on the one hand, and by the nearness of traditionally-feared May-Eve on the other hand. That Gilman talked in his sleep was plain, and it was obviously from Desrochers' keyhole-listenings that the delusive notion of the violet dream-light had got abroad. These simple people were quick to imagine they had seen any odd thing they had heard about. As for a plan of action— Gilman had better move down to Elwood's room and avoid sleeping alone. Elwood would, if awake, rouse him whenever he began to talk or rise in his sleep. Very soon, too, he must see the specialist. Meanwhile they would take the spiky image around to the various museums and to certain professors; seeking identification and stating that it had been found in a public rubbish-can. Also, Dombrowski must attend to the poisoning of those rats in the walls.

BRACED UP by Elwood's companionship, Gilman attended classes that day. Strange urges still tugged at him, but he could sidetrack them with considerable success. During a free period he showed the queer image to several professors, all of whom were intensely interested, though none of them could shed any light upon its nature or origin. That night he slept on a couch which Elwood had had the landlord bring to the second-story room, and for the first time in weeks was wholly free from disquieting dreams. But the feverishness still hung on, and the whines of the loom-fixer were an unnerving influence.

During the next few days Gilman enjoyed an almost perfect immunity from morbid manifestations. He had, Elwood said, showed no tendency to talk or rise in his sleep; and meanwhile the landlord was putting rat-poison everywhere. The only disturbing element was the talk among the superstitious foreigners, whose imaginations had become highly excited. Mazurewicz was always trying to make him get a crucifix, and finally forced one upon him which he said had been blessed by the good Father Iwanicki. Desrochers, too, had something to say; in fact, he insisted that cautious steps had sounded in the now vacant room above him on the first and second nights of Gilman's absence from it. Paul Choynski thought he heard sounds in the halls and on the stairs at night, and claimed that his door had been softly tried, while Mrs. Dombrowski vowed she had seen Brown Jenkin for the first time since All-Hallows. But such naïve reports could mean very little, and Gilman let the cheap metal crucifix hang idly from a knob on his host's dresser.

For three days Gilman and Elwood canvassed the local museums in an effort to identity the strange spiky image, but always without success. In every quarter, however, interest was intense; for the utter alienage of the thing was a tremendous challenge to scientific curiosity. One of the small radiating arms was broken off and subjected to chemical analysis. Professor Ellery found platinum, iron and tellurium in the strange alloy; but mixed with these were at least three other apparent elements of high atomic weight which chemistry was absolutely powerless to classify. Not only did they fail to correspond with any human element, but they did not even fit the vacant places reserved for probable elements in the periodic system. The mystery remains unsolved to this day, though the image is on exhibition at the museum of Miskatonic University.

ON THE MORNING of April 27th a fresh rat-hole appeared in the room where Gilman was a guest, but Dombrowski tinned it up during the day. The poison was not having much effect, for scratchings and scurryings in the walls were virtually undiminished.

Elwood was out late that night, and Gilman waited up for him. He did not wish to go to sleep in a room alone— especially since he thought he had glimpsed in the evening twilight the repellent old woman whose image had become so horribly transferred to his dreams. He wondered who she was, and what had been near her rattling the tin cans in a rubbish-heap at the mouth of a squalid courtyard. The crone had seemed to notice him and leer evilly at him— though perhaps this was merely his imagination.

The next day both youths felt very tired, and knew they would sleep like logs when night came. In the evening they drowsily discussed the mathematical studies which had so completely and perhaps harmfully engrossed Gilman, and speculated about the linkage with ancient magic and folklore which seemed so darkly probable. They spoke of old Keziah Mason, and Elwood agreed that Gilman had good scientific grounds for thinking she might have stumbled on strange and significant information. The hidden cults to which these witches belonged often guarded and handed down surprizing secrets from elder, forgotten eons; and it was by no means impossible that Keziah had actually mastered the art of passing through dimensional gates. Tradition emphasizes the uselessness of material barriers in halting a witch's motions, and who can say what underlies the old tales of broomstick rides through the night?

Whether a modern student could ever gain similar powers from mathematical research alone, was still to be seen. Success, Gilman added, might lead to dangerous and unthinkable situations; for who could foretell the conditions pervading an adjacent but normally inaccessible dimension? On the other hand, the picturesque possibilities were enormous. Time could not exist in certain belts of space, and by entering and remaining in such a belt one might preserve one's life and age indefinitely; never suffering organic metabolism or deterioration except for slight amounts incurred during visits to one's own or similar planes. One might, for example, pass into a timeless dimension and emerge at some remote period of the earth's history as young as before.

Whether anybody had ever managed to do this, one could hardly conjecture with any degree of authority. Old legends are hazy and ambiguous, and in historic times all attempts at crossing forbidden gaps seem complicated by strange and terrible alliances with beings and messengers from outside. There was the immemorial figure of the deputy or messenger of hidden and terrible powers— the "Black Man" of the witch-cult, and the "Nyarlathotep" of the Necronomicon. There was, too, the baffling problem of the lesser messengers or intermediaries— the quasi-animals and queer hybrids which legend depicts as witches' familiars. As Gilman and Elwood retired, too sleepy to argue further, they heard Joe Mazurewicz reel into the house half drunk, and shuddered at the desperate wildness of his whining prayers.

That night Gilman saw the violet light again. In his dream he had heard a scratching and gnawing in the partitions, and thought that some one fumbled clumsily at the latch. Then he saw the old woman and the small furry thing advancing toward him over the carpeted floor. The beldame's face was alight with inhuman exultation, and the little yellow-toothed morbidity tittered mockingly as it pointed at the hearty-sleeping form of Elwood on the other couch across the room. A paralysis of fear stifled all attempts to cry out. As once before, the hideous crone seized Gilman by the shoulders, yanking him out of bed and into empty space. Again the infinitude of the shrieking abysses flashed past him, but in another second he thought he was in a dark, muddy, unknown alley of fetid odors with the rotting walls of ancient houses towering up on every hand.

Ahead was the robed black man he had seen in the peaked space in the other dream, while from a lesser distance the old woman was beckoning and grimacing imperiously. Brown Jenkin was rubbing itself with a kind of affectionate playfulness around the ankles of the black man, which the deep mud largely concealed. There was a dark open doorway on the right, to which the black man silently pointed. Into this the grinning crone started, dragging Gilman after her by his pajama sleeves. There were evil-smelling staircases which creaked ominously, and on which the old woman seemed to radiate a faint violet light; and finally a door leading off a landing. The crone fumbled with the latch and pushed the door open, motioning to Gilman to wait, and disappearing inside the black aperture.

The youth's over-sensitive ears caught a hideous strangled cry, and presently the beldame came out of the room bearing a small, senseless form which she thrust at the dreamer as if ordering him to carry it. The sight of this form, and the expression on its face, broke the spell. Still too dazed to cry out, he plunged recklessly down the noisome staircase and into the mud outside; halting only when seized and choked by the waiting black man. As consciousness departed he heard the faint, shrill tittering of the fanged, rat-like abnormality.

ON THE MORNING of the 29th Gilman awaked into a maelstrom of horror. The instant he opened his eyes he knew something was terribly wrong, for he was back in his old garret room with the slanting wall and ceiling, sprawled on the now unmade bed. His throat was aching inexplicably, and as he struggled to a sitting posture he saw with growing fright that his feet and pajama bottoms were brown with caked mud. For the moment his recollections were hopelessly hazy, but he knew at least that he must have been sleep-walking. Elwood had been lost too deeply in slumber to hear and stop him. On the floor were confused muddy prints, but oddly enough they did not extend all the way to the door. The more Gilman looked at them, the more peculiar they seemed; for in addition to those he could recognize as his there were some smaller, almost round markings— such as the legs of a large chair or a table might make, except that most of them tended to be divided into halves. There were also some curious muddy rat-tracks leading out of a fresh hole and back into it again. Utter bewilderment and the fear of madness racked Gilman as he staggered to the door and saw that there were no muddy prints outside. The more he remembered of his hideous dream the more terrified he felt, and it added to his desperation to hear Joe Mazurewicz chanting mournfully two floors below.

Descending to Elwood's room he roused his still-sleeping host and began telling of how he had found himself, but Elwood could form no idea of what might really have happened. Where Gilman could have been, how he got back to his room without making tracks in the hall, and how the muddy, furniture-like prints came to be mixed with his in the garret chamber, were wholly beyond conjecture. Then there were those dark, livid marks on his throat, as if he had tried to strangle himself. He put his hands up to them, but found that they did not even approximately fit. While they were talking, Desrochers dropped in to say that he had heard a terrific clattering overhead in the dark small hours. No, there had been no one on the stairs after midnight, though just before midnight he had heard faint footfalls in the garret, and cautiously descending steps he did not like. It was, he added, a very bad time of year for Arkham. The young gentleman had better be sure to wear the crucifix Joe Mazurewicz had given him. Even the daytime was not safe, for after dawn there had been strange sounds in the house— especially a thin, childish wail hastily choked off.

Gilman mechanically attended classes that morning, but was wholly unable to fix his mind on his studies. A mood of hideous apprehension and expectancy had seized him, and he seemed to be awaiting the fall of some annihilating blow. At noon he lunched at the University Spa, picking up a paper from the next seat as he waited for dessert. But he never ate that dessert; for an item on the paper's first page left him limp, wild-eyed, and able only to pay his check and stagger back to Elwood's room.

There had been a strange kidnapping the night before in Orne's Gangway, and the two-year-old child of a clod-like laundry worker named Anastasia Wolejko had completely vanished from sight. The mother, it appeared, had feared the event for some time; but the reasons she assigned for her fear were so grotesque that no one took them seriously. She had, she said, seen Brown Jenkin about the place now and then ever since early in March, and knew from its grimaces and titterings that little Ladislas must be marked for sacrifice at the awful Sabbat on Walpurgis Night. She had asked her neighbor Mary Czanek to sleep in the room and try to protect the child, but Mary had not dared. She could not tell the police, for they never believed such things. Children had been taken that way every year ever since she could remember. And her friend Pete Stowacki would not help because he wanted the child out of the way.

But what threw Gilman into a cold perspiration was the report of a pair of revellers who had been walking past the mouth of the gangway just after midnight. They admitted they had been drunk, but both vowed they had seen a crazily dressed trio furtively entering the dark passageway. There had, they said, been a huge robed negro, a little old woman in rags, and a young white man in his nightclothes. The old woman had been dragging the youth, while around the feet of the negro a tame rat was rubbing and weaving in the brown mud.

GILMAN SAT IN A DAZE all the afternoon, and Elwood— who had meanwhile seen the papers and formed terrible conjectures from them— found him thus when he came home. This time neither could doubt but that something hideously serious was closing in around them. Between the fantasms of nightmare and the realities of the objective world a monstrous and unthinkable relationship was crystallizing, and only stupendous vigilance could avert still more direful developments. Gilman must see a specialist sooner or later, but not just now, when all the papers were full of this kidnapping business.

Just what had really happened was maddeningly obscure, and for a moment both Gilman and Elwood exchanged whispered theories of the wildest kind. Had Gilman unconsciously succeeded better than he knew in his studies of space and its dimensions? Had he actually slipped outside our sphere to points unguessed and unimaginable? Where— if anywhere— had he been on those nights of demoniac alienage? The roaring twilight abysses— the green hillside— the blistering terrace— the pulls from the stars— the ultimate black vortex— the black man— the muddy alley and the stairs— the old witch and the fanged, furry horror— the bubble-congeries and the little polyhedron— the strange sunburn— the wrist wound— the unexplained image— the muddy feet— the throat-marks— the tales and fears of the superstitious foreigners— what did all this mean? To what extent could the laws of sanity apply to such a case?

There was no sleep for either of them that night, but next day they both cut classes and drowsed. This was April 30th, and with the dusk would come the hellish Sabbat-time which all the foreigners and the superstitious old folk feared. Mazurewicz came home at six o'clock and said people at the mill were whispering that the Walpurgis-revels would be held in the dark ravine beyond Meadow Hill where the old white stone stands in a place queerly devoid of all plant life. Some of them had even told the police and advised them to look there for the missing Wolejko child, but they did not believe anything would be done. Joe insisted that the poor young gentleman wear his nickel-chained crucifix, and Gilman put it on and dropped it inside his shirt to humor the fellow.

Late at night the two youths sat drowsing in their chairs, lulled by the praying of the loom-fixer on the floor below. Gilman listened as he nodded, his preternaturally sharpened hearing seeming to strain for some subtle, dreaded murmur beyond the noises in the ancient house. Unwholesome recollections of things in the Necronomicon and the Black Book welled up, and he found himself swaying to infandous rhythms said to pertain to the blackest ceremonies of the Sabbat and to have an origin outside the time and space we comprehend.

Presently he realized what he was listening for— the hellish chant of the celebrants in the distant black valley. How did he know so much about what they expected? How did he know the time when Nahab and her acolyte were due to bear the brimming bowl which would follow the black cock and the black goat? He saw that Elwood had dropped asleep, and tried to call out and waken him. Something, however, closed his throat. He was not his own master. Had he signed the black man's book after all?

Then his fevered, abnormal hearing caught the distant, wind-borne notes. Over miles of hill and field and alley they came, but he recognized them none the less. The fires must be lit, and the dancers must be starting in. How could he keep himself from going? What was it that had enmeshed him? Mathematics— folklore— the house— old Keziah— Brown Jenkin . . . and now he saw that there was a fresh rat-hole in the wall near his couch. Above the distant chanting and the nearer praying of Joe Mazurewicz came another sound— a stealthy, determined scratching in the partitions. He hoped the electric lights would not go out. Then he saw the fanged, bearded little face in the rat-hole— the accursed little face which he at last realized bore such a shocking, mocking resemblance to old Keziah's— and heard the faint fumbling at the door.

The screaming twilight abysses flashed before him, and he felt himself helpless in the formless grasp of the iridescent bubble-congeries. Ahead raced the small, kaleidoscopic polyhedron, and all through the churning void there was a heightening and acceleration of the vague tonal pattern which seemed to foreshadow some unutterable and unendurable climax. He seemed to know what was coming— the monstrous burst of Walpurgis-rhythm in whose cosmic timbre would be concentrated all the primal, ultimate space-time seethings which lie behind the massed spheres of matter and sometimes break forth in measured reverberations that penetrate faintly to every layer of entity and give hideous significance throughout the worlds to certain dreaded periods.

But all this vanished in a second. He was again in the cramped, violet-litten peaked space with the slanting floor, the low cases of ancient books, the bench and table, the queer objects, and the triangular gulf at one side. On the table lay a small white figure— an infant boy, unclothed and unconscious— while on the other side stood the monstrous, leering old woman with a gleaming, grotesque-hafted knife in her right hand, and a queerly proportioned pale metal bowl covered with curiously chased designs and having delicate lateral handles in her left. She was intoning some croaking ritual in a language which Gilman could not understand, but which seemed like something guardedly quoted in the Necronomicon.

AS THE SCENE grew clear he saw the ancient crone bend forward and extend the empty bowl across the table— and unable to control his own motions, he reached far forward and took it in both hands, noticing as he did so its comparative lightness. At the same moment the disgusting form of Brown Jenkin scrambled up over the brink of the triangular black gulf on his left. The crone now motioned him to hold the bowl in a certain position while she raised the huge, grotesque knife above the small white victim as high as her right hand could reach. The fanged, furry thing began tittering a continuation of the unknown ritual, while the witch croaked loathsome responses. Gilman felt a gnawing, poignant abhorrence shoot through his mental and emotional paralysis, and the light metal bow! shook in his grasp. A second later the downward motion of the knife broke the spell completely, and he dropped the bowl with a resounding bell-like clangor while his hands darted out frantically to stop the monstrous deed.

In an instant he had edged up the slanting floor around the end of the table and wrenched the knife from the old woman's claws; sending it clattering over the brink of the narrow triangular gulf. In another instant, however, matters were reversed; for those murderous claws had locked themselves tightly around his own throat, while the wrinkled face was twisted with insane fury. He felt the chain of the cheap crucifix grinding into his neck, and in his peril wondered how the sight of the object itself would affect the evil creature. Her strength was altogether superhuman, but as she continued her choking he reached feebly in his shirt and drew out the metal symbol, snapping the chain and pulling it free.

At sight of the device the witch seemed struck with panic, and her grip relaxed long enough to give Gilman a chance to break it entirely. He pulled the steel-like claws from his neck, and would have dragged the beldame over the edge of the gulf had not the claws received a fresh access of strength and closed in again. This time he resolved to reply in kind, and his own hands reached out for the creature's throat. Before she saw what he was doing he had the chain of the crucifix twisted about her neck, and a moment later he had tightened it enough to cut off her breath. During her last struggle he felt something bite at his ankle, and saw that Brown Jenkin had come to her aid. With one savage kick he sent the morbidity over the edge of the gulf and heard it whimper on some level far below.

Whether he had killed the ancient crone he did not know, but he let her rest on the floor where she had fallen. Then, as he turned away, he saw on the table a sight which nearly snapped the last thread of his reason. Brown Jenkin, tough of sinew and with four tiny hands of demoniac dexterity, had been busy while the witch was throttling him, and his efforts had been in vain. What he had prevented the knife from doing to the victim's chest, the yellow fangs of the furry blasphemy had done to a wrist— and the bowl so lately on the floor stood full beside the small lifeless body.

In his dream-delirium Gilman heard the hellish alien-rhythmed chant of the Sabbat coming from an infinite distance, and knew the black man must be there. Confused memories mixed themselves with his mathematics, and he believed his subconscious mind held the angles which he needed to guide him back to the normal world alone and unaided for the first time. He felt sure he was in the immemorially sealed loft above his own room, but whether he could ever escape through the slanting floor or the long-stopped egress he doubted greatly. Besides, would not an escape from a dream-loft bring him merely into a dream-house— an abnormal projection of the actual place he sought? He was wholly bewildered as to the relation betwixt dream and reality in all his experiences.

The passage through the vague abysses would be frightful, for the Walpurgis-rhythm would be vibrating, and at last he would have to hear that hitherto-veiled cosmic pulsing which he so mortally dreaded. Even now he could detect a low, monstrous shaking whose tempo he suspected all too well. At Sabbat-time it always mounted and reached through to the worlds to summon the initiate to nameless rites. Half the chants of the Sabbat were patterned on this faintly overheard pulsing which no earthly ear could endure in its unveiled spatial fullness. Gilman wondered, too, whether he could trust his instincts to take him back to the right part of space. How could he be sure he would not land on that green-litten hillside of a far planet, on the tessellated terrace above the city of tentacled monsters somewhere beyond the galaxy, or in the spiral black vortices of that ultimate void of Chaos where reigns the mindless demon-sultan Azathoth?

Just before he made the plunge the violet light went out and left him in utter blackness. The witch— old Keziah— Nahab— that must have meant her death. And mixed with the distant chant of the Sabbat and the whimpers of Brown Jenkin in the gulf below he thought he heard another and wilder whine from unknown depths. Joe Mazurewicz— the prayers against the Crawling Chaos now turning to an inexplicably triumphant shriek— worlds of sardonic actuality impinging on vortices of febrile dream— Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat with a Thousand Young. . . .

THEY FOUND GILMAN on the floor of his queerly-angled old garret room long before dawn, for the terrible cry had brought Desrochers and Choynski and Dombrowski and Mazurewicz at once, and had even wakened the soundly sleeping Elwood in his chair. He was alive, and with open, staring eyes, but seemed largely unconscious. On his throat were the marks of murderous hands, and on his left ankle was a distressing rat-bite. His clothing was badly rumpled, and Joe's crucifix was missing. Elwood trembled, afraid even to speculate on what new form his friend's sleep-walking had taken. Mazurewicz seemed half dazed because of a "sign" he said he had had in response to his prayers, and he crossed himself frantically when the squealing and whimpering of a rat sounded from beyond the slanting partition.

When the dreamer was settled on his couch in Elwood's room they sent for Doctor Malkowski— a local practitioner who would repeat no tales where they might prove embarrassing— and he gave Gilman two hypodermic injections which caused him to relax in something like natural drowsiness. During the day the patient regained consciousness at times and whispered his newest dream disjointedly to Elwood. It was a painful process, and at its very start brought out a fresh and disconcerting fact.

Gilman— whose ears had so lately possessed an abnormal sensitiveness— was now stone-deaf. Doctor Malkowski, summoned again in haste, told Elwood that both ear-drums were ruptured, as if by the impact of some stupendous sound intense beyond all human conception or endurance. How such a sound could have been heard in the last few hours without arousing all the Miskatonic Valley was more than the honest physician could say.

Elwood wrote his part of the colloquy on paper, so that a fairly easy communication was maintained. Neither knew what to make of the whole chaotic business, and decided it would be better if they thought as little as possible about it. Both, though, agreed that they must leave this ancient and accursed house as soon as it could be arranged. Evening papers spoke of a police raid on some curious revellers in a ravine beyond Meadow Hill just before dawn, and mentioned that the white stone there was an object of age-long superstitious regard. Nobody had been caught, but among the scattering fugitives had been glimpsed a huge negro. In another column it was stated that no trace of the missing child Ladislas Wolejko had been found.

THE CROWNING HORROR came that very night. Elwood will never forget it, and was forced to stay out of college the rest of the term because of the resulting nervous breakdown. He had thought he heard rats in the partitions all the evening, but paid little attention to them. Then, long after both he and Gilman had retired, the atrocious shrieking began. Elwood jumped up, turned on the lights, and rushed over to his guest's couch. The occupant was emitting sounds of veritably inhuman nature, as if racked by some torment beyond description. He was writhing under the bedclothes, and a great red stain was beginning to appear on the blankets.

Elwood scarcely dared to touch him, but gradually the screaming and writhing subsided. By this time Dombrowski, Choynski, Desrochers, Mazurewicz, and the top-floor lodger were all crowding into the doorway, and the landlord had sent his wife back to telephone for Doctor Malkowski. Everybody shrieked when a large rat-like form suddenly jumped out from beneath the ensanguined bedclothes and scuttled across the floor to a fresh, open hole close by. When the doctor arrived and began to pull down those frightful covers Walter Gilman was dead.

It would be barbarous to do more than suggest what had killed Gilman. There had been virtually a tunnel through his body— something had eaten his heart out. Dombrowski, frantic at the failure of his rat-poisoning efforts, cast aside all thought of his lease and within a week had moved with all his older lodgers to a dingy but less ancient house in Walnut Street. The worst thing for a while was keeping Joe Mazurewicz quiet; for the brooding loom-fixer would never stay sober, and was constantly whining and muttering about spectral and terrible things.

It seems that on that last hideous night Joe had stooped to look at the crimson rat-tracks which led from Gilman's couch to the near-by hole. On the carpet they were very indistinct, but a piece of open flooring intervened between the carpet's edge and the baseboard. There Mazurewicz had found something monstrous— or thought he had, for no one else could quite agree with him despite the undeniable queerness of the prints. The tracks on the flooring were certainly vastly unlike the average prints of a rat, but even Choynski and Desrochers would not admit that they were like the prints of four tiny human hands.

The house was never rented again. As soon as Dombrowski left it the pall of its final desolation began to descend, for people shunned it both on account of its old reputation and because of the new fetid odor. Perhaps the ex-landlord's rat-poison had worked after all, for not long after his departure the place became a neighborhood nuisance. Health officials traced the smell to the closed spaces above and beside the eastern garret room, and agreed that the number of dead rats must be enormous. They decided, however, that it was not worth their while to hew open and disinfect the long-sealed spaces; for the fetor would soon be over, and the locality was not one which encouraged fastidious standards. Indeed, there were always vague local tales of unexplained stenches upstairs in the Witch-House just after May-Eve and Hallowmass. The neighbors acquiesced in the inertia— but the fetor none the less formed an additional count against the place. Toward the last the house was condemned as a habitation by the building inspector.

Gilman's dreams and their attendant circumstances have never been explained. Elwood, whose thoughts on the entire episode are sometimes almost maddening, came back to college the next autumn and graduated in the following June. He found the spectral gossip of the town much diminished, and it is indeed a fact that— notwithstanding certain reports of a ghostly tittering in the deserted house which lasted almost as long as that edifice itself— no fresh appearances either of Old Keziah or of Brown Jenkin have been muttered of since Gilman's death. It is rather fortunate that Elwood was not in Arkham in that later year when certain events abruptly renewed the local whispers about elder horrors. Of course he heard about the matter afterward and suffered untold torments of black and bewildered speculation; but even that was not as bad as actual nearness and several possible sights would have been.

IN MARCH, 1931, a gale wrecked the roof and great chimney of the vacant Witch-House, so that a chaos of crumbling bricks, blackened, moss-grown shingles, and rotting planks and timbers crashed down into the loft and broke through the floor beneath. The whole attic story was choked with debris from above, but no one took the trouble to touch the mess before the inevitable razing of the decrepit structure. That ultimate step came in the following December, and it was when Gilman's old room was cleared out by reluctant, apprehensive workmen that the gossip began.

Among the rubbish which had crashed through the ancient slanting ceiling were several things which made the workmen pause and call in the police. Later the police in turn called in the coroner and several professors from the university. There were bones— badly crushed and splintered, but clearly recognizable as human— whose manifestly modern date conflicted puzzlingly with the remote period at which their only possible lurking place, the low, slant-floored loft overhead, had supposedly been sealed from all human access. The coroner's physician decided that some belonged to a small child, while certain others— found mixed with shreds of rotten brownish cloth— belonged to a rather undersized, bent female of advanced years. Careful sifting of debris also disclosed many tiny bones of rats caught in the collapse, as well as older rat-bones gnawed by small fangs in a fashion now and then highly productive of controversy and reflection.

Other objects found included the mangled fragments of many books and papers, together with a yellowish dust left from the total disintegration of still older books and papers. All, without exception, appeared to deal with black magic in its most advanced and horrible forms; and the evidently recent date of certain items is still a mystery as unsolved as that of the modern human bones. An even greater mystery is the absolute homogeneity of the crabbed, archaic writing found on a wide range of papers whose conditions and watermarks suggest age differences of at least 150 to 200 years. To some, though, the greatest mystery of all is the variety of utterly inexplicable objects— objects whose shapes, materials, types of workmanship, and purposes baffle all conjecture— found scattered amidst the wreckage in evidently diverse states of injury. One of these things— which excited several Miskatonic professors profoundly— is a badly damaged monstrosity plainly resembling the strange image which Gilman gave to the college museum, save that it is larger, wrought of some peculiar bluish stone instead of metal, and possessed of a singularly angled pedestal with undecipherable hieroglyphics.

Archeologists and anthropologists are still trying to explain the bizarre designs chased on a crushed bowl of light metal whose inner side bore ominous brownish stains when found. Foreigners and credulous grandmothers are equally garrulous about the modern nickel crucifix with broken chain mixed in the rubbish and shiveringly identified by Joe Mazurewicz as that which he had given poor Gilman many years before. Some believe this crucifix was dragged up to the sealed loft by rats, while others think it must have been on the floor in some corner of Gilman's old room all the time. Still others, including Joe himself, have theories too wild and fantastic for sober credence.

When the slanting wall of Gilman's room was torn out, the once sealed triangular space between that partition and the house's north wall was found to contain much less structural debris, even in proportion to its size, than the room itself; though it had a ghastly layer of older materials which paralyzed the wreckers with horror. In brief, the floor was a veritable ossuary of the bones of small children— some fairly modern, but others extending back in infinite gradations to a period so remote that crumbling was almost complete. On this deep bony layer rested a knife of great size, obvious antiquity, and grotesque, ornate, and exotic design— above which the debris was piled.

In the midst of this debris, wedged between a fallen plank and a cluster of cemented bricks from the ruined chimney, was an object destined to cause more bafflement, veiled fright, and openly superstitious talk in Arkham than anything else discovered in the haunted and accursed building. This object was the partly crushed skeleton of a huge diseased rat, whose abnormalities of form are still a topic of debate and source of singular reticence among the members of Miskatonic's department of comparative anatomy. Very little concerning this skeleton has leaked out, but the workmen who found it whisper in shocked tones about the long, brownish hairs with which it was associated.

The bones of the tiny paws, it is rumored, imply prehensile characteristics more typical of a diminutive monkey than of a rat, while the small skull with its savage yellow fangs is of the utmost anomalousness, appearing from certain angles like a miniature, monstrously degraded parody of a human skull. The workmen crossed themselves in fright when they came upon this blasphemy, but later burned candles of gratitude in St. Stanislaus' Church because of the shrill, ghostly tittering they felt they would never hear again.

_____________

11: Too Far South

John Arthur Barry

1851-1911

In: Steve Brown's Bunyip And Other Stories, 1905

THE CAPTAIN of the Boadicea— regular London and Australian trader— had long been the owner of a crotchet, or perhaps it would be nearer the mark to call it a theory. He was a comparatively young man, and after a few trips of eighty-nine, ninety, and ninety-six days respectively, he grew impatient; and at last, seeing an opportunity of putting his idea to the test, he determined to make the attempt.

It was by no means a new theory; simply an expansion of an old one. Years ago the masters of the Lightning, Red Jacket, and other clipper ships of renown, had successfully demonstrated that, instead of turning round the Cape of Good Hope as if it were a corner, in the old style, vessels bound to the Australian colonies would, if they kept on southward, be very likely to pick up a current of strong westerly winds which, although twice the distance might have to be sailed over, yet would take them to their destination far more quickly than by the usual route.

But the master of the Boadicea contended that none of these early exponents of 'Great Circular sailing' had as yet gone far enough south, and that, at a still more distant point, a regular westerly wind-current, strong as a good-sized gale and as steady as a trade, without its fickleness, was to be met with which would shorten the average passage by at least ten days.

Older shipmasters laughed, and, saying that they found the Roaring Forties quite strong enough for them, stuck to the regular merchantman track, not so old yet, they thought, nor so worn by the marks of their keels, as to require a fresh one. However, Captain Stewart had, by dint of long persuasion and perseverance, obtained permission from his owners to test practically his pet idea; and this was the reason that, on the thirty-fifth day out, the Boadicea, in place of running her easting down amongst the Forties like a Christian ship, with half a gale singing in the bellies of her topsails, and mountains of dark-blue water roaring rhythmically astern, found herself poking about close hauled, with, on every hand as far as vision extended, icebergs, varying in size and shape, from a respectable many-peaked island to a spireless dissenting chapel.

We were very far indeed to the southward.

And now there came both mist and snow,

And it grew wondrous cold;

And ice, mast high, came floating by,

As green as emerald.

Still our commander's faith in his strong wind-streak was unshaken; albeit, for a week or more, light baffling airs, scarce sufficing to fill the stiffened canvas, had been our portion. It was, too, indeed, 'wondrous cold,' and the necessity for keeping a close and unwearied look-out became every hour more apparent. Already we had had narrow escapes of coming into collision with bergs wandering aimlessly about, which, although wonderfully beautiful objects in the daytime, and at a distance, with the bright sunlight reflecting a thousand prismatic hues from their glistening surfaces, yet of a dark night were liable, with a touch almost, to send us in a twinkling to Davy Jones.

The crew growled and shivered, and shivered and growled, making the while sarcastic inquiries as to the near vicinity of the South Pole, wishing in undertones that their skipper had been perched on the top of it before leading them into such cold quarters. As for myself, although rated as third mate, I was little more than a lad at the time, and thought the whole thing simply magnificent, hoping that we might penetrate still further into the unknown 'regions of thick-ribbed ice' ahead of us, whilst visions of a Southern Continent, bears, seals and walruses, floated through my imagination. To be sure I was well clothed and comfortably housed, which, perhaps, made all the difference. We are very apt to look at things one-sidedly, and with regard only to the character of our own particular surroundings. Man born of a woman is a more or less selfish animal. Every day the 'wandering pearls of the sea,' as someone has called them, seemed to become more plentiful, whilst, to add to our dilemma, a thick Antarctic fog, through which the Boadicea, with look-outs alow and aloft, crept like some great blind monster feeling its way across the ocean, arose and hid everything from view.

The only one on board with any experience of such latitudes was our chief officer, a rough New Englander, who had taken a couple of voyages to the Northern fisheries in a Nantucket whaler. Far, however, from giving himself airs on that account, he was probably the most anxious man in the ship's company. He had not a particle of faith in the great theory; moreover, he had seen a vessel 'ripped' in Davis Sound, which none of his companions had.

One evening, as if drawn up by some mighty hand, the fog lifted, disclosing the sun, cold, red, and angry-looking, glaring at us out of a sombre sky, and flushing the water and the bergs round about with a flood of purple light, on which our masts and rigging cast tremulous, long, black shadows, crossing and recrossing in a quivering maze, with big, shapeless blotches here and there for the sails. Suddenly a deeper, darker shadow fell athwart us; and there, not two oars' lengths away, between ship and sun, rose an island.

Men rubbed their eyes, and rubbed and looked again, but there it was, every stern outline standing in bold relief, a rough, ragged mass of barren, desolate rock, its summit covered with snow— still, indisputably land. Even as we gazed eagerly, wonderingly, the mirage faded away in a moment, as it had appeared, and the mist descended like a grey, heavy curtain, enveloping all things in its damp folds.

Presently it came on to snow. The standing rigging and running gear alike were coated with ice, whilst the canvas took the consistency of sheet-iron, and rang like glass when touched.

Roaring fires were lit in oil drums, fore and aft, in forecastle and cuddy. Soon the smoke in both places was as thick as the fog on deck; a kind of damp, unwholesome warmth was engendered as the impromptu stoves grew red-hot; great half-frozen cockroaches, thinking that the tropics were at hand, crawled out of nooks and crannies; and it seemed at times a toss up whether our end should come by ice or fire.

Most of our crew were Danes or Swedes, hardy and obedient men. If they had been British they would probably have attempted to compel the captain to alter his course. As it was, they simply put on all their available clothing and growled quietly. No matter what their nationality, all seamen growl; only some growl and work also.

Now, all the watches and clocks on board stopped, and, refusing to start again, they were placed in the cook's oven with a view to warming the works. But, in the excitement consequent upon fending off a huge berg, which threatened to crush us, they were done brown, and completely ruined. About this time the captain, thinking, perhaps, that his experiment had gone far enough, gave the order to square the yards. On going to the braces we found that the sheaves of the blocks were frozen to their pins and would not travel. Taking them to the winch, with much heaving, the yards at last swung, creaking and groaning, round, whilst showers of icy fragments fell rattling on deck.

It was almost a calm, the ship having barely steerage way upon her; but the barometer was falling, and it was judged prudent to shorten sail by putting the Boadicea under a couple of lower top-sails and fore and mizzen stay-sails.

To stow each of the upper top-sails it took twenty-four men and two boys— nearly, in fact, the ship's company; and, if the courses had not already been furled, I do not think we could ever have managed them. The foot-ropes were like glass, the reef-points as rigid as bar iron, and one's hands, after a minute aloft, had no more feeling in them than the icy canvas they tried to grasp. Through the fog, as we slowly descended the slippery ratlines, we imagined we could see great bergs looming indistinctly; and in our strained ears echoed the ever-impending crash as the wind gradually freshened.

It was a trying experience, even for the best prepared amongst us, this comparatively sudden transit from the tropics to twenty degrees below freezing point; and I firmly believe that, but for the unlimited supply of hot cocoa available day and night, at all hours, some of us would have given in. Spirits could be had for the asking, but no one seemed to care about them, even those known to be inveterate topers declining rum with something akin to disgust; perhaps the reason was that it became quite thick, and, when taken into the mouth, burned and excoriated both tongue and palate.

The night of the day on which we had snugged the  Boadicea down was dark as pitch, and you could feel the fog as it hung low and clingingly to everything. Some time in the middle watch the breeze died away, giving place to light, unsteady airs— catspaws almost— and occasional falls of snow.

Imagine, if you can, the big ship creeping timorously and uncertainly through the thick Polar darkness and mist, a shapeless mass of yet thicker darkness, emitting here and there ruddy flashes of light, reflected momentarily back from snow-covered deck or coil of frozen rope. No sound breaks the silence except a gentle lap-lapping of water under her fore-foot as the canvas just fills enough to draw. Now snow falls, not deliberately, but with a soft, fleecy, rushing motion, which speedily fills up any inequalities about the decks, and would fill them from rail to rail if it lasted long. Presently a dozen bulky spectres move noiselessly around the galley door, which, being withdrawn, a warm glow streams out upon the watch come for hot cocoa.

Imagine, too, just as the tired men are about to drag their half-frozen limbs below, a sudden deeper silence, and a strange feeling of warmth and calm pervading the ship; the sails giving one mighty creaking flap up there in the gloom; the crash and rattle of ice falling from their frozen folds, and a cluster of awe-struck, up-turned faces, shining pallidly in the glow of the galley fire, as the Boadicea, but for a slight roll, lies idle and at rest.

Everyone knows and feels that something unusual has taken place, but no man there can say what it is. A muttered order is heard, and in a minute a flood of vivid blue fire pours out into the darkness from the ship's quarter, and a great subdued 'Ah!' runs fore and aft her, as, by its glare, we see tall, jagged cliffs, weird and ghastly in the strange light, towering far on high above our mast-heads, which appear to touch them.

'Get the deep-sea lead overboard!' shouts the captain.

'Watch, there, watch!' needlessly cry the men, as the line slips from their hands; and no bottom at one hundred fathoms.

"Taint land at all,' says the mate quietly. 'I kin smell ice; an' ef we don't mind we may calculate to winter 'mongst it 'stead o' makin' tracks for the Antipodes. Lower the quarter-boat,' he goes on, 'an' tie the ship up for the night, as, ef I ain't mistook, we're pooty nigh surrounded.'

More bluelights are burned, and by their help and those of lanterns, the Boadicea, in a somewhat unnatural plight, is warped alongside a kind of ice jetty which stretches out from the main mass, and which, as if to save us the trouble of carrying out anchors, also to complete the resemblance to a pier, is furnished here and there with great knobs, to which we make fast our lines.

If you will try and picture to yourself the scene I have described, you will, I think, be willing to admit that ship seldom entered stranger harbour in a stranger manner, or that the 'sweet little cherub, sitting up aloft,' who is supposed to keep a special look-out for 'poor Jack,' and who on the present occasion— all the more honour to him— must have felt colder even than the proverbial upper hank of a Greenlandman's gib, seldom performed his duty better.

Perhaps the all-pervading stillness was the thing that struck us most. The fenders, even, between the ship's side and her novel pier scarcely gave a creak. And yet we were conscious that, somewhere, not very far away, it was beginning to blow freshly, although the sound fell on our ears but as a subdued, faint murmur, serving only to intensify the surrounding silence and hush.

'There's a fire up there!' exclaimed one of the men, presently. And, sure enough, a tiny, sickly flame appeared far away above us. It grew gradually larger and larger, till at length a long, broad streak of silver shot down the ice-mountains and fell athwart our decks, as a three-quarters-full moon, pale, washed-out and sickly-looking, shone for a minute through the low, black clouds hurrying swiftly across her face.

A dull, grey dawn, at last, giving us just enough light to see what had happened. Ice everywhere!

The ice was here, the ice was there,

The ice was all around;

and on every side rose huge bergs from one hundred feet to two hundred feet in height, and enclosing a space of barely a mile in circumference; an ice-bound lake, in fact; and, what struck a chill of terror to our hearts as we gazed, a lake without any exit. Look as we might, there was not the least sign of an opening. Unwittingly we had sailed or drifted into a girdle of conjoined bergs. During the night the passage through which we entered had closed, and a cruel and stupendous barrier, hard as granite, slippery as glass, lay betwixt us and the outer ocean.

Within, the water was as smooth as a mill-pond, the air was quite warm, and after breakfast all hands went 'ashore' to stretch their legs, look wonderingly up at our prison walls, and speculate on the chances of getting out.

As I gazed around me at the strange scene— the snow-clad, towering peaks, glittering coldly in the yet feeble sun rays, the deep, shadow-laden valleys at their bases, and the perpendicular curtains of naked, steely-blue ice connecting one berg with the other— there came to my mind some long-forgotten lines of Montgomery's, in which he depicts the awful fate of an ice-bound vessel:—

There lies a vessel in that realm of frost,

Not wrecked, not stranded, but for ever lost;

Its keel embedded in the solid mass;

Its glistening sails appear expanded glass;

The transverse ropes with pearls enormous strung.

Morn shall return, and noon, and eve, and night

Meet here with interchanging shade and light;

But from that barque no timber shall decay;

Of these cold forms no feature pass away.

I had rather enjoyed the first days of our Antarctic experiences, but the pleasure began decidedly to pall with such a horrible contingency in view, and I was now fully as anxious as anyone for clear water and a straight course.

After a while, the gig was manned, and, with the captain and chief mate, we pulled round our harbour to a spot where, from the ship, a part of the ice-curtain seemed low and pretty accessible. So it had appeared; but when we reached it we found fifty feet of perpendicular slippery wall between our boat's gunwale and the summit of the ridge we had hoped to mount.

'We're in a pooty nice kind o' a fix,' said our mate, as we returned. 'An',' glancing at the lowering sky, 'I reckon it's going to blow some, presently. Mebbe it'll blow us out o' these chunks of ice.'

The captain made no reply, but he was evidently not in a very cheerful state of mind.

That evening it did begin to blow very hard. Not that we felt it much, but we could hear the storm howling and roaring outside, and the thunderous breakers which dashed themselves against our sheltering bergs, causing them to tremble and pitch now and again as the mighty seas struck their bases. We had shifted the Boadicea out to the extreme end of the jetty, double-banked our fenders, and taken every other precaution we could think of, in addition to standing-by through the night to cast off and sheet home at a minute's notice.

There was no more silence now; for, although we were all drifting away together about E. half S. before the wind, the bergs forming our enclosure ground against each other with an incessant rending, tearing sound, which now, although seeming to foretell an early dissolution of partnership, filled us with terror lest some of them should topple over on the ship.

The ship herself, no longer steady, was hove violently up and down with every motion of the bergs; whilst the great wooden fenders, cut from spare spars, were torn to splinters, and the hawsers surged round their icy mooring posts with a curious, screaming, intermittent noise, making us think that every moment they were about to part.

Four bells in the morning watch had just struck when we heard a terrific crash rising high above the surrounding din, and the next instant a great wave came rushing over the Boadicea, filling her decks, nearly lifting her on to the ice, and then slamming her down with such force as to snap the hawsers like threads and smash the bulwarks to matchwood the whole length of the port side. Drifting away from our friendly jetty, we at once felt that our prison was broken up; for, now, the gale from which we had been so long sheltered howled and tore through the rigging, whilst cataracts of bitter cold water rushed in quick succession over the decks, and lumps of ice bumped up against the Boadicea's bows and sides.

'Set the lower fore-top-sail and mizzen-stay-sail!'

And now the slatting and banging of canvas, the rattle of iron sheets and hanks, the hoarse cries of the men as they staggered about the wet, slippery planking, together with the rending and smashing of ice all around, made up a scene that defies description; whilst to lend it an additional weirdness, a 'flare-up' of oakum and tar, which had been run up to a lower-stuns'l boom-end, blazed wildly overhead like a great fierce eye looking down upon us out of the thick darkness. So closely were we beset, however, that, spite of the canvas, we soon found that we were simply drifting aimlessly about amidst immense fragments of capsized bergs, which threatened every moment to crush us. Indeed, we did get one squeeze that made the ship crack again, and whose after effect was seen by the fact that the cabin doors for the rest of the passage refused to close by a good six inches. Presently, grinding and scraping up alongside a small berg— or portion of a larger one, we cannot tell which— we make fast to it as well as we are able, and direct all our efforts to fending off its companions. As daylight approaches, we notice that the ice becomes rarer, and sails by at longer intervals; and as it breaks more fully out of a lowering yellowish sky a wild sight meets our eyes.

The sea is dotted with bergs— small ones nodding and bobbing along, big ones gliding majestically before the wind, till, a pair of these latter colliding, down crumble spires and minarets, towers and pinnacles, suddenly as a child's card-built house, sending up tall columns of water as they fall.

It is not this spectacle, however, that brings forth a simultaneous shout from everyone on board, but the appearance, as one berg gives a half-turn, of an object, hardly two hundred yards from our jibboom end, standing there, amidst all the wild commotion, steadfast, rugged and grim, with tall breakers curling up against its ice-surrounded, dark red cliffs, and falling back in showers of foam, showing milky-white in the morning gloom.

It is land, surely! And, surely, we have seen those forbidding, snow-capped precipices before. It is the island of the mirage, substantial enough this time, and in another ten minutes we shall be dashed to atoms against its surf-encircled base.

The sight had a wondrous effect, and men who seemed incapable a minute before of stirring their stiffened limbs now hopped up the rigging like goats, and scampered along the deck with the top-sail halliards as if racing for a wager, in obedience to the order to cast off and make sail.

'Hard a port!' and the Boadicea's poop is splashed with spray from rocks and ice as she turns slowly from a jagged, honeycombed promontory, whilst her late consort goes headlong to destruction on its iron teeth.

It is still blowing hard; but our captain is more than satisfied; and, under everything she can carry, the Boadicea rushes, like a frightened stag, fast away, northwards and eastwards, out of those dismal seas of ice and fog, snow, and unknown islands, a very nightmare of navigation, into which one merchant skipper, at least, will never willingly venture again.

However, we, after all, perhaps, set our course on a higher parallel than anyone had done since Ross in '41, followed the outline of a southern continent, whose volcanoes flamed to heaven from a lifeless, desolate land of ice and snow. And, as some compensation for our trouble and dangers, till we sighted the south end of Tasmania, we never had occasion to touch a rope, so steadily and strongly blew the fair wind.

'Seventy-five days— a rattlin' good passage!' exclaimed our Port Jackson pilot; and when he asked what had become of our bulwarks, and why the cuddy doors wouldn't shut, we simply told him we had been 'Too far south.'

___________

12: Golden Bars

Max Pemberton

1863-1950

The Strand Magazine Feb 1904

A Story of the African Treasure

THEY WERE TALKING of treasure in the parlour of the Three Tuns at Gravesend— old salts, every one of them, to whom five hundred pounds a year had been riches beyond desire. The precise inspiration of their eloquence chanced to be the money which had been smuggled out of Africa at the time of the war. Some said that it was all banked in France and Holland; others declared that a few paltry millions had gone to America. In the heat of the argument pipes were broken and glasses overturned. Gilbert Lorimer, a young officer on a Scotch tramp, who had been ashore on his captain's business, smiled often and said little; but he corrected old Crabb of the Margate service, and drew down upon himself that worthy's wrath thereby.

"There's more nonsense than not talked about a million of money," the captain had remarked, sententiously. The others agreed. Had anyone bestowed such a trifle upon them, they would have been at no loss how to handle it.

"I'd pop my lot in the Savings Bank," said Billy of the wherry, in parsimonious solemnity. Jack the waterman, however, declared that he would ferry his across the river and leave it to-morrow with the lawyers. Then the sage and learned Skipper Crabb delivered himself of the oracle.

"A million weighs close upon five tons," said he.

"More than ten," exclaimed Gilbert Lorimer, quietly.

"Ah, here's Crœsus," was the captain's sly retort, "and I dare say," he put it familiarly to Gilbert, "that you are very much at home with sums like that. Suppose you make it champagne, young man?"

Gilbert laughed drily. He was a fine specimen of a sailor, and he would have been called handsome by the women in spite of the scar upon his cheek— an ugly gash which seemed to have a history behind it. A little reserved and proud, he had listened to the talk of money with some contempt; but the captain's challenge drew him out, and he rang the bell impatiently for the barman.

"Champagne, by all means," he said, "since the next that I shall drink will be in Sydney. As to your million, I know nothing about it; but I once owned some large part of one. What's more, I was careless enough to lose it."

A solemn silence fell upon the company. Gilbert Lorimer raised his glass and gave them "To our next." The aged Captain Crabb surrendered at once to a master. I, alone, followed the young sailor from the room and asked him, at the river's bank, to let me have a story.

"Yonder's my ship," he said, indicating the anchor light of a large steamer. "She would be at the Nore before I had well begun."

"Then why not write it—?"

He shook his head.

"I am handier with the gloves," said he.

"Oh, but you can spin a plain yarn, I'll be bound."

"Well, as to that—"

The great steamer sounded her siren and he leaped into the wherry. His last word was a cheery "So long." But he sent me the story of his treasure three months afterwards, and I give it here with scarce a line deleted or a phrase re-turned.

ii

EVERY MAN on board the Oceanus— sometime a mail-boat to the South African ports— knew that we carried treasure to Europe, but what was the amount of it, or for whom we carried it, our captain, Joey Castle, alone could say. We had been chartered at Sydney for the purpose, being one of the fastest steamers in Southern waters, and we took in the bullion, chiefly in golden ingots, at Lorenzo Marques. Some did say that it was the property of a Dutch bank, which preferred the American flag to the German, for the Oceanus was under American colours, and a handier steamer of her tonnage I never sailed in. Grant you that the crew were a rough lot— niggers and Lascars, Poles and Swedes, with half-a-dozen Christian white men to put currants on your cake. Well, the owners were one of the safest houses in New York, and fat Joey Castle you might have trusted with the Bank of England itself. Not two cents did he care whether he had a hold full of diamonds or of doughnuts.

"I'm going right through, gentlemen," he said to us at dinner the night we sailed, "and if any tin warship threatens me I'll make Europe laugh. Risk! Why, there's twenty times the risk in a roundabout at a fair! Let 'em stop me if they like— I'll put 'em through the goose-step before they've been two minutes aboard, as sure as my name's Joey Castle!"

Well, we didn't think very much about it, but there had been a lot of talk ashore concerning the British Government and how it handled suspicious ships entering or leaving Lorenzo Marques. I myself thought it not unlikely that we should have some trouble. To put it honestly, I didn't take the hook on the end of this Dutch bank line; and I just said to myself that our gold was Government gold, and that if it were found aboard of us all the Stars and Stripes between 'Frisco and Sandy Hook wouldn't be worth a red cent to us. We should have to pay out, and quick about it.

In this view I stood alone, however, and I must say that when we put to sea without let or hindrance, and were steaming next morning due south before a rattling breeze and with a splendid swell under us, I dismissed the subject as readily as the others and considered our port already made. That opinion lasted for ten days. On the eleventh day, at noon, we sighted a British cruiser on our port quarter. Poor old Joey Castle! He didn't say a word about the Stars and Stripes then. His topic concerned the nether regions. You shivered in your boots when he talked to the engineers. I was on the bridge when the nigger Sam cried up his news of the other ship; and while I was spying her through my glass Captain Castle himself came out of the chart-room and asked me what was there.

"Looks like an ugly one, sir," said I; "a cruiser, I should say, of the second class."

He took the glass from my hand— I can see him now, fat and florid, and as plainly anxious at heart as a nervous man could be. I thought then of all his boasts the night we left Lorenzo, and I was really a bit sorry for him.

"Do you think she means mischief, Mr. Lorimer?" he asked, with the glass still to his eye.

I said that he was the best judge of that.

"These dirty Britishers have their finger in every pie," he went on, presently. "Well, we'll make 'em look foolish. What the deuce are they doing in the stokehold? Just let me have a word with Nicolson, will you?"

His "word" was something to hear. A barge-master who had dropped his dinner overboard might have come up to Joey Castle at his best; but I doubt it. He had the ship doing sixteen knots before one bell in the afternoon watch. She was a Belfast-built mail-boat, with boilers and engines not twelve months old, and a better for the purpose we could not have chartered. By three bells it was patent that the cruiser gained nothing on us. Her smoke burned upon a clear horizon, but her stumpy funnel was no longer to be seen. The captain seemed as pleased as a schoolboy who has won a race— he ordered champagne for our mess and he talked as big as he had done when we sailed from Lorenzo.

"Here's to a good pair of heels and hoofs for the Britisher," was his toast. "I'd like to see him stop me, by thunder. There'll be good money for this at Bremerhaven, and more to come afterwards. Fill your glass, Lorimer, and drink to a sharp eye on the next watch. Let him come aboard just for five minutes, and I'll teach him the French language as they speak it out 'Frisco way. It's a wonderful tongue there, Lorimer, a wonderful tongue!"

I did not doubt it. Spoken as Joey Castle speaks it, a harbour-master will take off his hat to you. What I was not so sure of was the Britisher's understanding of it. Many a ship sailing out of Lorenzo had been stopped and searched— so much was common gossip aboard. If the cruiser overhauled us, she would certainly find our million pounds' worth of ingots— marked "fruit" though they might be, kept in the great refrigerator for better security.

Here was something more tangible than Joey Castle's French lingo. I did not know much about international law, but it was in my head that our ship would be sent to a British port and the gold aboard her handed over to the British Government. With the crew, I had a sense of personal honour in the matter. If it had been my ship I would have sunk the Oceanus before I hauled down my colours to any foreigner, let her flag be what it might. But what the captain was going to do I did not know; and thirty-six hours passed before I was any wiser. The afternoon watch taught me little. Now and then I saw the stumpy funnel upon the horizon; at other times there was nothing but the hand's-breadth of smoke to mark the cruiser's course.

On the following day she seemed to be playing a game with us. First she would show herself clear and threatening on the horizon; then we lost her again and were just breathing freely when up she pops, like a squatting hare, and has a good look at us. The see-saw worked on the captain like an overdose of French absinthe. He couldn't rest a minute anywhere. He swore and cursed, prayed and threatened, until I thought the men would mutiny and have done with it. That, however, was to come later on, when the gold fever fairly got hold of them. They were willing enough for the time being.

"What do you make of it now, Mr. Lorimer?" says the captain at supper-time. I answered him just as bluntly as he had asked me.

"She's got the legs of you, sir— it seems to me that she's waiting for something or other. Perhaps it's only a watching job," I put it to him.

"I was thinking the same. The little man in the cap waiting for the big man in the cocked hat. Well, I hope he'll keep himself cool. We'll give him a fever draught if he comes aboard. Just pass the whisky, will you?— my head's queer to-night; but there's a good deal in it— a great deal— Lorimer, and it's coming out by-and-by."

I had no doubt of it— he had taken enough whisky that afternoon to start a bar. As for what was in his head, a madder scheme never came to any man whom fear had robbed of nerve and sense.

"If the cocked hat wants to come aboard here, he shall," he said, presently; "that's my notion, Lorimer. Let him come aboard and hear the French lingo. We'll do the honours and then drum him out. You'll be standing by in the launch with as much gold as she'll carry in her coal-holes. The life-boats can take the rest. You and Nicolson and the 'fourth' must take charge of them. I'll pick you up next day and you'll have your compasses. There's not weather enough to hurt a toy yacht, and a night out will do you good. All this, mind you, if he has the heels of us and means to come aboard. But I don't believe he can make sixteen knots, and that's what we're making now."

Well, he chuckled away over this wild notion just as though it had been a sane man's plan; and, fuddled as he was with the whisky, he kept repeating it until I was tired of hearing it. When Billy Frost, our young fourth officer, came down presently to say that the cruiser had picked us up again and was using her search-light, it was a relief to go on deck and tot the position up. My belief all along had been that the cruiser had the legs of us, and what I saw from the bridge confirmed my judgment. She stood now upon our starboard quarter— her search-light ran all over us in silvery waves like water washing down a rock-side. And yet, mind you, she did not challenge us, did not ask us a question; but just followed us, patiently waiting, I did not doubt, for some further instructions to be received in European waters. This doubt and uncertainty plagued our captain to the last point. "They shall come aboard, by Heaven," he said; "ten days more of this would kill me." I knew then how much he had at stake, and that it was no mere captain's wage which had tempted him to carry gold from the Transvaal. He was playing for a bigger sum of money than he had ever played for in all his life, and the game had robbed him of his man's common sense.

The cruiser's search-light contrived for a good hour or more to play all over us like a hose. It made the captain dance, I can tell you; and when they dropped it just upon eight bells in the morning watch, I saw that he had come to a resolution and that nothing would turn him from it.

"We must get the brass overboard, Lorimer," he said; "this crew will turn ugly if the thing goes on. We'll make a beginning with the launch. Take Sam the nigger, Peter Barlow, and young Nicolson the engineer, and bear west for Ascension. I'll make them search us at dawn and turn back for you; keep your bearings as close as you can and take an observation every hour. We should pick you up by noon to-morrow— I'll mark the place on the chart. A cockle-shell could swim in this sea, and the launch will come to no harm. It's a great scheme, man, and there's few would have thought of it."

I tried to argue with him, putting it that, even if the cruiser did search us, she would have no authority to take the gold; moreover, it would be an international question for the two Governments. He wouldn't hear a word of it.

"Let 'em wrangle," he said; "I'll hold the dollars meanwhile. The men will turn on me if I don't. Why, just look at it. They come aboard and find nothing but silver spoons. The report goes in that we are all right, and we steam to Bremerhaven without let or hindrance. It's mighty, man, just mighty; and I'll not be turned from it."

So he had his way. The cruiser fell back at the dark hour before the dawn, and we began to get the ingots of gold into the launch. This was one of Simpson's larger boats, carried by us especially to transport bullion expeditiously— part of the whole affair planned out from the beginning. Willing hands passed up the golden bars— we packed a fortune on the deck, and the men stood round about shivering with greed of the treasure. Let the scheme be mad or sane, I had to go through with it then; and I own up to a better opinion of it as the time went on. Nothing could be easier to a trained seaman than to keep such a course as the captain laid down for us. We had compasses, sextants, and our navigation books. There was not wind enough to shake a judge's wig nor any omen of bad weather. Let us get away under cover of the darkness, and the rest would be child's play. The "if" was a big one. The light might strike upon us at any instant. I went about the deck with my heart in my mouth. Sometimes I covered my eyes with my arm, fearing to find the bright beams upon me. It was all or nothing— an hour's grace or a million sterling on board the British ship.

Well, we lowered the launch with her heavy cargo of ingots— as many of them as we dared to put into her— and getting her away under shelter of the steamer we headed due west toward Ascension Isle. True, there was an ugly red glimmer from our funnel, but the furnace was under a half-deck, and our memory didn't run to lights, be sure of it. I had Sam the nigger with me, together with Nicolson the young engineer, and Peter Barlow for quarter-master; these were the hands named for my crew; and I was not a little astonished when we were well away from the steamer's side to hear the loud voice of Mike the Irishman— a lazy rogue I would gladly have left behind me.

"Why, Mike," cries I, "and how did you get here?"

"Please, your honour, I just dropped in," says he.

"Then, if I had a rope's end, I'd make you drop out again!" says I.

"Aye, but, your honour," says he, "when was the Irishman born that had any liking for the water? Sure, I always loved ye from the first day I clapped these blessed eyes upon ye! 'I'll go aboard to take care of him,' says I, 'for I feel like his own mother's son!'"

There was no time to argue with him. What with getting the launch away neatly, and being mortal afraid to find myself any minute in the path of the cruiser's search-light, I had too much to do to begin with a hullabaloo— and for that matter the situation was not one to set a man against companionship. There we were, the five of us, in a boat not built for ocean seas, running like a good one away from the ship that should have carried us to Europe and our homes. Let the search-light be clapped upon us, and the gold would be aboard the British cruiser within an hour. Or, in another case and a harder one, let the wind blow, and what then? The gold weighed us down as it was, until even gentle seas splashed us as we lifted to them. A hatful of wind would sink us; a shoreman would have known that. I believed that it was the spin of a coin anyway; and just as I was saying it the cruiser showed her light again, and a great white arc fixed itself upon the distant steamer like a mighty river of molten radiance flowing out upon a darkened sea.

"Look at that for a lantern now," says Mike the Irishman, cowering before it. "'Twould see ye home from a waking, and no mistake about it. Just douk your head, sir, if you please. 'Twould be as well not to be on speaking terms with them when next ye meet."

I smiled at his notion that any amount of "douking" would save us from the cruiser's light, but instinctively I crouched down with the others. To me it seemed impossible that any freak of fortune could hide us from the cruiser's observation. There we were in the still sea, a black speck, no doubt, but one that a clever eye on a warship's bridge would never fail to spy out. Our own steamer, the Oceanus, was running north as fast as honest engines could drive her. She, too, appeared now to be just a shimmer of dancing lights— the captain showed every lantern he had got to divert the chase from the launch, and here he succeeded only too well.

Though it was all Lombard Street to a china orange that the cruiser marked us, she held on obstinately after the bigger game. Perhaps she believed that it was all a sham and that we had put off to make a fool of her. I never learned; but I could scarcely believe my eyes when the blinding light swept over them and still nothing happened. Were they all daft aboard her? It was really incredible.

"The admiral's having his hair cut, I suppose," said Barlow the quarter-master, who watched the affair with me from a seat aft. "He's telling 'em to keep it short in the neck, sir— some day a dog will be leading him at the end of a string. Well, I don't make no complaint about that."

"Better not, my man," said I, "if you wish to see the Oceanus again."

"Oh, as to that, we're well enough off here, sir," he said, turning away his eyes from me; "though if we never saw Captain Castle again, I reckon we'd have meat and drink for the rest of our lives."

I looked at him sharply; he coughed and glanced down at the compass. This was the first time I quite understood how well the hands were acquainted with the cargo and its owners. The danger of the knowledge could not be hidden from me. Even the nigger Sam, with his blinking green eyes, ate up every word of our talk and smacked his lips over it.

"You buy barrel of rum and no mistake, sar," he chimed in, unasked. "You change your Sunday shirt on Monday and blarm the expense. We all very rich gentlemen, surely."

I turned it with a laugh, though I was well aware of the reservation behind it. Happily, but for a bottle of brandy of my own, there was no drink on the launch. I had a revolver in my pistol-pocket, and I said that at the worst, which was then but a suspicion, I could keep both the nigger and Peter in order. Mike the Irishman might go any way; but Nicolson, the young engineer, could certainly be counted upon. To him I said a word when two of the hands had been ordered to turn in. His answer was reassuring, but more ambiguous than I liked.

"Oh," he said, "anything to help the Dutchmen. They'll miss this odd lot if we lose it— and, of course, we're all honest, Lorimer. Don't you be uneasy. I've no fancy for gilded firesides myself; besides," he added, "if we took our oaths that we had to jettison it, who'd believe us? Better go straight under the circumstances."

I replied that there were no circumstances possible to make common rogues of us, and his cheery assent did much to deceive me. Counting upon him entirely, I let the launch simply drift while he lay down for a couple of hours' sleep, and afterwards I wrapped myself up in a blanket and managed to get some rest. When I awoke it was broad daylight. An immensely round sun fired the placid water with sheets of crimson splendour; the air came heavy from the Equator; a burning, intolerable day seemed before us. Restless and anxious already to be sure of our bearings, that the Oceanus might find us at noon, I bustled up almost as soon as I was awake; but the first thing I saw took my breath away, and I just stood like a man in a wonder-world to watch it. There amidships, in the well where the money was stored, Sam the nigger, Mike the Irishman, and Nicolson the engineer were grouped about a box of golden ingots, and so transported with the sight of them that they scarcely heard me. One by one they had laid out those shimmering yellow bars, each a fortune to such men; and they watched the sunlight glittering upon them, and caressed them with gentle hands and feasted their eyes upon them. When I appeared, no man budged from his place or seemed in any way abashed. Evidently they were all agreed upon a purpose, and this Nicolson made known to me.

"Yes," he said, coolly; "we're counting up the dollars, old chap— divide on shore, you know— fair and square. Come, don't look blue. The Dutchman won't miss them, and old Joey's made his own bargain. We can rig up a tale between us and buy the crowd at Ascension— good joke, isn't it, Lorimer?"

"Why, yes," said I; "but, as my port's not Ascension, I don't quite see the point of it. Come, Nicolson, don't be a fool. Just put that lid on and help me to go over the chart. We mustn't keep the captain waiting— you know what he is."

Very lazily, I thought, he put the lid on the box of ingots, and, laughing at the others, he came aft with me. When I took up the chart to make a dead reckoning by the help of his own calculations during my watch off, he laughed again in his peculiar way. "It's all right," he said; "due west for Ascension, as you wished."

"Nicolson," I said, quietly, "you've been playing a fool's game; what does it mean?"

He sat on the gunnel and looked me full in the face.

"Means that our port is Ascension," he said.

I kept my temper.

"Nicolson," I said, "do you wish me to think you a scoundrel?"

"Think what you like; there are four in this launch who don't mean Joey Castle to touch these dollars again."

I turned away from him, wrestling with my temper.

" 'Bout ship!" I cried. Barlow took no notice whatsoever. Then my hand went to my pistol-pocket and I knew the worst. They had taken the revolver while I slept. I was one against four, and the launch was running over a calm sea to Ascension Isle and the discovery which inevitably awaited us there.

iii

WE STEAMED all that day upon a fair sea, but at sundown the truth came out. We had not coal enough for another hour's run and were still a hundred miles from Ascension. I watched the faces of the men when Nicolson told them. They seemed to care nothing. The gold greed was upon them; the ingots were piled up everywhere about the launch and the hands hugged them as children, dearer than anything afloat or ashore. Nicolson got curses for his pains and went below again.

I watched the scene gloomily from the stern— it was beginning to dawn upon me that no man would see land again; and when an hour and a half had passed and the engines of the launch suddenly stopped I could not call myself a pessimist. The hands themselves, awed by the mishap, began to talk of sailing ships which would pick them up and of a story they must have ready. Nicolson was to be the captain of a ship which had stranded; Barlow was his mate. They did not name me; and, as the day is my witness, I believe they intended to murder me.

You may think that this sent a man to his supper with a good appetite. Truth to tell, I lay down in my blanket at ten o'clock and never expected to see the sun again. A shadow passing by me, a voice, a whisper, made me start like a frightened hare. Once I found the nigger Sam bending over me, and I jumped up, wet through with perspiration. Even a child would have seen that these madmen, lost to all sense of reason, would never take me ashore with them. Then when would they make an end of it? Soon, I hoped, if it must be. The suspense was making an old man of me. Every evil glance that was turned upon me seemed like a warning anew. I believe to this hour that they would have shot me before dawn but for the wind, the truest friend a man ever had in the hour of his need. Yes, to the wind and the sea, twin brothers to a sailor, I owed my life. It began to blow about seven bells in the first watch, and by dawn the waves were running as they run on no other ocean but the Atlantic. Laden as we were, deep down in the seas, our chances of weathering the gale may be imagined. Had we still owned a fire the first wash over would have snuffed it out. The good launch staggered at every blow, like a boxer badly hit. I said that the gold must go— and not a man aboard who did not know that I spoke the truth.

I have witnessed some strange scenes in my life— niggers running amuck in St. Louis, French sailors among the drink in a panic, a liner sinking with more than a hundred women aboard; but for honest madness about money the scene on that launch defies my words. No sooner was it plain that we should sink if we could not raise her in the water than the men (but chiefly the Irishman and the nigger Sam) got the gold open again and fell on it, blubbering and raving like children. Drink they had from somewhere, that I was sure of— even Nicolson the engineer showed the whites of his eyes when he staggered up to them; and what with their terror of the sea, their greed of the gold, and the whisky they had drunk, they might have been raving madmen let loose from Bedlam.

I said that the launch could not last another hour. The shrieking of the wind, the monster green seas gathered up in walls of jade-like water, the great hollows into which we went rushing like a switchback, cascades of foam and spindrift, the scudding masses of cloud, they terrified these wretched men, and would have appalled the heart of the strongest. If we were to have any hope at all, the gold must go. Again I said it; and fearful for my own life, yet caring nothing what they might do to me, I stepped forward and addressed them.

"This is your share and share alike, is it?" I cried— "the little bit that Joey Castle will not miss. Well, it's got to go overboard, my lads, and pretty soon about it. Nicolson, you're no fool; Barlow, you know how long the game can last. Do you want to live or die? It's come to that, as you pretty well see."

They heard me in sullen silence. A big wave catching the launch amidships heeled her so far over that I thought she would never recover. It threw Nicolson off his feet; and as he fell and turned over my own revolver dropped from his pocket. You need not ask me if I snatched it up. It was in my hand and smoking before ten seconds had passed. And there was one man less upon the launch.

So it came about. The great Irishman, standing ankle-deep in the gold, leaped out upon me when the launch righted herself. What quite happened I can scarcely tell you, but I know that I felt his colossal arms crushing the life out of me and that I saw it was his hour or mine. Then a report rang loud in my ears, and I was free once more; while the man tumbled backward, clutching at the air; and the sea engulfed him, and there were four in peril where five had been. From that moment the fear of God, I do believe, fell upon the others. They neither spoke nor stirred for many minutes together. The terrible wind howled its wildest— the heavens were black as night. I said that the sea was with me, and, crying out to them to save themselves, I began to drop the ingots overboard.

One by one, each a fortune to a poor man, we cast the gold bars into the ocean. That which would have meant so much to us ashore meant nothing here in the face of death and the storm. And yet I could not but think of the pleasures this very dross (as it seemed there upon the high seas) would give to many a home, to honest toilers and starving children in the great cities I had known. Nevertheless, it must be swallowed by the green water, lost for ever upon the bed of the Atlantic. And moment by moment the launch rose higher and higher upon the mountainous seas, like a bird that has been weighed down but now is free. I began to tell them that we should make Ascension Isle after all. I did not know that we should have no need to make it.

The last of the ingots had been cast overboard, the wind had begun to fall, when the British cruiser picked us up. There was no need for explanations. She had searched the Oceanus at dawn and seized her treasure before Joey Castle could get what was left of it away. She knew that we had ingots for our cargo, and she followed us westward. We went aboard her to laugh at the chagrin of her commander and to show him our empty well.

"What you seek is a thousand fathoms down," said I, a little bitterly; "you don't need to ask me why."

"Mr. Lorimer," he cried, with a smile, "if all the gold in the world were in the same place, what a pleasant place this old globe would be to live on!"

I knew what he meant— but, after all, if men weren't cutting each other's throats for gold they would be doing the same for shells or silver or other rubbish, as any philosopher will tell you.

___________

13:  Daphne

Guy Boothby

1867-1905

Darling Downs Gazette (Qld), 21 Aug 1897

…There is always work,

And tools to work withal for those who will;

And blessed are the horny hands of toil.

—Lowell.

TALL, ANGULAR, and peculiarly, plain, she was the wife of a Queensland bush carrier; and it is, I believe, an accepted fact that ladies of that station are not noted either for their culture or their refinement. Crawling with heavily-laden bullock waggons across plains and never-ending scrubs would not appear to be an existence possessed of many charms, and yet I believe there is no case on record of a man or woman who, having once served his or her apprenticeship to the trade, has ever returned to a civilised life again.

In the Queensland bush carrying trade, you must understand, there are three main arteries, the townships of Hughenden, Longreach, and Charleville, and from each of these places there flows continually a stream of enormous table-topped waggons bound for stations in the Great West, all more or less remote from what is generally supposed to make life worth living. The existence of the carrier is rough to a terrible degree, and must in no way be confounded with that of the, respectable, jog-trot class who ply their trade in English rural districts. Let me picture for you a night's camp of one of these nomad families.

Imagine a treeless plain, say some two or three hundred miles from civilisation, extending as far as the eye can reach on every side. In the foreground you will probably have a fair-sized waterhole, up to the side of which, as you look, lumbers an enormous waggon, piled with loading of every kind and description, and drawn by perhaps twenty bullocks. Wearied after their long day's march, the team drags up to the water and then comes to a halt with a deep grunt of satisfaction. The sun, which throughout the day has  caused them untold agonies, now lies low upon the horizon, burning the dreary plain into the likeness of a waveless sea, and painting the placid waterhole with colours of ever-changing beauty.

Once at a standstill, the work of unyoking commences; and after this is accomplished, the offsider, of driver's assistant, bells certain bullocks, and  conducts the herd to water and the best grass; the driver meanwhile places the yokes in proper order upon the pole, preparatory to an early start upon the morrow.

The carrier's wife, by this time, has descended from her perch on the summit of the load, and, with a crowd of nut-brown children at her heels, has set about her preparation of the evening meal. Ere it is eaten, the sun has packed his pillows in the west, and dropped into his crimson bed. As daylight disappears, and without an interval of twilight, darkness descends upon the plain, and one by one sundry jewels drop out of the treasure house of night to deck the canopy of heaven. The stillness is most remarkable, and later on, when each member of the tiny party has found a resting place among the loading or beneath the waggon, it becomes even more intense, till only the whistle of a curlew, the cry of a marauding dingo, or the insistent boom of the bullock bells jars upon the sleeping night.

By daybreak the community is once, more astir, and when breakfast has been eaten the team is yoked up. Then the woman places herself and children upon the top of the waggon, the carrier takes his place and cracks his heavy whip, the bullocks sway forward, and once more the journey is resumed across the same interminable plain.

So, week in week out, from year's end to year's end, the same life goes forward, never varying save when rain, or scarcity of grass, makes the track impassable. Small wonder, therefore, that the women grow to be hard and rough, consorting, as they do, with none but the sternest of the opposite sex, and daily doing work that would test the patience and endurance of the strongest man. These are some of the folk who in reality do the building up of our colonies, although the credit goes to another noisier, uglier, and far less useful class.

But to get back to my story. As I have said at the beginning, she was tall, angular, and peculiarly plain, and, in spite of the glaring incongruity of it, it must up recorded that her baptismal name was Daphne. Her husband was a carrier on the Hidgeree-Kalaba track, and she was at once the brain and mainstay of his business. My first acquaintance with them occurred on the edge of a Boree scrub, a dismal place, and more than a hundred miles removed from either of the above townships. They were camped beside a big waterhole, and on dismounting from my horse I was introduced by the carrier, with becoming ceremony, to his wife. Great were the proofs of friendship they showed to me, and long will I cherish the memory of that rough but hearty hospitality. Next morning I went my way, they theirs, and it was not for nearly a year that we met again.

When next I heard of them, Daphne was in the township hospital, recovering from a serious accident occasioned by a fall from the waggon; and her husband, an enormously-built man, with a rough manner, which, by those unskilled in such matters, might easily have been mistaken for insolence, had that very day returned with loading from the West.

By inquiring after his wife, whose illness I was aware of, I touched the right string; for his eyes lit up, his voice softened, and he answered my questions with surprising meekness.

"She was getting on well," he said, "but all the same it was terrible slow work."

Now, it must be known here that although the Kalaba hospital occupies the best position in that township, even then it is, if anything, a little less cheerful than an undertaker's showroom. Great gray plains surround it on three sides; the township, with its ugly whitewashed roofs, stare at it from the fourth; and it would be impossible to say which view would be likely to have the most depressing effect upon an invalid. I am told that Kalaba was only designed as a depot for the Great West, and I console myself with the reflection that in the very near future the overland railway will obviate that necessity, and then it will be scattered to the four winds of heaven. At present It is the Decalogue turned backwards.

When my business was finished I rode up to the hospital and left some newspapers. Daphne being the only patient, I found her occupying the best bed in the only ward. Her wiry black hair straggled In rank confusion about her pillow, while her complexion harmonised, as near as a well-tanned skin would permit, with the clingy whiteness of the counterpane. Only the great dark honest eyes lent relief to the monotony of her expression, and they were now full of something which, when read aright, spelt hopelessness of an extraordinary degree.

Towards the end of the afternoon the husband made his appearance, and, preceded by the matron, stalked into his wife's presence. For a moment he stood in the doorway, dazed, bewildered perhaps by the half darkness; then, recognising his wife, he advanced towards the bed.

"Daphne, old gal," he said with a little tremor in his voice as he bent over her, " 'an' 'ow's it with ee now? Ye looks better by a darned sight!"

She gave a little sigh before she replied.

"I'm nearly well now, Bill; better'n I 'ave been by a long chalk. Sit ye down, old man, and tell us 'ow it goes with the children an' the team."

Bill sat very gingerly on the edge of the bed, and, as if out of compliment to the peculiar cleanliness of the place, fell to scrubbing his face with a daring red cotton handkerchief.

"The kids is fit, an' the team's first class," he answered. Then with a gesture of almost awe he assumed possession of one of the thin brown hands upon the coverlet.

"My lass, 'ow dog poor yer 'ans has got, to be sure; but they was always pretty 'ands to my thinkin'."

Daphne patted his great brown paws and allowed a little wan smile of gratified vanity to flicker across her face. Let the  woman be ever so old and plain, she is never beyond the reach of a' compliment from the man she loves.

"An' 'ow's the roads lookin' out back?" she asked.

"A.1., an' no mistake; green as a leaf all the way. From here to Hidgeree Creek there's water in every hole, an' the little wild-flowers yer used to like is that thick along the track yer can hardly see the grass for 'em. I brought yer some!"

Out of the lining of his cabbage-tree hat, he took a tiny bunch of bush blue-bells and placed them in her hand. It was a critical moment for both of them. He was acutely afraid of ridicule; she, for some reason she could not have explained, did not know whether to laugh or cry. She laid the flowers on the table by her bedside, and then turned to her husband, the better to express her thanks.

"Bill," she said softly,  "you was allus a good chap to me!"

"Nay, nay, my lass, yon mustn't say that. You don't know 'ow we misses yer out yonder; things ain't the same at all without you. Make 'aste an' get well an' come back to the kids an' me, an' let's get out of this 'ere town."

"But I shan't be—"

"Shan't be what, lass?" He looked rather anxiously down at her.

"I shan't be—" The weak voice paused as if to think of a word then she seemed to choke, and after that a painful silence ensued. Finally she said:

"I— I shan't be long."

Bill gave a sigh of relief and continued: "I'm 'avin' new tires put on the fore-wheels, an' we've got the new pair o' steers in place o' Billabong  'n' Blossom, that were too old for work. We've got full loadin' out to the Diamantina an' back, an' when the trip's done there'll be a matter of twenty pounds to put into the stocking for kids. Get well, my lass, an' come back to yer place on the load: the bush wind, an' the blue sky, an' the sight o' them wild flowers'll soon set yer right. Yer ain't feelin' any worse, are yer '!'

"No, old man, the doctor says I'll be out again this side o' Sunday."

"That's the talk! We're camped down yonder on the creek, an' the day yere out I'll come up an' fetch yer meself. The team'll be all fresh, the loadin' 'll be aboard, an' the very next mornin' we'll have the yokes on an' be where a man's got room to breathe!"

"Why, Bill. I never 'eard yer talk so before! It's like what the parson who comes here every Monday calls poetry!"

There was an ocean of pathos in the man's reply.

"Yer see, old girl, I must talk a bit different, for yer ain't never been ill like this afore!"

Another long silence fell upon the pair. Then he rose to nay good-bye, and his wife's face grew, if possible, paler than before.

"Bill!' she began falteringly, "I've been a-tryin' all the time yer've been here to tell yer somethin', but I dunno 'ow to begin. It's this way—"

"Out wi' it my lass. What's wrong? Ain't they been a-treatin' yer well in 'orsepital?"

"It's not that, Bill," she answered. "But there, I can't tell yer. Flesh and  blood couldn't, let alone yer wife. You must just ask the doctor, when yer get outside, if 'e's got anythin' to say agin me walkin' with the team, will yer?"

"If yer says so o' course. But Daphne, there ain't nothin' agin' it is there?"

"You ax 'im; 'e'll tell yer, Bill— But 'ere's the matron coming. I guess yer'd better be goin'. Tell them kiddies their mother ain't forgot 'em!"

Raising herself with an effort. she pulled the big man's tangled head down  to her, and kissed him on the forehead with a gentleness that would have been grotesque, if the sentiment that prompted It had not been so gruesomely pathetic. Then, as the matron approached the bed, he went down the corridor to find the house-surgeon.

The latter, I may tell you, was a rough man, embittered by hard work and insufficient returns: the position of house-surgeon in a bush hospital being but little sought after by the shining lights of the profession.

When Daphne's husband entered, he was engaged writing to the Board demanding, for the sixth time, an increase in his meagre salary. He looked up, and, seeing the man before him, said roughly:

"Well?  What do you want?"

The carrier shuffled from one foot to the other with evident uneasiness.

"I beg yer pardon sir, an' sorry for interruptin', but the missis axed me to ax you as if it were likely yer'd 'ave any objection to 'er walkin' alongside the team when she comes out?"

"Whose missis?— Oh! I understand— the woman in the ward there. Walk beside the team? Good heavens, man! What are you talking about? Are you mad? How on earth can she walk beside the team?"

"I mean, o' course, sir, when she's well enough to come out."

"Well enough in come out? Why man alive! She's as well now as ever she will be. It was compound fracture of both femurs, and a double amputation. She hasn't a leg to stand on, much less to walk with! No! No! You'd better look out for a house in the township, and find somebody to move her about for the rest of her life. She'll never be able to travel with you again— Here! hang it, man, go outside if you're going to be ill!"

"I ax yer pardin, sir, but— if yer don't mind, I'll just sit down for a minute. Everything's a-goin' round an' round, an' I don't somehow feel kinder well."

__________

14: The Land Where There is no Death

Stephen Vincent Benét

1898-1943

Redbook Oct 1942

IT was not very far from Hilda's house to John's house— just three and a half streets and a corner— and it seemed to the children as if they had always known each other. They were always running back and forth— you could hear the light patter of their steps in the street like the patter of rain. John was the elder of the two by about six months— he had a merrv face, a short nose and a lively imagination. Hilda had yellow pigtails and round cheeks. They had known each other since they were born.

The town in which they lived was an old town, even for the land, and a pleasant one. There was the gray old church with its stiff stone angels and the city hall with its carved ceiling, the square with its fountain and its statue to a longdead hero, the running river and the cemetery on the hill. Hilda and John knew all of them, as children know, by exploring. They were the provost's girl and the minister's boy— most people knew them and were friendly.

Of course, they were not always together. They were part of a whole band of children, of the river and current of children that streams back and forth to school— the wreath and garland of children that brings new life to a town. Often Hilda played with other companions and John too; neither of them were freakish. Yet there was always something that drew them back toward one another. Even their parents grew used to it— and their older brothers and sisters. They did not say, "Where's Hilda?" or "Where's John?" They said, ""Where's Hilda and John?"

They were able to console each other. Let us take death: The children knew that it happened and accepted it. Yet when old Ketty died— old Ketty who worked at the ptovost's house— they were puzzled. Old Ketty, with her gouty fingers and her cross kindness, was as much a part of their lives as the house or the lamps in the street, the fountain in the square or the moon in the sky. Now she lay in her coffin, with her hands crossed over her breast and her hair very smooth. The children went to the funeral together and saw her buried. Afterward, Hilda's mother gave them both a piece of gingercake, and sent them out to play.

They played for a while quite cheerfully at being dead like Ketty. Then they gave it up and sat down on a stone bench by the fountain in the square.

"I guess Ketty must be in heaven by now," said Hilda. "I guess she started as soon as they put her in the ground. Is that when they start, John?"

"Oh, yes," said John, who was the minister's son. "I guess that's when they start. She had on her best dress, too."

"Yes, I'd like to have on my best dress," said Hilda. "It doesn't matter so much, with boys."

"No, I suppose it doesn't," said John. He kicked at the bench. "When you held your breath very hard, did you feel dead, Hilda?"

Hilda considered. "No," she said. "I felt funny, but I didn't feel dead." Then she burst into tears.

"For goodness' sake, what are you crying about?" said John.

"It doesn't feel very pleasant," said Hilda, overpowered with grief. "I don't want to be dead myself. I don't want anybody to be dead."

"That's silly," said John. "Everybody's got to be dead sometime." But he was made uncomfortable by her tears.

"Everybody doesn't have to be dead," said Hilda. "Tell me everybody doesn't have to."

"Oh, all right," said John. "Everybody doesn't have to be dead."

She sat bolt upright, her round cheeks blazing. "Do you mean that, John? You're not just talking about heaven? I know about heaven."

"No, I'm not talking about heaven. I'm talking about—" He paused and thought: "I'm talking about the land where there is no death," he said, firmly.

Hilda stopped crying. She fished out a bit of barley sugar from her pocket and sucked on it.

"Tell me about it, John," she said, reassured.

So he told her about the land where there is no death. It was far away, of course, but it could be reached and found. As he told about it, he began to believe in it himself and to see it plainly. It was very like the best of all that they knew— the friendliness of the town and the warmth of the fields in summer— except that no creature died there, not even a hare. When he had quite finished, Hilda's tears were dry.

"It sounds wonderful, John," she said. "But we won't have to go there right away, will we? I promised Mother to help her with the ironing tomorrow."

"No" said John. "We won't have to go there right away. But we shall go sometime, of course."

THAT is how they first heard of the land where there is no death; and for a long time, it occupied their thoughts. Each day, when they met, they would add one detail or another to the picture they had of it, until it grew very real to them indeed. There was a town and valley; there were streams-and forests. They knew it foot by foot, as they knew the streets of their town.

As the children grew older, of course, the land receded farther and farther to the backs of their minds. They would talk of it now and then to one another, half in jest, but it was not a pressing concern. Nevertheless, though Hilda had been the first to raise the question, it was John whose life was changed by it.

It came upon him while he was in the last year of his studies for the ministry. Perhaps he had been studying too ardently; but at all events, one summer evening, he lifted his eyes from the dry page and there it was before him— the land where there is no death, with its wide summer fields and forests and its garland of ageless children who pass continually through the streets of its town. The sound of its streams was in his ears like a calling of voices. He knew that it was but a vision, and yet it called to him. He put the text aside and sat by the open window for a long time, with his hand upon his brow.

So when he came before his examiners, they cast him out— for he could not reconcile the goodness of God with the fact that death was loose in the world. He did not complain of their judgment—  but his heart was unsatisfied, and he knew that he must go forth and seek what he must seek.

It was hard to do so, indeed, for by now he was a young man and Hilda a maiden. They had not spoken of love to each other, and yet they had taken for granted in their hearts that sometime between them there would be love and marriage and the kindly and mortal things. Yet, when they parted at the crossroads, they were gay enough.

"It will not be for long," said John. "Perhaps I shall find it in a month— perhaps in a year. Yet surely I shall find it. And that will be a great thing, Hilda."

"That is true,' said Hilda. "And I will not stop your going. Yet the world is very wide. You will not forget me, John? Not even in that land?"

"I could not forget you, Hilda. But, when I have found what I must seek, I shall come back to you."

She gave him bread for his journey, and with kisses and sighs they parted. How many the partings are! And John took his staff in his hand and Hilda went back to the town, for it was baking-day and the rest of her loaves should have been in the oven an hour ago.

Si John set forth upon his search, and it was not a hard journey, at first. He had lived in one town all his life but, being friendly himself, he found the wide world friendly and of passionate interest.

Where his search was concerned, he got continual encouragement. Whenever he spoke of what he was seeking, soberly and honestly, there were those who would listen and reply. Sure enough, they had heard of such a land— or their fathers had. It might lie just beyond the mountains— perhaps a little farther— that was hard to tell. But there was a tale and a memory of it in men's minds. This excited John and made him wonder why they had not sought for the land themselves. But for that there was always a good answer. This man had his field to plow or the village would get no grain—  that man had just been wed; that other had great possessions.

Here and there, of course, there were those who thought him a fool or a madman. But he had an even temper and was able to bear their scorn. If they threw him in jail, there was something to be learned in jail— if they drove him out of the village, he went from it uncomplaining. He had no quarrel with them — only with death.

Soon enough the money in his purse was gone and he must turn to a trade to keep on with his journey. But he was strong of body and clever of hand— he would do a day's work for any man— so he got on well enough. Moreover, he found very early that a story or a song often smooths the road for a stranger. They were not hard for him to furnish—  he had told so many stories to Hilda when they were children that his tongue was quite in the way of it. When the day's work was done, the folk would gather about him to listen— or, if not the grown folk, the children, and that suited John even better. At first he had but a small enough stock of stories, but as time went on and he saw more of the world, it grew larger and he told them with more art. Some were real and of things that had happened; some were the old tales all men tell; some came into his head as he walked along the roads.

YET in all this time, he did not forget the object of his search. He was cheerful and gay but it was continually in his mind, for wherever he went, death ravaged the fields of man. And from death none were exempt, no folk and no nation. It seemed to him once that surely the rich and the proud must have, among their treasures, some clue to his searchings. So he stayed for nearly a year at a king's court, telling his stories, and the king was well pleased with him. But when the king's son died, in the bloom of his youth, there was nought to do. He could ease the king's heart a little by his tales, but that was all. At another time he sought out the scholars— and the wisest of them were most wise. But, wise as they were, they could tell him little of the land he sought, though they dragged out many rolls of parchment. For one said that such a land was mentioned by Aristotle the Greek, but another said it was not, and then there were fierce and angry words among the baldheads. It was all John could do to calm their quarrel with a story— and he left them in the end, happily picking his story to pieces, as men pick bones from a fish.

Now he was no longer young but a man in his prime, yet the anguish of his search burned in him more fiercely than ever. It drove him across seas and continents, into strange lands, among strange folk. Yet, when he came to know them, they were no longer strange but all children of men. They might live on a bowl of rice under burning suns— they might hunt the elk through the snows— yet they lived and loved and suffered as all men do. Often they broke his heart with their slyness and their kindness, their cruelty and their strange courage, their hate and their sudden brotherhood. He saw great wars flame and cease and the plow go back to the fields— he saw bitter injustice done and yet a few men stand against it and out of their bones imperfect justice arise. All these things he saw, and of many he made stories, and some were bitter. It is bitter to see man blacken the face of man— it is bitter to see him die when he might live. Sometimes it was so bitter to John that it seemed to him that, wherever he went, Death himself followed at his heels, a leering companion, shaking his sides at his endless jest upon man. Then John would brace his heart and put himself in Death's way— buf, in plague and famine and conflict, Death passed him by. So he went on... .

You will ask if he thought nothing of Hilda in all these years. He thought of her always and continually— sometimes as the child he had played with, sometimes as the maiden he had left. As the years passed, the memory of her face grew dim; yet he knew he would know her in an instant, once he saw her again, and that was a solace to him. Every child to whom he told a story had something of Hilda in its face, and for that reason, he did his best with the stories. "And, as soon as my search is ended, I shall see her again," he thought.

His search did not end in a day or a year, yet it ended suddenly. For some time he had noticed a difference and a change in the lands through which he passed— the speech was more familiar to him, though a speech he had not used for very long. As he struggled one day toward a certain pass in the mountains, he felt burning in his heart the certainty that tomorrow would be the day and with it the long task completed. Had they not said in the valley: "Yes, we have heard of the land, and it is not here. But across the mountains, doubtkess— "

The mountain air was thin in his lungs as he toiled upward with the evening, but his spirits rose.

And sure enough, at the very head of the pass, he caught a glimpse of it, as he had imagined— a fair land with broad fields and bright streams and a good town where men might dwell, all luminous for a moment in the last golden haze of the sun. Then the sun dipped and the mists of evening shut over it, but John had seen what he had seen. He did not try to go down through the pass that night, for he knew he must husband his strength.

Next morning he roused with the first light and resumed his journey. As the road led toward the town, his excitement mounted, for each stone by the way seemed familiar to him, and that was a sure sign. Yet it was not all as he had dreamed of it, but in some ways changed; and that gave him assurance too. He noticed that folk looked at him a little oddly as he strode into the town itself, with his ragged cloak around him and his worn staff in his hand— well, that was to be expected when one entered the land where there is no death. He did not stop to converse with them or ask questions—  that would be for later. First of all, he must go to a certain part of the town and sit upon a bench by a fountain. He did not know why he must do this but it was strong upon him.

They were busy with their own affairs, the good people— he passed among them and smiled. The shopman kept his shop and the housewife came back from market, and all of a sudden, the bells rang and the children burst out of school. How merry they were and lively! He would find the ones who liked stories best later on. So, at last, he came to the square with the stone bench and fountain.

There was a young girl by the fountain, and as she heard his footsteps, she turned and his heart gave a leap within him. He paused, leaning upon his staff.

"Well, Hilda," he said, "I have found it, as you see. And yet we are together, after all."

Then he saw her eyes change with surprise and knew that it was not Hilda, though very like her. And, with that, his years came upon him and he leaned upon the rim of the fountain. He could see in the waters of the fountain that his hair was as white as snow and his face the face of an old man. Then he knew where he was and that he was mistaken indeed.

How long he stood gazing into the fountain, he did not know, but after a while he looked up; and Hilda was indeed before him, though not the young Hilda he remembered. Her hair was as white as his own. Yet he knew her at once.

"Well, John," she said, "it is good to see you again. And have you no word for an old playmate?"

"I have many words indeed, Hilda," said John, very bitterly. "But they all come down to the one— that I have been a fool. You were right not to wait for me, Hilda— my search has lasted all my life, and yet it has been but a wild-goose chase and brought me back to my own door. And now, at the end of it, I have not even children to match with yours."

"Why, it is not quite like that," said Hilda. "Children I have, and grandchildren, and that can be. And yet I have always waited for you, John."

She sat down on the bench beside him and took his hand.

"You must come home with me and tell me of your travels," she said. "For even in this quiet place, we know your name, and all children know your stories."

"Some of them are not badly made," said John. "And yet I set out to find the land where there is no death and not to tell stories to children." He looked at her intently. "Have you heard that perhaps one or two of them were not so badly made?" he said.

"I know them all," said Hilda. "Or as many as my children would tell me—  no doubt you have more. There was one that you told about old Ketty. You gave her another name, but I knew old Ketty at once."

"Yes, that was about old Ketty," said John. "It is not a bad story, though I always meant to mend it a little. But the children liked it as it was." He sighed. "And now I must tell my last story," he said. "I must tell that there is no land where there is no death, and that men's hopes are in vain. That will be a hard story to tell, but it must be told. Yet, first, I would like to look around the town. It has been so long."

"The house where your father lived still stands," said Hilda. "It is now town property, but I think the town might grant it to a famous teller of stories. My second' daughter's husband now being provost— " she said.

So that was how, after all his journeyings, John came back to his own house again— and matters worked out for him much as Hilda had said. Indeed, at times, he was almost happy, for if there were many of his stories the townspeople had heard from other mouths, there were many they did not know, and that is always pleasant for a story-teller. And even the old ones, he found, gained a certain new life from the faces of the listening children— the children not of his loins and yet of his town. They were in and out of his house and Hilda's house all the time— they slipped in quietly when he sat by the fire, and had slid upon stools to listen before he knew they were there—  you could hear their footsteps ic the street like the patter of rain. Now and then there would be two with their heads together, and John and Hilda would look upon them and smile.

Yet, when the dark fit came upon him, John would swear that he must set out upon his travels again and tell his last story— the story that no land exists where there is no death; and that death, not life, rules all things. Nor did Hilda attempt to dissuade him. But whenever he tried to frame that story in his mind, the words would not come. He could tell of his own search and his own folly, but that was not enough.

"Indeed, I think I have lost what little wits I had, Hilda," he said to her one day, in anger with himself, as they walked by the river. "For here is a story worth any man's telling, and yet it will not come to my mouth."

"It is a grim story," said Hilda.

"It is a true story," he said.

"Are you sure it is true?" she said, and he looked at his old companion with anger and surprise.

"Have I traveled the world for nothing?" he said. "What do you know of all this— you who sat at home?"

"It is true that I did not go with you, and true that I am neither traveler nor tale-teller," said Hilda. 'And yet I have my own ideas, for what they are. I have not found your land, but there are the faces and the bodies of my children. For, even though they die before me, I have put life into the world, and though all come to dust in the end, there shall yet be dust to that dust. So I say life rules all, not death."

"You talk like a woman, and they are always bound to have the last word," said John angrily, and flung away from her, for he was annoyed at her crossing him when she was not a tale-teller. Yet her words sank into his mind and remained there as he walked further on down the stream, striking at the reeds with his staff.

"Now I wish I could talk to Death himself about this," said John. "For I have neither chick nor child but only stories. And there are many with neither child nor story." And even as he argued with himself, his story began to take shape in his mind... .

It was a grim story and a sad one. For it showed how vain were the dreams and hopes of men of a land where there is no death— and how, from the cradle itself, behind every man and woman, followed Death, a leering companion, at all times ready to play his one monotonous jest. He came to the king and the beggar, and neither might nor humility could ward him away— he touched the strong man in his strength and the fair maiden in her bloom— he tumbled knights from their horses and children from their desks at school. Neither pulpit nor pew was exempt from him; he was there in the crowd at the fair, and the roar of battle, and the silence of the hermit's cell. Men might cry out against him manfully— they might pray and supplicate and dream— it all came to one in the end, and the end was dust. Nay, the world itself, when it was old, he would destroy in time, having fed his bad heart first with every creature of that world. To no purpose did the sun rise and the moon rise and the sky show its spangled stars— death was in the air and the earth and the waters under the earth— death everywhere, omnipresent, a king of terrors ruling a world of dupes and slaves.

John rolled the words on his tongue, and they were fine words. Let it be his last tale— yet it was truth and his best. He could see the faces grow white as he told it out, and he shivered as the wind came raw from the river.

"And yet, that is only Death's story," he said to himself.

Then he thought of the ways of life — not of any one way of it, but of life itselfi— and how it is renewed each year in leaf and seed and feather and fur and flesh. In the cold jellies of the streams there was life, and in the thrust of the tree-root deep in the earth, in the new-hatched chick and the child curled in the womb. And each year that life was renewed. In the early spring, with the snow still crusted on the ground, there was a change and a quickening as the earth turned back toward the sun, It began with melting ice and the running of the brooks— with the smell of new earth and the cry of the first-come birds and the peeping and buzzing noises of tiny things. It began and swelled through the summer, a great chorus of all the living, and through all the scale of creation Life wandered like a proud husbandman, sowing immortal seed. Though Death had been in the world for a million years, yet each new thing came into life as if death had never been— though Death slew and slew, he could not wipe life from the world.

And in the thoughts of men— aye, there Death was powerless— for though he could slay the body, he could slay neither thought nor dream. The virtuous he could slay but not their virtue— he could stop the hearts of the bold, but there was a memory and an example to inspirit other hearts. So went the great pageant of life, like an army against its adversary— and ever the battle was won and ever the battle lost; and yet to Death, in the end, was not the victory.

"And that is true also," thought John. "And yet— may we not have peace?"

THEN he saw his land as it must be, not as he had dreamed it— the land where there is no death— a land without autumn or winter but all one perpetual spring. Very beautiful it was at first sight, but very strange. For in it, as there was no death, there could be neither change nor time. Forever the waters were untroubled, forever the skies serene. Never could a new leaf grow upon a tree, for no old leaf had fallen to make way for it; never could a child be born, for with the birth of any child, the mother takes one willing step toward death. The rain might not weather the stone nor the wind blow the blossom nor the sun make folk feel lusty — for these things, too, mean change.

There could be no growth in such a land, for with growth comes completion and an end, and here there could be no end. He looked upon the faces of these who dwelt there, and they were comely and fair, but not like humankind. Their bodies were unwearied and strong, but upon them was an enormous lassitude and a blankness. For however they toiled and endeavored, their toil must be undone by evening, or change must enter their world, and with change, the struggle between life and death begins. They might love, but without the sharpness of brief and mortal love— they might plan, but with all time to plan in, the plan itself had no meaning. They knew not what it was to be safe, for they had not danger— they knew not what victory was, for they had never known defeat. On their backs was a huger load than any borne by mortal man — not man's load of a few years or many, but,a dark load of endless time, remorseless, absolute. For, in that land, each day was like another day and every day the same— and just beyond its borders. Death sat upon a stone, cracking his fingers and laughing.

Or was it Life who sat there and laughed, full-throated, for very joy of the struggle and the adversary, and the way in which his children took Time's harsh odds and yet made a mock of Time? John did not know, for the closer he looked, the less he could distinguish between the figures. Then the vision was gone, and he turned back toward his house, huddling his jacket about him, for the bleak wind of spring made him cough.

So, after that he was ill, and Hilda told him what she thought of him for wandering by the river without a cloak.

And with all she said, he agreed, for she was right and dear to him. For sonie days he was in fever; then the fever cleared and he felt better though weak. Yet he knew, as men sometimes do, that he would not mend. It did not matter very much to him as long as the children still came to hear his stories, and Hilda sat by his bed for an hour or so, talking quietly of old times. He knew that they were old, but he did not think of her as old.

"I thought, for a while, that I had been very bad for you, Hilda," he said to her one day. "But I see that too was wrong."

"Well, John, you were always a little conceited," said Hilda, with the frankness of an old friend. "I suppose that is part of being a story-teller. And I suppose that, in a story, the world might think ill of you for leaving me. But do you not think I had pleasure in a friend gone away to strange lands? It made me quite conceited myself for a time, I assure you. I led Jonas a merry dance because of it, poor man, and that was as well for him—  he would not have liked me half as well if I had not. And now it is time for your soup." And she patted his hand.

SO IT WENT till John knew he was dying and that he must tell his last story. There was a child in the room— a child of Hilda's— a grandchild— Hilda herself— he was not quite sure, but its cheeks were tear-stained as it looked at him.

"Why, what is the matter, child?" he said.

"Mother tells me Old John is dying," said the child in a thin voice. "And I don't want people to die. I don't want them to die at all."

"They do not die in the land where there is no death," said John reflectively, for he had his story in his mind. "I shall tell you a story of that land." "Where is that land?" asked the child eagerly.

"It is not here," said John. "And it is not over the mountains. And yet you shall go there, and I and Hilda, and all that you know."

He saw Death standing by the bed, but beside Death was Life, and both beckoned.

"Yes," he said. "It is only through living and dying that we may get to a land where there is no death. But do not be afraid, child, for you were born to the journey."

Then he rose and followed those who beckoned him, and Hilda closed the eyes of the man upon the bed.

_______________

15: Cool Air

H. P. Lovecraft

1890-1937

Tales of Magic and Mystery March 1928

YOU ASK ME to explain why I am afraid of a draught of cool air; why I shiver more than others upon entering a cold room, and seem nauseated and repelled when the chill of evening creeps through the heat of a mild autumn day. There are those who say I respond to cold as others do to a bad odour, and I am the last to deny the impression. What I will do is to relate the most horrible circumstance I ever encountered, and leave it to you to judge whether or not this forms a suitable explanation of my peculiarity.

It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude. I found it in the glare of mid-afternoon, in the clangour of a metropolis, and in the teeming midst of a shabby and commonplace rooming-house with a prosaic landlady and two stalwart men by my side. In the spring of 1923 I had secured some dreary and unprofitable magazine work in the city of New York, and being unable to pay any substantial rent, began drifting from one cheap boarding establishment to another in search of a room which might combine the qualities of decent cleanliness, endurable furnishings and very reasonable price. It soon developed that I had only a choice between different evils, but after a time I came upon a house in West Fourteenth Street which disgusted me much less than the others I had sampled.

The place was a four-story mansion of brownstone, dating apparently from the late forties, and fitted with woodwork and marble whose stained and sullied splendour argued a descent from high levels of tasteful opulence. In the rooms, large and lofty, and decorated with impossible paper and ridiculously ornate stucco cornices, there lingered a depressing mustiness and hint of obscure cookery; but the floors were clean, the linen tolerably regular, and the hot water not too often cold or turned off, so that I came to regard it as at least a bearable place to hibernate until one might really live again. The landlady, a slatternly, almost bearded Spanish woman named Herrero, did not annoy me with gossip or with criticisms of the late-burning electric light in my third floor front hall room; and my fellow lodgers were as quiet and uncommunicative as one might desire, being mostly Spaniards a little above the coarsest and crudest grade. Only the din of street-cars in the thoroughfare below proved a serious annoyance.

I had been there about three weeks when the first odd incident occurred. One evening at about eight I heard a spattering on the floor, and became suddenly aware that I had been smelling the pungent odor of ammonia for some time. Looking about, I saw that the ceiling was wet and dripping, the stuff apparently proceeding from a corner on the side toward the street. Anxious to stop the matter at its source, I hastened to the basement to tell the landlady, and was assured by her that the trouble would quickly be set right.

"Doctair Munoz," she cried as she rushed upstairs ahead of me, "he have speel hees chemicals. He ees too seeck for doctair heemself— seecker and seecker all the time— but he weel not have no othair for help. He ees vairy queer in hees seeckness— all day he takes funneeh smelling baths, and he cannot get excite or warm. All hees own housework he do— hees leetle room are full of bottles and machines and he do not work as doctair. But he was great once— my fathair in Barcelona have hear of heem— and only joost now he feex a arm of the plumber that get hurt of sudden. He nevair go out, only on roof, and my boy Esteban he breeng heem hees food and laundry and mediceens and chemicals. My God, the sal-ammoniac that man use for to keep heem cool!"

Mrs. Herrero disappeared up the staircase to the fourth floor, and I returned to my room. The ammonia ceased to drip and as I cleaned up what had spilled and opened the window for air, I heard the landlady's heavy footsteps above me. Doctor Munoz I had never heard, save for certain sounds as of some gasoline-driven mechanism, since his step was soft and gentle. I wondered for a moment what the strange affliction of this man might be and whether his obstinate refusal of outside aid were not the result of a rather baseless eccentricity. There is, I reflected tritely, an infinite deal of pathos in the state of an eminent person who has come down in the world.

I MIGHT NEVER have known Doctor Munoz had it not been for the heart attack that suddenly seized me one forenoon as I sat writing in my room. Physicians had told me of the danger of those spells, and I knew there was no time to be lost. So, remembering what the landlady had said about the invalid's help of the injured workman, I dragged myself upstairs and knocked feebly at the door above mine. My knock was answered in good English by a curious voice, some distance to the right, asking my name and business; and these things being stated, there came an opening of the door next to the one I had sought.

A rush of cool air greeted me; and though the day was one of the hottest of late June, I shivered as I crossed the threshold into a large apartment whose rich and tasteful decoration surprised me in this nest of squalor and seediness. A folding couch now filled its diurnal role of sofa, and the mahogany furniture, sumptuous hangings, old paintings and mellow bookshelves all bespoke a gentleman's study rather than a boarding-house bedroom. I now saw that the hall room above mine— the "leetle room" of bottles and machines which Mrs. Herrero had mentioned— was merely the laboratory of the doctor, and that his main living quarters lay in the spacious adjoining room whose convenient alcoves and large contiguous bathroom permitted him to hide all dressers and obtrusively utilitarian devices. Doctor Munoz, most certainly, was a man of birth, cultivation, and discrimination.

The figure before me was short but exquisitely proportioned, and clad in somewhat formal dress of perfect fit and cut. A high-bred face of masterful though not arrogant expression was adorned by a short, iron-grey beard, and an old-fashioned pince-nez shielded the full, dark eyes and surmounted an acquiline nose which gave a Moorish touch to a physiognomy otherwise dominantly Celt-Iberian. Thick, well-trimmed hair that argued the punctual calls of a barber was parted gracefully above a high forehead; and the whole picture was one of striking intelligence and superior blood and breeding.

Nevertheless, as I saw Doctor Munoz in that blast of cool air, I felt a repugnance which nothing in his aspect could justify. Only his lividly inclined complexion and coldness of touch could have afforded a physical basis for this feeling, and even these things should have been excusable considering the man's known invalidism. It might, too, have been the singular cold that alienated me; for such chilliness was abnormal on so hot a day, and the abnormal always excites aversion, distrust and fear.

But repugnance was soon forgotten in admiration, for the strange physician's extreme skill at once became manifest despite the ice-coldness and shakiness of his bloodless-looking hands. He clearly understood my needs at a glance, and ministered to them with a master's deftness, the while reassuring me in a finely modulated though oddly hollow and timbreless voice that he was the bitterest of sworn enemies to death, and had sunk his fortune and lost all his friends in a lifetime of bizarre experiment devoted to its bafflement and extirpation. Something of the benevolent fanatic seemed to reside in him, and he rambled on almost garrulously as he sounded my chest and mixed a suitable draught of drugs fetched from the smaller laboratory room. Evidently he found the society of a well-born man a rare novelty in this dingy environment, and was moved to unaccustomed speech as memories of better days surged over him.

His voice, if queer, was at least soothing, and I could not even perceive that he breathed as the fluent sentences rolled urbanely out. He sought to distract my mind from my own seizure by speaking of his theories and experiments; and I remember his tactfully consoling me about my weak heart by insisting that will and consciousness are stronger than organic life itself so that if a bodily frame be but originally healthy and carefully preserved, it may through a scientific enhancement of these qualities retain a kind of nervous animation despite the most serious impairments, defects, or even absences in the battery of specific organs. He might, he half-jestingly said, some day teach me to live— or at least to possess some kind of conscious existence— without any heart at all!

For his part, he was afflicted with a complication of maladies requiring a very exact regimen which included constant cold. Any marked rise in temperature might, if prolonged, affect him fatally, and the frigidity of his habitation— some fifty-five or fifty-six degrees Fahrenheit— was maintained by an absorption system of ammonia cooling, the gasoline engine whose pumps I had often heard in my room below.

RELIEVED of my seizure in a marvellously short while, I left the shivery place a disciple and devotee of the gifted recluse. After that I paid him frequently overcoated calls, listening while he told of secret researches and almost ghastly results, and trembling a bit when I examined the unconventional and astonishingly ancient volumes on his shelves. I was eventually I may add, almost cured of my disease for all time by his skilful ministrations. It seems that he did not scorn the incantations of the mediaevalists, since he believed these cryptic formulae to contain rare psychological stimuli which might conceivably have singular effects on the substance of a nervous system from which organic pulsations had fled.

I was touched by his account of the aged Doctor Torres of Valencia, who had shared his earlier experiments and nursed him through the great illness of eighteen years before, whence his present disorders proceeded. No sooner had the venerable practitioner saved his colleague than he himself succumbed to the grim enemy he had fought. Perhaps the strain had been too great; for Doctor Munoz made it whisperingly clear— though not in detail— that the methods of healing had been most extraordinary, involving scenes and processes not welcomed by elderly and conservative Galens.

As the weeks passed, I observed with regret that my new friend was indeed slowly but unmistakably losing ground physically, as Mrs. Herrero had suggested. The livid aspect of his countenance was intensified, his voice became more hollow and indistinct, his muscular motions were less perfectly co-ordinated, and his mind and will displayed less resilience and initiative. Of this sad change he seemed by no means unaware, and little by little his expression and conversation both took on a gruesome irony which restored in me something of the subtle repulsion I had originally felt.

He developed strange caprices, acquiring a fondness for exotic spices and Egyptian incense until his room smelled like the vault of a sepulchred Pharaoh in the Valley of Kings. At the same time, his demands for cold air increased, and with my aid he amplified the ammonia piping of his room and modified the pumps and feed of his refrigerating machine until he could keep the temperature as low as thirty-four or forty degrees, and finally even twenty-eight degrees; the bathroom and laboratory, of course, being less chilled, in order that water might not freeze and that chemical processes might not be impeded. The tenant adjoining him complained of the icy air from around the connecting door; so I helped him fit heavy hangings to obviate the difficulty.

A kind of growing horror, of outré and morbid cast, seemed to possess him. He talked of death incessantly, but laughed hollowly when such things as burial or funeral arrangements were gently suggested. All in all, he became a disconcerting and even gruesome companion; yet in my gratitude for his healing I could not well abandon him to the strangers around him, and was careful to dust his room and attend to his needs each day, muffled in a heavy ulster which I bought especially for the purpose. I likewise did much of his shopping, and gasped in bafflement at some of the chemicals he ordered from druggists and laboratory supply houses.

An increasing and unexplained atmosphere of panic seemed to rise around his apartment. The whole house, as I have said had a musty odour, but the smell in his room was worse, in spite of all the spices and incense and the pungent chemicals of the now incessant baths which he insisted on taking unaided. I perceived that it must be connected with his ailment, and shuddered when I reflected on what that ailment might be. Mrs. Herrero crossed herself when she looked at him, and gave him up unreservedly to me, not even letting her son Esteban continue to run errands for him.

When I suggested other physicians, the sufferer would fly into as much of a rage as he seemed to dare to entertain. He evidently feared the physical effect of violent emotion, yet his will and driving force waxed rather than waned, and he refused to be confined to his bed. The lassitude of his earlier ill days gave place to a return of his fiery purpose, so that he seemed about to hurl defiance at the death demon even as that ancient enemy seized him. The pretence of eating, always curiously like a formality with him, he virtually abandoned, and mental power alone appeared to keep him from total collapse.

He acquired a habit of writing long documents of some sort, which he carefully sealed and filed with injunctions that I transmit them after his death to certain persons whom he named— for the most part lettered East Indians, but including also a once celebrated French physician now generally thought dead, and about whom the most inconceivable things had been whispered. As it happened, I burned all these papers undelivered and unopened. His aspect and voice became utterly frightful, and his presence almost unbearable. One September day an unexpected glimpse of him induced an epileptic fit in a man who had come to repair his electric desk lamp, and for whom he prescribed effectively while keeping himself well out of sight. That man, oddly enough, had been through the terrors of the Great War without having incurred any fright so thorough.

THEN, in the middle of October, the horror of horrors came with stupefying suddenness. One night about eleven the pump of the refrigerating machine broke down, so that within three hours the process of ammonia cooling became impossible. Doctor Munoz summoned me by thumping on the floor, and I worked desperately to repair the injury while my host cursed in a tone whose lifeless, rattling hollowness surpassed description. My amateur efforts, however, proved of no use, and when I had brought in a mechanic from a neighbouring all-night garage we learned that nothing could be done until morning, when a new piston would have to be obtained. The moribund hermit's rage and fear, swelling to grotesque proportions, seemed likely to shatter what remained of his failing physique; and once a spasm caused him to clap his hands to his eyes and rush into the bathroom. He groped his way out with face tightly bandaged, and I never saw his eyes again.

The frigidity of the apartment was now sensibly diminishing, and at about five in the morning the Doctor retired to the bathroom, commanding me to keep him supplied with all the ice I could obtain at all-night drug stores and cafeterias. As I would return from my sometimes discouraging trips and lay my spoils before the closed bathroom door, I could hear a restless splashing within and a thick voice croaking out the order for "More— more!" At length a warm day broke, and the shops opened one by one. I asked Esteban either to help with the ice-fetching while I obtained the pump piston or to order the piston while I continued with the ice; but, instructed by his mother, he absolutely refused. Finally I hired a seedy-looking loafer whom I encountered on the corner of Eighth Avenue to keep the patient supplied with ice from a little shop where I introduced him, and applied myself diligently to the task of finding a pump piston and engaging workmen competent to install it.

The task seemed interminable, and I raged almost as violently as the hermit when I saw the hours slipping by in a breathless, foodless round of vain telephoning and a hectic quest from place to place, hither and thither by subway and surface car. About noon I encountered a suitable supply house far downtown, and at approximately one-thirty that afternoon arrived at my boarding-place with the necessary paraphernalia and two sturdy and intelligent mechanics. I had done all I could, and hoped I was in time.

Black terror, however, had preceded me. The house was in utter turmoil, and above the chatter of awed voices I heard a man praying in a deep basso. Fiendish things were in the air, and lodgers told over the beads of their rosaries as they caught the odour from beneath the Doctor's closed door. The lounger I had hired, it seems, had fled screaming and mad-eyed not long after his second delivery of ice: perhaps as a result of excessive curiosity. He could not, of course, have locked the door behind him, yet it was now fastened, presumably from the inside. There was no sound within save a nameless sort of slow thick dripping.

Briefly consulting with Mrs. Herrero and the workmen, despite a fear that gnawed my inmost soul, I advised the breaking down of the door; but the landlady found a way to turn the key from the outside with some wire device. We had previously opened the doors of all the other rooms on that hall and flung all the windows to the very top. Now, noses protected by handkerchiefs, we tremblingly invaded the accursed south room, which blazed with the warm sun of early afternoon.

A kind of dark, slimy trail led from the open bathroom door to the hall door, and thence to the desk, where a terrible little pool had accumulated. Something was scrawled there in pencil in an awful, blind hand on a piece of paper hideously smeared as though by the very claws that traced the hurried last words. Then the trail led to the couch and ended unutterably.

What was, or had been, on the couch I cannot and dare not say here. But this is what I shiveringly puzzled out on the stickily smeared paper before I drew a match and burned it to a crisp; what I puzzled out in terror as the landlady and two mechanics rushed frantically from that hellish place to babble their incoherent stories at the nearest police station. The nauseous words seemed well-nigh incredible in that yellow sunlight, with the clatter of cars and motor trucks ascending clamorously from crowded Fourteenth Street, yet I confess that I believed them then. Whether I believe them now I honestly do not know. There are things about which it is better not to speculate, and all that I can say is that I hate the smell of ammonia and grow faint at a draught of unusually cool air.

"The end," ran that noisome scrawl, "is here. No more ice— the man looked and ran away. Warmer every minute, and the tissues can't last. I fancy you know— what I said about the will and the nerves and the preserved body after the organs ceased to work. It was a good theory, but couldn't keep up indefinitely. There was a gradual deterioration I had not foreseen. Doctor Torres knew, but the shock killed him. He couldn't stand what he had to do; he had to get me in a strange, dark place, when he minded my letter and nursed me back. And the organs would never work again. It had to be done my way— artificial preservation— for you see I died that time eighteen years ago."

____________

16: The Predicament of De Plonville.

Robert Barr

1850-1912

Collected in: The Face and the Mask, 1894

YOUNG M. DE PLONVILLE of Paris enjoyed a most enviable position. He had all the money he needed, which is quite a different thing from saying he had all the money he wanted. He was well educated, and spoke three languages, that is, he spoke his own well and the other two badly, but as a man always prides himself on what he is least able to do, De Plonville fancied himself a linguist. His courage in speaking English to Englishmen and German to Germans showed that he was, at least, a brave man. There was a great deal of good and even of talent in De Plonville. This statement is made at the beginning, because everyone who knows De Plonville will at once unhesitatingly contradict it. His acquaintances thought him one of the most objectionable young men in Paris, and naval officers, when his name was mentioned, usually gave themselves over to strong and unjustifiable language. This was all on account of De Plonville's position, which, although enviable had its drawbacks.

His rank in the navy was such that it entitled him to no consideration whatever, but, unfortunately for his own popularity, De Plonville had a method of giving force to his suggestions. His father was a very big man in the French Government. He was so big a man that he could send a censure to the commander of a squadron in the navy, and the commander dare not talk back. It takes a very big man indeed to do this, and that was the elder De Plonville's size. But then it was well known that the elder De Plonville was an easy-going man who loved comfort, and did not care to trouble himself too much about the navy in his charge, and so when there was trouble, young De Plonville got the credit of it; consequently, the love of the officers did not flow out to him.

Often young De Plonville's idiotic impetuosity gave color to these suspicions. For instance, there is the well-known Toulon incident. In a heated controversy young De Plonville had claimed that the firing of the French ironclads was something execrable, and that the whole fleet could not hold their own at the cannon with any ten of the British navy. Some time after, the naval officers learned that the Government at Paris was very much displeased with the inaccurate gun practice of the fleet, and the hope was expressed that the commander would see his way to improving it. Of course, the officers could do nothing but gnash their teeth, try to shoot better, and hope for a time to come when the Government then in power would be out, and they could find some tangible pretence for hanging young De Plonville from the yard-arm.

All this has only a remote bearing upon this story, but we now come to a matter on which the story sinks or swims. De Plonville had a secret— not such a secret as is common in Parisian life, but one entirely creditable to him. It related to an invention intended to increase the efficiency of the French army. The army being a branch of the defences of his country with which De Plonville had nothing whatever to do, his attention naturally turned towards it. He spoke of this invention, once, to a friend, a lieutenant in the army. He expected to get some practical suggestions. He never mentioned it again to anyone.

"It is based on the principle of the umbrella," he said to his friend; "in fact, it was the umbrella that suggested it to me. If it could be made very light so as not to add seriously to the impedimenta at present carried by the soldier, it seems to me it would be exceedingly useful. Instead of being circular as an umbrella is, it must be oblong with sharp ends. It would have to be arranged so as to be opened and closed quickly, with the cloth thin, but impervious to water. When the army reached a river each soldier could open this, place it in the water, enter it with some care, and then paddle himself across with the butt-end of his gun, or even with a light paddle, if the carrying of it added but little to the weight, thus saving the building of temporary bridges. It seems to me such an invention ought to be of vast use in a forced march. Then at night it might be used as a sort of tent, or in a heavy rain it would form a temporary shelter. What do you think of the idea?" His friend had listened with half-closed eyes. He blew a whiff of cigarette smoke from his nostrils and answered:

"It is wonderful, De Plonville," he said drawlingly. "Its possibilities are vast— more so than even you appear to think. It would be very useful in our Alpine corps as well."

"I am glad you think so. But why there?"

"Well, you see, if the army reached a high peak looking into a deep valley, only to be reached over an inaccessible precipice, all the army would have to do would be to spread out your superb invention and use it as a parachute. The sight of the army of France gradually floating down into the valley would be so terrifying to the nations of Europe, that I imagine no enemy would wait for a gun to be fired. De Plonville, your invention will immortalize you, and immortalize the French army."

Young De Plonville waited to hear no more, but turned on his heel and strode away.

This conversation caused young De Plonville to make two resolutions; first, to mention his scheme to no one; second, to persevere and perfect his invention, thus causing confusion to the scoffer. There were several sub-resolutions dependent on these two. He would not enter a club, he would abjure society, he would not speak to a woman— he would, in short, be a hermit until his invention stood revealed before an astonished world.

All of which goes to show that young De Plonville was not the conceited, meddlesome fop his acquaintances thought him. But in the large and small resolutions he did not deduct the ten per cent. for the unknown quantity.

Where? That was the question. De Plonville walked up and down his room, and thought it out. A large map of France was spread on the table. Paris and the environs thereof were manifestly impossible. He needed a place of seclusion. He needed a stretch of water. Where then should be the spot to which coming generations would point and say, "Here, at this place, was perfected De Plonville's celebrated parachute-tent-bateau invention."

No, not parachute. Hang the parachute! That was the scoffing lieutenant's word. De Plonville paused for a moment to revile his folly in making a confidant of any army man.

There was a sufficiency of water around the French coast, but it was too cold at that season of the year to experiment in the north and east. There was left the Mediterranean. He thought rapidly of the different delightful spots along the Riviera— Cannes, St. Raphael, Nice, Monte Carlo,— but all of these were too public and too much thronged with visitors. The name of the place came to him suddenly, and, as he stopped his march to and fro, De Plonville wondered why it had not suggested itself to him at the very first. Hyères! It seemed to have been planned in the Middle Ages for the perfecting of just such an invention. It was situated two or three miles back from the sea, the climate was perfect, there was no marine parade, the sea coast was lonely, and the bay sheltered by the islands. It was an ideal spot.

De Plonville easily secured leave of absence. Sons of fathers high up in the service of a grateful country seldom have any difficulty about a little thing like that. He purchased a ticket for that leisurely train which the French with their delicious sense of humor call the "Rapide," and in due time found himself with his various belongings standing on the station platform at Hyères.

Few of us are as brave as we think ourselves. De Plonville flinched when the supreme moment came, and perhaps that is why the Gods punished him. He had resolved to go to one of the country inns at Carqueyranne on the coast, but this was in a heroic mood when the lieutenant had laughed at his project. Now in a cooler moment he thought of the cuisine of Carqueyranne and shuddered. There are sacrifices which no man should be called upon to endure, so the naval officer hesitated, and at last directed the porter to put his luggage on the top of the Costebelle Hotel "bus." There would be society at the hotel it is true, but he could avoid it, while if he went to the rural tavern he could not avoid the cooking. Thus he smothered his conscience. Lunch at Costebelle seemed to justify his choice of an abiding-place. The surroundings of the hotel were dangerously charming to a man whose natural inclination was towards indolent enjoyment. It was a place to "Loaf and invite your soul," as Walt Whitman phrases it. Plonville, who was there incognito, for he had temporarily dropped the "De," strolled towards the sea in the afternoon, with the air of one who has nothing on his mind. No one to see him would have suspected he was the future Edison of France. When he reached the coast at the ruins of the ancient Roman naval station called Pomponiana, he smote his thigh with joy. He had forgotten that at this spot there had been erected a number of little wooden houses, each larger than a bathing-machine and smaller than a cottage, which were used in summer by the good people of Hyères, and in winter were silently vacant. The largest of these would be exactly the place for him, and he knew he would have no difficulty in renting it for a month or two. Here, he could bring down his half-finished invention; here, work at it all day unmolested; and here test its sailing qualities with no onlookers.

He walked up the road, and hailed the ancient bus which jogs along between Toulon and Hyères by way of the coast; mounted beside the driver, and speedily got information about the owner of the cottages at Pomponiana.

As he expected, he had no difficulty in arranging with the proprietor for the largest of the little cottages, but he thought he detected a slight depression on the right eyelid as that person handed him the key. Had the owner suspected his purpose? he asked himself anxiously, as he drove back from the town to Costebelle. Impossible. He felt, however, that he could not be too secret about his intentions. He had heard of inventors being forestalled just at the very moment of success.

He bade the driver wait, and placed that part of his luggage in the cab which consisted of his half-finished invention and the materials for completing it. Then he drove to the coast, and after placing the packages on the ground, paid and dismissed the man. When the cab was out of sight, he carried the things to the cottage and locked them in. His walk up the hill to the hotel rendered the excellent dinner provided doubly attractive.

Next morning he was early at work, and speedily began to realize how many necessary articles he had forgotten at Paris. He hoped he would be able to get them at Hyères, but his remembrance of the limited resources of the town made him somewhat doubtful. The small windows on each side gave him scarcely enough light, but he did not open the door, fearing the curiosity of a chance passer-by. One cannot be too careful in maturing a great invention.

Plonville had been at work for possibly an hour and a half, when he heard someone singing, and that very sweetly. She sang with the joyous freedom of one who suspected no listener. The song came nearer and nearer. Plonville standing amazed, dropped his implements, and stole to the somewhat obscure little window. He saw a vision of fresh loveliness dressed in a costume he never before beheld on a vision. She came down the bank with a light, springy step to the next cottage, took a key that hung at her belt, and threw open the door. The song was hushed, but not silenced, for a moment, and then there came from out the cottage door the half of a boat that made Plonville gasp. Like the costume, he had never before seen such a boat. It was exactly the shape in which he had designed his invention, and was of some extra light material, for the sylph-like girl in the extraordinary dress pushed it forth without even ceasing her song. Next moment, she came out herself and stood there while she adjusted her red head-gear. She drew the boat down to the water, picked out of it a light, silver-mounted paddle, stepped deftly aboard, and settled down to her place with the airy grace of a thistle-down. There was no seat in the boat, Plonville noted with astonishment. The sea was very smooth, and a few strokes of the paddle sent girl and craft out of sight along the coast. Plonville drew a deep breath of bewilderment. It was his first sight of a Thames boating costume and a canoe.

This, then, was why the man winked when he gave him the key. Plonville was in a quandary. Should he reveal himself when she returned? It did not seem to be quite the thing to allow the girl to believe she had the coast to herself when in fact she hadn't. But then there was his invention to think of. He had sworn allegiance to that. He sat down and pondered. English, evidently. He had no idea English girls were so pretty, and then that costume! It was very taking. The rich, creamy folds of the white flannel, so simple, yet so complete, lingered in his memory. Still, what was he there for? His invention certainly. The sneer of the lieutenant stung his memory. That Miss Whatever-her-name-might-be had rented the next box was nothing to him; of course not. He waved her aside and turned to his work. He had lost enough of time as it was; he would lose no more.

Although armed with this heroic resolution, his task somehow did not seem so interesting as before, and he found himself listening now and then for the siren's song. He dramatized imaginary situations, which is always bad for practical work. He saw the frail craft shattered or overturned, and beheld himself bravely buffeting the waves rescuing the fair girl in white. Then he remembered with a sigh that he was not a good swimmer. Possibly she was more at home in the waves than he was. Those English seemed on such terms of comradeship with the sea.

At last, intuition rather than hearing told him she had returned. He walked on tip-toe to the dingy window. She was pulling the light canoe up from the water. He checked his impulse to offer assistance. When the girl sprang lightly up the bank, Plonville sighed and concluded he had done enough work for the day. As he reached the road, he noticed that the white figure in the distance did not take the way to the hotel, but towards one of the neighboring Chateaux.

In the afternoon, Plonville worked long at his invention, and made progress. He walked back to his hotel with the feeling of self-satisfaction which indolent men have on those rare occasions when they are industrious. He had been uninterrupted, and his resolutions were again heroic. What had been done one afternoon might be done all afternoons. He would think no more of the vision he had seen and he would work only after lunch, thus avoiding the necessity of revealing himself, or of being a concealed watcher of her actions. Of course she came always in the morning, for the English are a methodical people, and Plonville was so learned in their ways that he knew what they did one day they were sure to do the next. An extraordinary nation, Plonville said to himself with a shrug of his shoulders, but then of course, we cannot all be French.

It is rather a pity that temptation should step in just when a man has made up his mind not to deviate from a certain straight line of conduct. There was to be a ball that night at the big hotel. Plonville had refused to have anything to do with it. He had renounced the frivolities of life. He was there for rest, quiet, and study. He was adamant. That evening the invitation was again extended to him, the truth being that there was a scarcity of young men, as is usually the case at such functions. Plonville was about to re-state his objections to frivolity when through the open door he caught a glimpse of two of the arriving guests ascending the stair. The girl had on a long opera cloak with some fluffy white material round the neck and down the front. A filmy lace arrangement rested lightly on her fair hair. It was the lady of the canoe— glorified. Plonville wavered and was lost. He rushed to his room and donned his war paint. Say what you like, evening dress improves the appearance of a man. Besides this, he had resumed the De once more, and his back was naturally straighter. De Plonville looked well.

They were speedily introduced, of course. De Plonville took care of that, and the manager of the ball was very grateful to him for coming, and for looking so nice. There was actually an air of distinction about De Plonville. She was the Hon. Margaret Stansby, he learned. Besides being unfair, it would be impossible to give their conversation. It would read like a section from Ollendorf's French-English exercises. De Plonville, as has been said, was very proud of his English, and, unfortunately, the Hon. Margaret had a sense of humor. He complimented her by saying that she talked French even better than he talked English, which, while doubtless true, was not the most tactful thing De Plonville might have said. It was difficult to listen to such a statement given in his English, and refrain from laughing. Margaret, however, scored a great victory and did not laugh. The evening passed pleasantly, she thought; delightfully, De Plonville thought.

It was hard after this to come down to the prosaic work of completing a cloth canoe-tent, but, to De Plonville's credit, he persevered. He met the young lady on several occasions, but never by the coast. The better they became acquainted the more he wished to have the privilege of rescuing her from some deadly danger; but the opportunity did not come. It seldom does, except in books, as he bitterly remarked to himself. The sea was exasperatingly calm, and Miss Margaret was mistress of her craft, as so many charming women are. He thought of buying a telescope and watching her, for she had told him that one of her own delights was looking at the evolutions of the ironclads through a telescope on the terrace in front of the Chateau.

At last, in spite of his distractions, De Plonville added the finishing touches to his notable invention, and all that remained was to put it to a practical test. He chose a day when that portion of the French navy which frequents the Rade d'Hyères was not in sight, for he did not wish to come within the field of the telescope at the Chateau terrace. He felt that he would not look his best as he paddled his new-fangled boat. Besides, it might sink with him.

There was not a sail in sight as he put forth. Even the fishing boats of Carqueyranne were in shelter. The sea was very calm, and the sun shone brightly. He had some little difficulty in getting seated, but he was elated to find that his invention answered all expectations. As he went further out he noticed a great buoy floating a long distance away. His evil genius suggested that it would be a good thing to paddle out to the buoy and back. Many men can drink champagne and show no sign, but few can drink success and remain sober. The eccentric airs assumed by noted authors prove the truth of this. De Plonville was drunk, and never suspected it. The tide, what little there is of it in the Mediterranean, helped him, and even the gentle breeze blew from the shore. He had some doubts as to the wisdom of his course before he reached the gigantic red buoy, but when he turned around and saw the appalling distance to the coast, he shuddered.

The great buoy was of iron, apparently boiler plate, and there were rings fastened to its side. It was pear-shaped with the point in the water, fastened to a chain that evidently led to an anchor. He wondered what it was for. As he looked up it was moved by some unseen current, and rolled over as if bent on the destruction of his craft. Forgetting himself, he sprang up to ward it off, and instantly one foot went through the thin waterproof that formed the bottom and sides of his boat. He found himself struggling in the water almost before he realized what had happened. Kicking his foot free from the entanglement that threatened to drag him under, he saw his invention slowly settle down through the clear, green water. He grasped one of the rings of the buoy, and hung there for a moment to catch his breath and consider his position. He rapidly came to the conclusion that it was not a pleasant one, but further than that he found it difficult to go. Attempting to swim ashore would be simply one form of suicide. The thing to do was evidently to get on top of the buoy, but he realized that if he tried to pull himself up by the rings it would simply roll him under. He was surprised to find, however, that such was not the case. He had under-estimated both its size and its weight.

He sat down on top of it and breathed heavily after his exertions, gazing for a few moments at the vast expanse of shimmering blue water. It was pretty, but discouraging. Not even a fishing-boat was in sight, and he was in a position where every prospect pleases, and only man is in a vile situation. The big iron island had an uncomfortable habit every now and then of lounging partly over to one side or the other, so that De Plonville had to scramble this way or that to keep from falling off. He vaguely surmised that his motions on these occasions lacked dignity. The hot sun began to dry the clothes on his back, and he felt his hair become crisp with salt. He recollected that swimming should be easy here, for he was on the saltiest portion of the saltiest open sea in the world. Then his gaze wandered over the flat lands about Les Salins where acres of ground were covered artificially with Mediterranean water so that the sun may evaporate it, and leave the coarse salt used by the fishermen of the coast. He did not yet feel hungry, but he thought with regret of the good dinner which would be spread at the hotel that evening, when, perhaps, he would not be there.

He turned himself around and scanned the distant Islands of Gold, but there was as little prospect of help from that quarter as from the mainland. Becoming more accustomed to the swayings of the big globe, he stood up. What a fool he had been to come so far, and he used French words between his teeth that sounded terse and emphatic. Still there was little use thinking of that. Here he was, and here he would stay, as a President of his country had once remarked. The irksomeness and restraint of his position began to wear on his nerves, and he cried aloud for something— anything— to happen rather than what he was enduring.

Something happened.

From between the Islands, there slowly appeared a great modern French ship of war, small in the distance. Hope lighted up the face of De Plonville. She must pass near enough to enable his signalling to be seen by the lookout. Heavens! how leisurely she moved! Then a second war vessel followed the first into view, and finally a third. The three came slowly along in stately procession. De Plonville removed his coat and waved it up and down to attract attention. So intent was he upon this that he nearly lost his footing, and, realizing that the men-of-war were still too far away, he desisted. He sat down as his excitement abated, and watched their quiet approach. Once it seemed to him they had stopped, and he leaned forward, shading his eyes with his hand, and watched them eagerly. They were just moving— that was all.

Suddenly, from the black side of the foremost battle-ship, there rolled upward a cloud of white smoke, obscuring the funnels and the rigging, thinning out into the blue sky over the top-masts. After what seemed a long interval the low, dull roar of a cannon reached him, followed by the echo from the high hills of the island, and later by the fainter re-echo from the mountains on the mainland. This depressed De Plonville, for, if the ships were out for practice, the obscuring smoke around them would make the seeing of his signalling very improbable; and then that portion of the fleet might return the way it came, leaving him in his predicament. From the second ironclad arose a similar cloud, and this time far to his left there spurted up from the sea a jet of water, waving in the air like a plume for a moment, then dropping back in a shower on the ruffled surface.

The buoy was a target!

As De Plonville realized its use, he felt that uncomfortable creeping of the scalp which we call, the hair standing on end. The third cannon sent up its cloud, and De Plonville's eyes extended at what they saw. Coming directly towards him was a cannon ball, skipping over the water like a thrown pebble. His experience in the navy— at Paris— had never taught him that such a thing was possible. He slid down flat on the buoy, till his chin rested on the iron, and awaited the shock. A hundred yards from him the ball dipped into the water and disappeared. He found that he had ineffectually tried to drive his nails into the boiler plate, until his fingers' ends were sore. He stood up and waved his arms, but the first vessel fired again, and the ball came shrieking over him so low that he intuitively ducked his head. Like a pang of physical pain, the thought darted through his brain that he had instigated a censure on the bad firing of these very boats. Doubtless they saw a man on the buoy, but as no man had any business there, the knocking of him off by a cannon ball would be good proof of accuracy of aim. The investigation which followed would be a feather in the cap of the officer in charge, whatever the verdict. De Plonville, with something like a sigh, more than suspected that his untimely death would not cast irretrievable gloom over the fleet.

Well, a man has to die but once, and there is little use in making a fuss over the inevitable. He would meet his fate calmly and as a Frenchman should, with his face to the guns. There was a tinge of regret that there would be no one to witness his heroism. It is always pleasant on such occasions to have a war correspondent, or at least a reporter, present. It is best to be as comfortable as possible under any circumstances, so De Plonville sat down on the spheroid and let his feet dangle toward the water. The great buoy for some reason floated around until it presented its side to the ships. None of the balls came so near as those first fired— perhaps because of the accumulated smoke. New features of the situation continued to present themselves to De Plonville as he sat there. The firing had been going on for some time before he reflected that if a shot punctured the buoy it would fill and sink. Perhaps their orders were to fire until the buoy disappeared. There was little comfort in this suggestion.

Firing had ceased for some minutes before he noticed the fact. A bank of thinning smoke rested on the water between the buoy and the ships. He saw the ironclads move ponderously around and steam through this bank turning broadside on again in one, two, three, order. He watched the evolution with his chin resting on his hands, not realizing that the moment for signalling had come. When the idea penetrated his somewhat dazed mind, he sprang to his feet, but his opportunity had gone. The smoke of the first gun rose in the air, there was a clang of iron on iron, and De Plonville found himself whirling in space: then sinking in the sea. Coming breathless to the surface, he saw the buoy revolving slowly, and a deep dinge in its side seemed to slide over its top and disappear into the water, showing where the shot had struck. The second boat did not fire, and he knew that they were examining the buoy with their glasses. He swam around to the other side, intending to catch a ring and have it haul him up where he could be seen. Before he reached the place the buoy was at rest again, and as he laboriously climbed on top more dead than alive, the second ship opened fire. He lay down at full length exhausted, and hoped if they were going to hit they would hit quick. Life was not worth having on these conditions. He felt the hot sun on his back, and listened dreamily to the cannon. Hope was gone, and he wondered at himself for feeling a remote rather than an active interest in his fate. He thought of himself as somebody else, and felt a vague impersonal pity. He criticised the random firing, and suspected the hit was merely a fluke. When his back was dry he rolled lazily over and lay gazing up at the cloudless sky. For greater comfort he placed his hands beneath his head. The sky faded, and a moment's unconsciousness intervened.

"This won't do," he cried, shaking himself. "If I fall asleep I shall roll off."

He sat up again, his joints stiff with his immersion, and watched the distant ironclads. He saw with languid interest a ball strike the water, take a new flight, and plunge into the sea far to the right. He thought that the vagaries of cannon-balls at sea would make an interesting study.

"Are you injured?" cried a clear voice behind him.

"Mon Dieu!" shouted the young man in a genuine fright, as he sprang to his feet.

"Oh, I beg pardon," as if a rescuer need apologize, "I thought you were M. De Plonville."

"I am De Plonville."

"Your hair is grey," she said in an awed whisper; then added, "and no wonder."

"Mademoiselle," replied the stricken young man, placing his hand on his heart, "it is needless to deny— I do not deny— that I was frightened— but— I did not think— not so much as that, I regret. It is so— so— theatrical— I am deeply sorrowful."

"Please say no more, but come quickly. Can you come down? Step exactly in the middle of the canoe. Be careful— it is easily upset— and sit down at once. That was very nicely done."

"Mademoiselle, allow me at least to row the boat."

"It is paddling, and you do not understand it. I do. Please do not speak until we are out of range. I am horribly frightened."

"You are very, very brave."

"Hs-s-sh."

Miss Stansby wielded the double-bladed paddle in a way a Red Indian might have envied. Once she uttered a little feminine shriek as a cannon ball plunged into the water behind them; but as they got further away from the buoy those on the ironclads appeared to notice that a boat was within range, and the firing ceased.

Miss Stansby looked fixedly at the solemn young man sitting before her; then placed her paddle across the canoe, bent over it, and laughed. De Plonville saw the reaction had come. He said sympathetically:—

"Ah, Mademoiselle, do not, I beg. All danger is over, I think."

"I am not frightened, don't think it," she cried, flashing a look of defiance at him, and forgetting her admission of fear a moment before. "My father was an Admiral. I am laughing at my mistake. It is salt."

"What is?" asked her astonished passenger.

"In your hair."

He ran his fingers through his hair, and the salt rattled down to the bottom of the canoe. There was something of relief in his laugh.

DE PLONVILLE always believes the officers on board the gunboats recognized him. When it was known in Paris that he was to be married to the daughter of an English Admiral, whom rumor said he had bravely saved from imminent peril, the army lieutenant remarked that she could never have heard him speak her language—which, as we know, is not true.

__________

17: The Ideal

Stanley G. Weinbaum

1902-1935

Wonder Stories, Sep 1935

Collected in: A Century of Science Fiction, 1962

A Haskel van Manderpootz story. Weinbaum wrote just 3 stories featuring this vain and eccentric scientist.

"THIS," said the Franciscan, "is my Automaton, who at the proper time will speak, answer whatsoever question I may ask, and reveal all secret knowledge to me." He smiled as he laid his hand affectionately on the iron skull that topped the pedestal.

The youth gazed open-mouthed, first at the head and then at the Friar. "But it's iron!" he whispered. "The head is iron, good father."

"Iron without, skill within, my son," said Roger Bacon. "It will speak, at the proper time and in its own manner, for so have I made it. A clever man can twist the devil's arts to God's ends, thereby cheating the fiend— Sst! There sounds vespers! Plena gratia, ave Virgo."

But it did not speak. Long hours, long weeks, the doctor mirabilis watched his creation, but iron lips were silent and the iron eyes dull, and no voice but the great man's own sounded in his monkish cell, nor was there ever an answer to all the questions that he asked— until one day when he sat surveying his work, composing a letter to Duns Scotus in distant Cologne— one day—

"Time is!" said the image, and smiled benignly.

The Friar looked up. "Time is, indeed," he echoed. "Time it is that you give utterance, and to some assertion less obvious than that time is. For of course time is, else there were nothing at all. Without time— "

"Time was!" rumbled the image, still smiling, but sternly, at the statue of Draco.

"Indeed time was," said the monk, "Time was, is, and will be, for time is that medium in which events occur. Matter exists in space, but events—

The image smiled no longer. "Time is past!" it roared in tones deep as the cathedral bell outside, and burst into ten thousand pieces.

"THERE," said old Haskel van Manderpootz, shutting the book, "is my classical authority in this experiment. This story, overlaid as it is with medieval myth and legend proves that Roger Bacon himself attempted the experiment and failed." He shook a long finger at me. "Yet do not get the impression, Dixon, that Friar Bacon was not a great man. He was— extremely great, in fact; he lighted the torch that his namesake Francis Bacon took up four centuries later, and that now van Manderpootz rekindles."

I stared in silence,

"Indeed," resumed the Professor, "Roger Bacon might almost be called a thirteenth-century van Manderpootz, or van Manderpootz a twenty-first-century Roger Bacon. His Opus Majus, Opus Minor, and Opus Tertium—"

"What," I interrupted impatiently, "has all this to do with— that?" I indicated the clumsy metal robot standing in the corner of the laboratory.

"Don't interrupt!" snapped van Manderpootz.

At this point I fell out of my chair. The mass of metal had ejaculated something like "A-a-gh-rasp!" and had lunged a single pace toward the window, arms upraised. "What the devil!" I sputtered as the thing dropped its arms and returned stolidly to its place.

"A car must have passed in the alley," said van Manderpootz indifferently. "Now as I was saying, Roger Bacon—"

I ceased to listen. When van Manderpootz is determined to finish a statement, interruptions are worse than futile. As an ex-student of his, I know. So I permitted my thoughts to drift to certain personal problems of my own, particularly Tips Alva, who was the most pressing problem of the moment. Yes, I mean Tips Alva the vision dancer, the little blonde imp who entertains on the Yerba Mate hour for that Brazilian company. Chorus girls, dancers, and television stars are a weakness of mine; maybe it indicates that there's a latent artistic soul in me. Maybe.

I'm Dixon Wells, you know, scion of the N. J. Wells Corporation, Engineers Extraordinary. I'm supposed to be an engineer myself; I say supposed, because in the seven years since my graduation, my father hasn't given me much opportunity to prove it. He has a strong sense of the value of time, and I'm cursed with the unenviable quality of being late to anything and for everything. He even asserts that the occasional designs I submit are late Jacobean, but that isn't fair. They're Post-Romanesque.

Old N. J. also objects to my penchant for ladies of the stage and 'vision screen, and periodically threatens to cut my allowance, though that's supposed to be a salary. It's inconvenient to be so dependent, and sometimes I regret that unfortunate market crash of 2009 that wiped out my own money, although it did keep me from marrying Whimsy White, and van Manderpootz, through his subjunctivisor, succeeded in proving that that would have been a catastrophe. But it turned out nearly as much of a disaster anyway, as far as my feelings were concerned. It took me months to forget Joanna Caldwell and her silvery eyes. Just another instance when I was a little late.

Van Manderpootz himself is my old Physics Professor, head of the Department of Newer Physics at N. Y. U., and a genius, but a bit eccentric. Judge for yourself.

"And that's the thesis," he said suddenly, interrupting my thoughts.

"Eh? Oh, of course. But what's that grinning robot got to do with it?"

He purpled. "I've just told you!" he roared. "Idiot! Imbecile! To dream while van Manderpootz talks! Get out! Get out!"

I got. It was late anyway, so late that I overslept more than usual in the morning, and suffered more than the usual lecture on promptness from my father at the office.

Van Manderpootz had forgotten his anger by the next time I dropped in for an evening. The robot still stood in the corner near the window, and I lost no time asking its purpose.

"It's just a toy I had some of the students construct," he explained. "There's a screen of photoelectric cells behind the right eye, so connected that when a certain pattern is thrown on them, it activates the mechanism. The thing's plugged into the light-circuit, but it really ought to run on gasoline."

"Why?"

"Well, the pattern it's set for is the shape of an automobile. See here." He picked up a card from his desk, and cut in the outlines of a streamlined car like those of that year. "Since only one eye is used," he continued, "the thing can't tell the difference between a full-sized vehicle at a distance and this small outline nearby. It has no sense of perspective."

He held the bit of cardboard before the eye of the mechanism. Instantly came its roar of "A-a-gh-rasp!" and it leaped forward a single pace, arms upraised. Van Manderpootz withdrew the card, and again the thing relapsed stolidly into its place.

"What the devil!" I exclaimed. "What's it for?"

"Does van Manderpootz ever do work without reason back of it? I use it as a demonstration in my seminar."

"To demonstrate what?"

"The power of reason," said van Manderpootz solemnly.

"How? And why ought it to work on gasoline instead of electric power?"

"One question at a time, Dixon. You have missed the grandeur of van Manderpootz's concept. See here, this creature, imperfect as it is, represents the predatory machine. It is the mechanical parallel of the tiger, lurking in its jungle to leap on living prey. This monster's jungle is the city; its prey is the unwary machine that follows the trails called streets. Understand?"

"No."

"Well, picture this automaton, not as it is, but as van Manderpootz could make it if he wished. It lurks gigantic in the shadows of buildings; it creeps stealthily through dark alleys; it skulks on deserted streets, with its gasoline engine purring quietly. Then— an unsuspecting automobile flashes its image on the screen behind its eyes. It leaps. It seizes its prey, swinging it in steel arms to its steel jaws. Through the metal throat of its victim crash steel teeth; the blood of its prey— the gasoline, that is— is drained into its stomach, or its gas-tank. With renewed strength it flings away the husk and prowls on to seek other prey. It is the machine-carnivore, the tiger of mechanics."

I suppose I stared dumbly. It occurred to me suddenly that the brain of the great van Manderpootz was cracking. "What the—?" I gasped.

"That," he said blandly, "is but a concept. I have many another use for the toy. I can prove anything with it, anything I wish."

"You can? Then prove something."

"Name your proposition, Dixon."

I hesitated, nonplussed.

"Come!" he said impatiently. "Look here; I will prove that anarchy is the ideal government, or that Heaven and Hell are the same place, or that— "

"Prove that!" I said. "About Heaven and Hell."

"Easily. First we will endow my robot with intelligence. I add a mechanical memory by means of the old Cushman delayed valve; I add a mathematical sense with any of the calculating machines; I give it a voice and a vocabulary with the magnetic-impulse wire phonograph. Now the point I make is this: Granted an intelligent machine, does it not follow that every other machine constructed like it must have the identical qualities? Would not each robot given the same insides have exactly the same character?"

"No!" I snapped. "Human beings can't make two machines exactly alike. There'd be tiny differences; one would react quicker than others, or one would prefer Fox Airsplitters as prey, while another reacted most vigorously to Carnecars. In other words, they'd have— individuality!" I grinned in triumph.

"My point exactly," observed van Manderpootz. "You admit, then, that this individuality is the result of imperfect workmanship. If our means of manufacture were perfect, all robots would be identical, and this individuality would not exist. Is that true?"

"I— suppose so."

"Then I argue that our own individuality is due to our falling short of perfection. All of us— even van Manderpootz— are individuals only because we are not perfect. Were we perfect, each of us would be exactly like everyone else. True?"

"Uh— yes."

"But Heaven, by definition, is a place where all is perfect. Therefore, in Heaven everybody is exactly like everybody else; and therefore, everybody thoroughly and completely bored. There is no torture like boredom, Dixon, and—  Well, have I proved my point?"

I was floored. "But— about anarchy, then?" I stammered.

"Simple. Very simple for van Manderpootz. See here; with a perfect nation— that is, one whose individuals are all exactly alike, which I have just proved to constitute perfection— with a perfect nation, I repeat, laws and government are utterly superfluous. If everybody reacts to stimuli in the same way, laws are quite useless, obviously. If, for instance, a certain event occurred that might lead to a declaration of war, why, everybody in such a nation would vote for war at the same instant. Therefore government is unnecessary, and therefore anarchy is the ideal government, since it is the proper government for a perfect race." He paused. "I shall now prove that anarchy is not the ideal government—"

"Never mind!" I begged. "Who am I to argue with van Manderpootz? But is that the whole purpose of this dizzy robot? Just a basis for logic?" The mechanism replied with its usual rasp as it leaped toward some vagrant car beyond the window.

"Isn't that enough?" growled van Manderpootz. "However"— his voice dropped—"I have even a greater destiny in mind. My boy, van Manderpootz has solved the riddle of the universe!" He paused impressively. "Well, why don't you say something?"

"Uh!" I gasped. "It's— uh— marvelous!"

"Not for van Manderpootz," he said modestly.

"But— what is it?"

"Eh— oh!" He frowned. "Well, I'll tell you, Dixon. You won't understand, but I'll tell you." He coughed. "As far back as the early twentieth century," he resumed, "Einstein proved that energy is particular. Matter is also particular, and now van Manderpootz adds that space and time are discrete!"

He glared at me.

"Energy and matter are particular," I murmured, "and space and time are discrete! How very moral of them!"

"Imbecile!" he blazed. "To pun on the words of van Manderpootz! You know very well that I mean particular and discrete in the physical sense. Matter is composed of particles, therefore it is particular. The particles of matter are called electrons, protons, and neutrons, and those of energy, quanta. I now add two others, the particles of space I call spations, those of time, chronons."

"And what in the devil," I asked, "are particles of space and time?"

"Just what I said!" snapped van Manderpootz. "Exactly as the particles of matter are the smallest pieces of matter that can exist, just as there is no such thing as a half of an electron, or for that matter, half a quantum, so the chronon is the smallest possible fragment of time, and the spation the smallest possible bit of space. Neither time nor space is continuous; each is composed of these infinitely tiny fragments."

"Well, how long is a chronon in time? How big is a spation in space?"

"Van Manderpootz has even measured that. A chronon is the length of time it takes one quantum of energy to push one electron from one electronic orbit to the next. There can obviously be no shorter interval of time, since an electron is the smallest unit of matter and the quantum the smallest unit of energy. And a spation is the exact volume of a proton. Since nothing smaller exists, that is obviously the smallest unit of space."

"Well, look here," I argued. "Then what's in between these particles of space and time? If time moves, as you say, in jerks of one chronon each, what's between the jerks?"

"Ah!" said the great van Manderpootz. "Now we come to the heart of the matter. In between the particles of space and time, must obviously be something that is neither space, time, matter, nor energy. A hundred years ago Shapley anticipated van Manderpootz in a vague way when he announced his cosmo-plasma, the great underlying matrix in which time and space and the universe are embedded. Now van Manderpootz announces the ultimate unit, the universal particle, the focus in which matter, energy, time, and space meet, the unit from which electrons, protons, neutrons, quanta, spations, and chronons are all constructed. The riddle of the universe is solved by what I have chosen to name the cosmon." His blue eyes bored into me.

"Magnificent!" I said feebly, knowing that some such word was expected. "But what good is it?"

"What good is it?" he roared. "It provides— or will provide, once I work out a few details— the means of turning energy into time, or space into matter, or time into space, or—" He sputtered into silence.

"Fool!" he muttered. "To think that you studied under the tutelage of van Manderpootz. I blush; I actually blush!"

One couldn't have told it if he were blushing. His face was always rubicund enough. "Colossal!" I said hastily. "What a mind!"

That mollified him. "But that's not all," he proceeded. "'Van Manderpootz never stops short of perfection. I now announce the unit particle of thought— the psychon!"

This was a little too much. I simply stared.

"Well may you be dumbfounded," said van Manderpootz. "I presume you are aware, by hearsay at least, of the existence of thought. The psychon, the unit of thought, is one electron plus one proton, which are bound so as to form one neutron, embedded in one cosmon, occupying a volume of one spation, driven by one quantum for a period of one chronon. Very obvious; very simple."

"Oh, very!" I echoed. "Even I can see that that equals one psychon."

He beamed. "Excellent! Excellent!"

"And what," I asked, "will you do with the psychons?"

"Ah," he rumbled. "Now we go even past the heart of the matter, and return to Isaak here." He jammed a thumb toward the robot. "Here I will create Roger Bacon's mechanical head. In the skull of this clumsy creature will rest such intelligence as not even van Manderpootz— I should say, as only van Manderpootz— can conceive. It remains merely to construct my idealizator."

"Your idealizator?"

"Of course. Have I not just proven that thoughts are as real as matter, energy, time, or space? Have I not just demonstrated that one can be transformed, through the cosmon, into any other? My idealizator is the means of transforming psychons to quanta, just as, for instance, a Crookes tube or X-ray tube transforms matter to electrons. I will make your thoughts visible! And not your thoughts as they are in that numb brain of yours, but in ideal form. Do you see? The psychons of your mind are the same as those from any other mind, just as all electrons are identical, whether from gold or iron. Yes! Your psychons" — his voice quavered—"are identical with those from the mind of— van Manderpootz!" He paused, shaken.

"Actually?" I gasped.

"Actually. Fewer in number, of course, but identical. Therefore, my idealizator shows your thought released from the impress of your personality. It shows it— ideal!"

Well, I was late to the office again.

A WEEK LATER I thought of van Manderpootz. Tips was on tour somewhere, and I didn't dare take anyone else out because I'd tried it once before and she'd heard about it. So, with nothing to do, I finally dropped around to the professor's quarter, found him missing, and eventually located him in his laboratory at the Physics Building. He was puttering around the table that had once held that damned subjunctivisor of his, but now it supported an indescribable mess of tubes and tangled wires, and as its most striking feature, a circular plane mirror etched with a grating of delicately scratched lines.

"Good evening, Dixon," he rumbled.

I echoed his greeting. "What's that?" I asked.

"My idealizator. A rough model, much too clumsy to fit into Isaak's iron skull. I'm just finishing it to try it out." He turned glittering blue eyes on me. "How fortunate that you're here. It will save the world a terrible risk."

"A risk?"

"Yes. It is obvious that too long an exposure to the device will extract too many psychons, and leave the subject's mind in a sort of moronic condition. I was about to accept the risk, but I see now that it would be woefully unfair to the world to endanger the mind of van Manderpootz. But you are at hand, and will do very well."

"Oh, no I won't!"

"Come, come!" he said, frowning. "The danger is negligible. In fact, I doubt whether the device will be able to extract any psychons from your mind. At any rate, you will be perfectly safe for a period of at least half an hour. I, with a vastly more productive mind, could doubtless stand the strain indefinitely, but my responsibility to the world is too great to chance it until I have tested the machine on someone else. You should be proud of the honor."

"Well, I'm not!" But my protest was feeble, and after all, despite his overbearing mannerisms, I knew van Manderpootz liked me, and I was positive he would not have exposed me to any real danger. In the end I found myself seated before the table facing the etched mirror.

"Put your face against the barrel," said van Manderpootz, indicating a stovepipe-like tube. "That's merely to cut off extraneous sights, so that you can see only the mirror. Go ahead, I tell you! It's no more than the barrel of a telescope or microscope."

I complied. "Now what?" I asked.

"What do you see?"

"My own face in the mirror."

"Of course. Now I start the reflector rotating." There was a faint whir, and the mirror was spinning smoothly, still with only a slightly blurred image of myself. "Listen, now," continued van Manderpootz.

"Here is what you are to do. You will think of a generic noun. 'House,' for instance. If you think of house, you will see, not an individual house, but your ideal house, the house of all your dreams and desires. If you think of a horse, you will see what your mind conceives as the perfect horse, such a horse as dream and longing create. Do you understand? Have you chosen a topic?"

"Yes." After all, I was only twenty-eight; the noun I had chosen was— girl.

"Good," said the professor. "I turn on the current."

There was a blue radiance behind the mirror. My own face still stared back at me from the spinning surface, but something was forming behind it, building up, growing. I blinked; when I focused my eyes again, it was— she was— there.

Lord! I can't begin to describe her. I don't even know if I saw her clearly the first time. It was like looking into another world and seeing the embodiment of all longings, dreams, aspirations, and ideals. It was so poignant a sensation that it crossed the borderline into pain. It was— well, exquisite torture or agonized delight. It was at once unbearable and irresistible.

But I gazed. I had to. There was a haunting familiarity about the impossibly beautiful features. I had seen the face— somewhere— sometime. In dreams? No; I realized suddenly what was the source of that familiarity. This was no living woman, but a synthesis. Her nose was the tiny, impudent one of Whimsy White at her loveliest moment; her lips were the perfect bow of Tips Alva; her silvery eyes and dusky velvet hair were those of Joan Caldwell. But the aggregate, the sum total, the face in the mirror— that was none of these; it was a face impossibly, incredibly, outrageously beautiful.

Only her face and throat were visible, and the features, were cool, expressionless, and still as a carving. I wondered suddenly if she could smile, and with the thought, she did. If she had been beautiful before, now her beauty flamed to such a pitch that it was— well, insolent; it was an affront to be so lovely; it was insulting. I felt a wild surge of anger that the image before me should flaunt such beauty, and yet be— non-existent! It was deception, cheating, fraud, a promise that could never be fulfilled.

Anger died in the depths of that fascination. I wondered what the rest of her was like, and instantly she moved gracefully back until her full figure was visible. I must be a prude at heart, for she wasn't wearing the usual cuirass-and-shorts of that year, but an iridescent four-paneled costume that all but concealed her dainty knees. But her form was slim and erect as a column of cigarette smoke in still air, and I knew that she could dance like a fragment of mist on water. And with that thought she did move, dropping in a low curtsy, and looking up with the faintest possible flush crimsoning the curve of her throat. Yes, I must be a prude at heart; despite Tips Alva and Whimsey White and the rest, my ideal was modest.

It was unbelievable that the mirror was simply giving back my thoughts. She seemed as real as myself, and— after all— I guess she was. As real as myself, no more, no less, because she was part of my own mind.

And at this point I realized that van Manderpootz was shaking me and bellowing, "Your time's up. Come out of it! Your half-hour's up!"

"O-o-o-o-o-oh!" I groaned.

"How do you feel?" he snapped.

"Feel? All right— physically." I looked up.

Concern flickered in his blue eyes. "What's the cube root of 4913?" he crackled sharply.

I've always been quick at figures. "It's— uh— 17," I returned dully. "Why the devil—?"

"You're all right mentally," he announced. "Now— why were you sitting there like a dummy for half an hour? My idealizator must have worked, as is only natural for a van Manderpootz creation, but what were you thinking of?"

"I thought— I thought of 'girl'," I groaned.

He snorted. "Hah! You would, you idiot! 'House' or 'horse', wasn't good enough; you had to pick something with emotional connotations. Well, you can start right in forgetting her, because she doesn't exist."

I couldn't give up hope as easily as that. "But can't you— can't you— " I didn't even know what I meant to ask.

"Van Manderpootz," he announced, "is a mathematician, not a magician. Do you expect me to materialize an ideal for you?" When I had no reply but a groan, he continued. "Now I think it safe enough to try the device myself. I shall take— let's see— the thought 'man.' I shall see what the superman looks like, since the ideal of van Manderpootz can be nothing less than superman." He seated himself. "Turn that switch," he said. "Now!"

I did. The tubes glowed into low blue light. I watched dully, disinterestedly; nothing held any attraction for me after that image of the ideal.

"Huh!" said van Manderpootz suddenly. "Turn it on, I say! I see nothing but my own reflection."

I stared, then burst into a hollow laugh. The mirror was spinning; the banks of tubes were glowing; the device was operating.

Van Manderpootz raised his face, a little redder than usual. I laughed half hysterically. "After all," he said huffily, "one might have a lower ideal of man than van Manderpootz. I see nothing nearly so humorous as your situation."

The laughter died. I went miserably home, spent half the remainder of the night in morose contemplation, smoked nearly two packs of cigarettes, and didn't get to the office at all the next day.

TIPS ALVA got back to town for a weekend broadcast, but I didn't even bother to see her, just phoned her and told her I was sick. I guess my face lent credibility to the story, for she was duly sympathetic, and her face in the phone screen was quite anxious. Even at that, I couldn't keep my eyes away from her lips because, except for a bit too lustrous make-up, they were the lips of the ideal. But they weren't enough; they just weren't enough.

Old N. J. began to worry again. I couldn't sleep late of mornings any more, and after missing that one day, I kept getting down earlier and earlier until one morning I was only ten minutes late. He called me in at once.

"Look here, Dixon," he said. "Have you been to a doctor recently?"

"I'm not sick," I said listlessly.

"Then for Heaven's sake, marry the girl! I don't care what chorus she kicks in, marry her and act like a human being again."

"I can't."

"Oh. She's already married, eh?"

Well, I couldn't tell him she didn't exist. I couldn't say I was in love with a vision, a dream, an ideal. He thought I was a little crazy, anyway, so I just muttered "Yeah," and didn't argue when he said gruffly:

"Then you'll get over it. Take a vacation. Take two vacations. You might as well for all the good you are around here."

I didn't leave New York; I lacked the energy. I just mooned around the city for a while, avoiding my friends, and dreaming of the impossible beauty of the face in the mirror. And by and by the longing to see that vision of perfection once more began to become overpowering. I don't suppose anyone except me can understand the lure of that memory; the face, you see, had been my ideal, my concept of perfection.

One sees beautiful woman here and there in the world; one falls in love— but always, no matter how great their beauty or how deep one's love, they fall short in some degree of the secret vision of the ideal. But not the mirrored face; she was my ideal, and therefore, whatever imperfections she might have had in the minds of others, in my eyes she had none. None, that is, save the terrible one of being only an ideal, and therefore unattainable— but that is a fault inherent in all perfection.

It was a matter of days before I yielded. Common sense told me it was futile, even foolhardy, to gaze again on the vision of perfect desirability. I fought against the hunger, but I fought hopelessly, and was not at all surprised to find myself one evening rapping on van Manderpootz's door in the University Club. He wasn't there; I'd been hoping he wouldn't be, since it gave me an excuse to seek him in his laboratory in the Physics Building to which I would have dragged him anyway.

There I found him, writing some sort of notations on the table that held the idealizator. "Hello, Dixon," he said. "Did it ever occur to you that the ideal university cannot exist? Naturally not, since it must be composed of perfect students and perfect educators, in which case the former could have nothing to learn and the latter, therefore, nothing to teach."

What interest had I in the perfect university and its inability to exist? My whole being was desolate over the nonexistence of another ideal. "Professor," I said tensely, "may I use that— that thing of yours again? I want to— uh— see something."

My voice must have disclosed the situation, for van Manderpootz looked up sharply. "So!" he snapped. "So you disregarded my advice! Forget her, I said. Forget her because she doesn't exist."

"But— I can't! Once more, Professor— only once more!"

He shrugged, but his blue, metallic eyes were a little softer than usual. After all, for some inconceivable reason, he likes me. "Well, Dixon," he said, "you're of age and supposed to be of mature intelligence. I tell you that this is a very stupid request, and van Manderpootz always knows what he's talking about. If you want to stupefy yourself with the, opium of impossible dreams, go ahead. This is the last chance you'll have, for tomorrow the idealizator of van Manderpootz goes into the Bacon head of Isaak there. I shall shift the oscillators so that the psychons, instead of becoming light quanta, emerge as an electron flow— a current which will actuate Isaak's vocal apparatus and come out as speech." He paused musingly. "Van Manderpootz will bear the voice of the ideal. Of course Isaak can return only what psychons he receives from the brain of the operator, but just as the image in the mirror, the thoughts will have lost their human impress, and the words will be those of an ideal." he perceived that I wasn't listening, I suppose. "Go ahead, imbeciles," he grunted.

I did. The glory that I hungered after flamed slowly into being, incredible in loveliness, and somehow, unbelievably, even more beautiful than on that other occasion. I know why now; long afterwards, van Manderpootz explained that the very fact that I had seen an ideal once before had altered my ideal, raised it to a higher level. With that face among my memories, my concept of perfection was different than it had been.

So I gazed and hungered. Readily and instantly the being in the mirror responded to my thoughts with smile and movement. When I thought of love, her eyes blazed with such tenderness that it seemed as if— l— I, Dixon Wells— were part of those pairs who had made the great romances of the world, Heloise and Abelard, Tristram and Isolde, Aucassin and Nicolette. It was like the thrust of a dagger to feel van Manderpootz shaking me, to hear his gruff voice calling, "Out of it! Out of it! Time's up."

I groaned and dropped my face on my hands. The Professor had been right, of course; this insane repetition had only intensified an unfulfillable longing, and had made a bad mess ten times as bad. Then I heard him muttering behind me. "Strange!" he murmured. "In fact, fantastic. Oedipus— Oedipus of the magazine covers and billboards."

I looked dully around. He was standing behind me, squinting, apparently, into the spinning mirror beyond the end of the black tube. "Hub?" I grunted wearily.

"That face," he said. "Very queer. You must have seen her features on a hundred magazines, on a thousand billboards, on countless 'vision broadcasts. The Oedipus complex in a curious form."

"Eh? Could you see her?"

"Of course!" he grunted. "Didn't I say a dozen times that the psychons are transmuted to perfectly ordinary quanta of visible light? If you could see her, why not I?"

"But— what about billboards and all?"

"That face," said the professor slowly. "It's somewhat idealized, of course, and certain details are wrong. Her eyes aren't that pallid silver-blue you imagined; they're green, sea-green, emerald-colored."

"What the devil," I asked hoarsely, "are you talking about?"

"About the face in the mirror. It happens to be, Dixon, a close approximation of the features of de Lisle d'Agrion, the Dragon Fly!"

"You mean— she's real? She exists? She lives? She—"

"Wait a moment, Dixon. She's real enough, but in accordance with your habit, you're a little late. About twenty-five years too late, I should say. She must now be somewhere in the fifties— let's see— fifty-three, I think. But during your very early childhood, you must have seen her face pictured everywhere, de Lisle d'Agrion, the Dragon Fly."

I could only gulp. That blow was devastating.

"You see," continued van Manderpootz, "one's ideals are implanted very early. That's why you continually fall in love with girls who possess one or another features that reminds you of her, her hair, her nose, her mouth, her eyes. Very simple, but rather curious."

"Curious!" I blazed. "Curious, you say! Every time I look into one of your damned contraptions I find myself in love with a myth! A girl who's dead, or married, or unreal, or turned into an old woman! Curious, eh? Damned funny, isn't it?"

"Just a moment," said the professor placidly. "It happens, Dixon, that she has a daughter. What's more, Denise resembles her mother. And what's Still More, she's arriving in New York next week to study American letters at the University here. She writes, you see."

That was too much for immediate comprehension. "How— how do you know?" I gasped.

It was one of the few times I have seen the colossal blandness of van Manderpootz ruffled. He reddened a trifle, and said slowly, "It also happens, Dixon, that many years ago in Amsterdam, Haskel van Manderpootz: and de Lisle d'Agrion were— very friendly— more than friendly, I might say, but for the fact that two such powerful personalities as the Dragon Fly and van Manderpootz were always at odds."

He frowned. "I was almost her second husband. She's had seven, I believe; Denise is the daughter of her third."

"Why— why is she coming here?"

"Because," he said with dignity, "van Manderpootz is here. I am still a friend of de Lisle's." He turned and bent over the complex device on the table. "Hand me that wrench," he ordered. "Tonight I dismantle this, and tomorrow start reconstructing it for Isaak's head."

But when, the following week, I rushed eagerly back to van Manderpootz's laboratory, the idealizator was still in place. The professor greeted me with a humorous twist to what was visible of his bearded mouth. "Yes, it's still here," he said, gesturing at the device. "I've decided to build an entirely new one for Isaak, and besides, this one has afforded me considerable amusement. Furthermore, in the words of Oscar Wilde, who am I to tamper with a work of genius. After all, the mechanism is the product of the great van Manderpootz."

He was deliberately tantalizing me. He knew that I hadn't come to hear him discourse on Isaak, or even on the incomparable van Manderpootz. Then he smiled and softened, and turned to the little inner office adjacent, the room where Isaak stood in metal austerity. "Denise!" he called. "Come here."

I don't know exactly what I expected, but I do know that the breath left me as the girl entered. She wasn't exactly my image of the ideal, of course; she was perhaps the merest trifle slimmer, and her eyes— well, they must have been much like those of de Lisle d'Agrion, for they were the clearest emerald I've ever seen. They were impudently direct eyes, and I could imagine why van Manderpootz and the Dragon Fly might have been forever quarreling; that was easy to imagine, looking into the eyes of the Dragon Fly's daughter.

Nor was Denise, apparently, quite as femininely modest as my image of perfection. She wore the extremely unconcealing costume of the day, which covered, I suppose, about as much of her as one of the one-piece swimming suits of the middle years of the twentieth century. She gave an impression, not so much of fleeting grace as of litheness and supple strength, an air of independence, frankness, and— I say it again— impudence.

"Well!" she said coolly as van Manderpootz presented me. "So you're the scion of the N. J. Wells Corporation. Every now and then your escapades enliven the Paris Sunday supplements. Wasn't it you who snared a million dollars in the market so you could ask Whimsy White?'

I rushed. "That was greatly exaggerated," I said hastily, "and anyway I lost it before we— uh— before I— "

"Not before you made somewhat of a fool of yourself, I believe," she finished sweetly. Well, that's the sort she was. If she hadn't been so infernally lovely, if she hadn't looked so much like the face in the mirror, I'd have flared up, said "Pleased to have met you," and never have seen her again.

But I couldn't get angry, not when she had the dusky hair, the perfect lips, the saucy nose of the being who to me was ideal. So I did see her again, and several times again. In fact, I suppose I occupied most of her time between the few literary courses she was taking, and little by little I began to see that in other respects besides the physical she was not so far from my ideal. Beneath her impudence was honesty, and frankness, and, despite herself, sweetness, so that even allowing for the head— start I'd had, I fell in love pretty hastily. And what's more, I knew she was beginning to reciprocate.

That was the situation when I called for her one noon and took her over to van Manderpootz's laboratory. We were to lunch with him at the University Club, but we found him occupied in directing some experiment in the big laboratory beyond his personal one, untangling some sort of mess that his staff had blundered into. So Denise and I wandered back into the smaller room, perfectly content to be alone together. I simply could rot feel hungry in her presence; just talking to her was enough of a substitute for food.

"I'm going to be a good writer," she was saying musingly. "Some day, Dick, I'm going to be famous."

Well, everyone knows how correct that prediction was. I agreed with her instantly.

She smiled. "You're nice, Dick," she said. "Very nice."

"Very?"

"Very!" she said emphatically. Then her green eyes strayed over to the table that held the idealizator.

"What crack-brained contraption of Uncle Haskel's is that?" she asked.

I explained, rather inaccurately, I'm afraid, but no ordinary engineer can follow the ramifications of a van Manderpootz conception. Nevertheless, Denise caught the gist of it and her eyes glowed emerald fire.

"It's fascinating!" she exclaimed. She rose and moved over to the table. "I'm going to try it."

"Not without the professor, you won't! It might be dangerous."

That was the wrong thing to say. The green eyes glowed brighter as she cast me a whimsical glance.

"But I am," she said. "Dick, I'm going to— see my ideal man!" She laughed softly.

I was panicky. Suppose her ideal turned out tall and dark and powerful, instead of short and sandy-haired and a bit— well, chubby, as I am. "No!" I said vehemently. "I won't let you!"

She laughed again. I suppose she read my consternation, for she said softly, "Don't be silly, Dick."

She sat down, placed her face against the opening of the barrel, and commanded, "Turn it on."

I couldn't refuse her. I set the mirror whirling, then switched on the bank of tubes. Then immediately I stepped behind her, squinting into what was visible of the flashing mirror, where a face was forming, slowly— vaguely.

I thrilled. Surely the hair of the image was sandy. I even fancied now that I could trace a resemblance to my own features. Perhaps Denise sensed something similar, for she suddenly withdrew her eyes from the tube and looked up with a faintly embarrassed flush, a thing most unusual for her.

"Ideals are dull!" she said. "I want a real thrill. Do you know what I'm going to see? I'm going to visualize ideal horror. That's what I'll do. I'm going to see absolute horror!"

"Oh, no you're not!" I gasped. "That's a terribly dangerous idea." Off in the other room I heard the voice of van Manderpootz, "Dixon!"

"Dangerous— bosh!" Denise retorted. "I'm a writer, Dick. All this means to me is material. It's just experience, and I want it."

Van Manderpootz again. "Dixon! Dixon! Come here." I said, "Listen, Denise. I'll be right back. Don't try anything until I'm here— please!"

I dashed into the big laboratory. Van Manderpootz, was facing a cowed group of assistants, quite apparently in extreme awe of the great man.

"Hah, Dixon!" he rasped. "Tell these fools what an Emmerich valve is, and why it won't operate in a free electronic stream. Let 'em see that even an ordinary engineer knows that much."

Well, an ordinary engineer doesn't, but it happened that I did. Not that I'm particularly exceptional as an engineer, but I did happen to know that because a year or two before I'd done some work on the big tidal turbines up in Maine, where they have to use Emmerich valves to guard against electrical leakage from the tremendous potentials in their condensers. So I started explaining, and van Manderpootz kept interpolating sarcasms about his staff, and when I finally finished, I suppose I'd been in there about half an hour. And then— I remembered Denise!

I left van Manderpootz staring as I rushed back, and sure enough, there was the girl with her face pressed against the barrel, and her hands gripping the table edge. Her features were hidden, of course, but there was something about her strained position, her white knuckles—

"Denise!" I yelled. "Are you all right? Denise!"

She didn't move. I stuck my face in between the mirror and the end of the barrel and peered up the tube at her visage, and what I saw left me all but stunned. Have you ever seen stark, mad, infinite terror on a human face? That was what I saw in Denise's— inexpressible, unbearable horror, worse than the fear of death could ever be. Her green eyes were widened so that the whites showed around them; her perfect lips were contorted, her whole face strained into a mask of sheer terror.

I rushed for the switch, but in passing I caught a single glimpse of— of what showed in the mirror. Incredible! Obscene, terror-laden, horrifying things— there just aren't words for them. There are no words.

Denise didn't move as the tubes darkened. I raised her face from the barrel and when she glimpsed me she moved. She flung herself out of that chair and away, facing me with such mad terror that I halted.

"Denise!" I cried. "It's just Dick. Look, Denise!"

But as I moved toward her, she uttered a choking scream, her eyes dulled, her knees gave, and she fainted. Whatever she had seen, it must have been appalling to the uttermost, for Denise was not the sort to faint.

IT WAS a week later that I sat facing van Manderpootz in his little inner office. The grey metal figure of Isaak was missing, and the table that had held the idealizator was empty.

"Yes," said van Manderpootz. "I've dismantled it. One of van Manderpootz's few mistakes was to leave it around where a pair of incompetents like you and Denise could get to it. It seems that I continually overestimate the intelligence of others. I suppose I tend to judge them by the brain of van Manderpootz."

I said nothing. I was thoroughly disheartened and depressed, and whatever the professor said about my lack of intelligence, I felt it justified.

"Hereafter," resumed van Manderpootz, "I shall credit nobody except myself with intelligence, and will doubtless be much more nearly correct." He waved a hand at Isaak's vacant corner. "Not even the Bacon head," he continued. "I've abandoned that project, because, when you come right down to it, what need has the world of a mechanical brain when it already has that of van Manderpootz?"

"Professor," I burst out suddenly, "why won't they let me see Denise? I've been at the hospital every day, and they let me into her room just once— just once, and that, time she went right into a fit of hysterics. Why? Is she—?" I gulped.

"She's recovering nicely, Dixon."

"Then why can't I see her?"

"Well," said van Manderpootz placidly, "it's like this. You see, when you rushed into the laboratory there, you made the mistake of pushing your face in front of the barrel. She saw your features right in the midst of all those horrors she had called up. Do you see? From then on your face was associated in her mind with the whole hell's brew in the mirror. She can't even look at you without seeing all of it again."

"Good— God!" I gasped. "But she'll get over it, won't she? She'll forget that part of it?"

"The young psychiatrist who attends her— a bright chap, by the way, with a number of my own ideas— believes she'll be quite over it in a couple of months. But personally, Dixon, I don't think she'll ever welcome the sight of your face, though I myself have seen uglier visages somewhere or other."

I ignored that. "Lord!" I groaned. "What a mess!" I rose to depart, and then— then I knew what inspiration means! "Listen!" I said, spinning back. "Listen, professor Why can't you get her back here and let her visualize the ideally beautiful? And then stick my face into that" Enthusiasm grew. "It can't fail!" I cried. "At the worst, it'll cancel that other memory. It's marvelous!"

"But as usual," said van Manderpootz, "a little late."

"Late? Why? You can put up your idealizator again. You'd do that much, wouldn't you?"

"Van Manderpootz," he observed, "is the very soul of generosity. I'd do it gladly, but it's still a little late, Dixon. You see, she married the bright young psychiatrist this noon."

Well, I've a date with Tips Alva tonight, and I'm going to be late for it, just as late as I please. And then I'm going to do nothing but stare at her lips all evening.

_____________________

18: Egging on Esmond

Sydney Horler

1888-1954

Collected in: Dying to Live and Other Stories, 1935

MY NAME'S WIMPLE. I'm a butler. I've never in my life authored before ; but things being what they are at the present time, and as everybody else seems to be doing it, I thought I might try my hand at writing out one or two of my experiences. And I've had a few— ho, not half, as the expression goes, I give you my word!

Now this is the story of how young Dunheved, through the modest efforts of your humble, came into fifty thousand a year and three estates! What did I get out of it? A fiver! A measly, mouldy, paltry fiver! But ain't— I should say isn't— that the way of the world? It was his great-aunt, Lady Fantangel, who caused young Dunheved to be called Esmond. She had a brother who went out as a missionary to the Cannibal Islands— and his name was Esmond. Esmond started cutting his capers at Eton, and by the time he had reached Oxford he had gone in for farming on a big scale ; that lad sowed more wild oats than would have covered the whole of Canada. His favourite occupation was biting policemen's ears, so that he became quite a well-known visitor at Marlborough Street Police Court. In fact, I believe the staff there came to look on him more or less as a fixture ; If Esmond didn't drop in once a week regular, a squad was sent out to see if anything serious had happened to the boy.

I was in service with Mr. Dalleby at the time. Rum nut he was too! Played a game of snooker-pool with young Essie one night— woke me up at three o'clock in the morning to tell me that I had to see my new master home in a taxicab. Been reading a book called "Ruggles of Red Gap", he gave me to understand. But, as I am never averse to a change in these days, I pulled Esmond's head out of the coal-box where he was slumbering restfully and went along to Hamilton Place.

Then my troubles began. It seems that young Tom had been telling the Bad Egg what a wonder I was in a crisis. According to him, I had once been a cocktail mixer to a bishop. That did it. Esmond had been fairly frolicsome before, but now he went all out. Said he wanted to test my powers. The worst of it was when I told him, as politely as possible, that I disliked getting out of a warm bed three nights following in order to bail him out at Vine Street, he said that I was the only friend— hic— he had in the world, and what were true friends for if they didn't rally round in time of trouble?

In spite of everything, I couldn't help liking the lad— and felt that his being yoked to a name like Esmond was deserving of sympathy. So I stayed on, always doing what I could. I hadn't been with him three months when he came into my pantry one morning shaking all over like a badly set blancmange. Before I could reach for the bottle, which he playfully called my "corpse-reviver", Esmond had thrust a newspaper into my hand. "Look at it, Wimple !'' he said shakily. Asking permission to sit down, I read what he had pointed out. It appeared that Esmond had become overnight the tenth Earl of Muraven.

"Congratulations, my lord," I said respectfully.

"Congratulations my foot!" he replied, or words to the same effect. "What's the use of coming into the title when there's no oof on the end of it?"

"The late Earl is said by the newspaper to have been a very rich man, sir," I said it with a bit of a lilt. I had hopes myself, you understand. There was a matter of wages owing me, and now that heaven had started to rain its blessings upon Esmond, I meant to collect.

Esmond became 'eated— pardon, heated.

"Here, read the darned thing for yourself, Wimple, and tell me what the deuce I'm to do about it." With that he pushed a letter into my hand, and clutched his head as though he were afraid it might come off.

The letter had been written by Messrs. Bates, Bates, Bates & Bates. I could tell from that they were solicitors. And a very nasty letter it was too. It pushed poor young Esmond into the soup head first. After reading the rigmarole four times, I gathered that owing to the Bad Egg's extravagant habits and general misbehaviour, the late Earl had left him a mere £100 a year with which to uphold the dignity of his high estate, and had bequeathed the bulk of his fortune to his spinster sister, the Lady Hermione Sudleigh.

Wiping my forehead, for the air seemed to have become very close, I turned to the newspaper— the Daily Megaphone it was— and there saw a face. That finished it ; directly I gazed upon the features of Lady Hermione, I knew that Esmond might as well start advertising for a job as a plumber's mate straight away. There would be nothing coming to him from that direction.

Later on Esmond told me all that he knew about Lady Hermione. It seemed sufficient. Lady. Hermione Sudleigh had inherited the elevating and high-minded tendencies of her famous relative Lady Fantangel. She spent her life, according to Esmond, in making flannel undergarments for dark-skinned huzzies in the tropics who were quite warm enough without them.

"To think that the money which should be mine by right is going to be spent on those confounded savages!" moaned the Bad Egg.

It was an affecting picture, especially as it made me think of the back salary.

"You must take an interest in social work yourself," I said sternly. I admit I gave it to him pretty straight, for I reckoned that some of that £50,000 a year belonged to me.

Esmond jumped as though I had offered him a nice cooling drink of prussic acid.

"What the devil do you mean, Wimple?" he barked. "What's social work?"

"Social work, as I understand it, my lord, is the attempt to make the lot of unfortunate souls a little brighter."

"What's the matter with me as an unfortunate soul, then?" he demanded. "This mousetrap female has robbed me of £50,000 every fifty-two weeks—nothing frantically jolly about that, is there?"

"On the contrary, sir. But you misunderstand me. What I meant to suggest was that it might be advisable to affect an interest in some of the things which Lady Hermione Sudleigh has so much at 'eart— heart."

"I get you, Wimple. Play up to the old girl; is that the idea?"

"Since you put it that way— yes, sir. I notice that there is a large and important meeting being held at the Carnleigh Hall this afternoon in aid of Foreign Missions. Should Lady Hermione see you there it might have a good influence upon her; surely she cannot expect you to keep up the earldom on a mere two pounds a week— it's not sufficient to pay me my wages, sir!"

The word "wages" stung Esmond as I had every intention it should. But for that I don't think he would have got a move on, but as it was he looked up from his fish and said: "If I'm not back by six o'clock, Wimple, you'd better stagger along to the Carnleigh Hall. I shall want your help."

"Certainly, my lord. If I might suggest"— taking the glass out of his hand—''I wouldn't have anything more to drink, my lord."

"Look here, Wimple..."' he started.

But I soon stopped that. I was in command from now on.

"Persons attending Foreign Missions meetings are invariably sober," I said severely.

Well, I got him off at last, thank goodness; but I hadn't had more than a couple of hours' sleep before there was a noise in the hall like a ton of coal being dropped into the cellar at one go. It was the Bad Egg, looking worse. And he didn't fall on my neck ; what good news he had he must have told to someone outside.

"You're a washout, Wimple!" he blared. 'You hear what I say, Wimple?— you're a rotten washout!"

"I heard you the first time, my lord," I replied, with some dignity.

"You did, eh? Well, that's some satisfaction, anyway." He broke off to clutch his head with both hands. (You will remember I have remarked upon this peculiar habit of his before.) "Do you know what they did to me this afternoon at that beastly meeting, Wimple? They hissed me."

"Hissed you, my lord!"

"Hissed me! Directly I pushed the old face round the door, some moth-eaten joker with hearth-rug whiskers asked me what my business was. Thinking to get on good terms with the relic, I said pleasantly enough that my intention was to pinch the collection if I had a chance. No harm in that, so far as I could see ; but what did this walking antimacassar do but lope around to another cove and whisper somewhat fiercely in his ear. You would have thought that I had measles spots all over me, the way they glared. Then they came across.

"If you attempt any disturbance here I shall call for the police !' said Mothball Number Two.

"Of course, I wasn't going to stand that, and so I pushed my way past them. That was when the hissing started."

"Er— was Lady Hermione Sudleigh present?" I ventured to enquire.

"Sitting in the front row, old lad, looking as though she were hatching out a nest of eggs. If ever there was a human hen, it's that woman, Wimple!"

"And what happened, sir?"

"Well, after they had all lost their breath hissing, the fun waxed fast and furious. Someone said that there were worse heathens here in London than were to be encountered in the darkest bits of Africa— the blighter was looking at me when he said it, too— and then everyone cried, 'Hear, hear!'

"After a while someone else gave an address on 'Sin and its Consequences', and when I got up he called after me, 'And lo! the sinner departeth!' They clapped that bit."

"It was an unfortunate experience, my lord; but if you will permit me to say so, you started badly, sounded the wrong note, asit were. It was injudicious for you to announce your intention of stealing the collection."

"Only my rotten joke, Wimple. I just wanted to establish a pally feeling right away."

"Quite so, my lord— but, in the circumstances, indiscreet. I am afraid you have made matters worse." He took his head between his hands once again—it really was a most distressing habit— and then he said wildly: "Look here, Wimple, you've simply got to pull me through this— I'll see that you're all right if you do."

Of course, what I ought to have done was to have reduced it to black and white ; but the appeal was so earnest that my heart got the better of my head.

"Was it true that you used to mix cocktails for the Bishop of Middlestone?" asked Esmond.

"I was certainly in his lordship's service."

"But old—"

"And that I was once fortunate enough to extricate his lordship from a somewhat awkward position."

"Good enoughski! If you can lug a bishop out by his coattails this job of mine should be dead easy. Now run away and think of something."

After mature deliberation, I decided that a conciliatory letter breathing peace and hoping for goodwill was about the best card to play. So painfully— for Esmond was a very poor correspondent— the Earl of Dunheved indited at my dictation the following letter to Lady Hermione Sudleigh:

My Dear Aunt

It has been a matter of great sorrow to me to know that however innocently— and such, I assure you, was the case— my visit to the wonderful meeting at Carnleigh Hall yesterday was the cause of disturbance. It was my intention— knowing your interest in social work of all description—to sit with you, but owing to an unfortunate misunderstanding at the door I was prevented from doing so. Wall you please accept my most sincere regrets? And may I not have the pleasure of calling upon you soon?

Your affectionate nephew,

Dunheved.

I thought it not bad myself, especially the last bit promising to open up further communications.

The next morning I went to the telephone. It was ringing very loudly, as though the person intended she should be heard.

"Who is that speaking" enquired a voice that had been carefully packed in ice.

"Wimple, madam."

"Ah— Wimple, is it?" came the frigid back-chat. "Then you can take a message, Wimple. You can tell my nephew the Earl of Dunheved that under no conditions whatever will I allow him to call at my house. You can also inform him that my servants have the strictest instructions to say that I am not at home should he disobey this order. Will you be careful to give him those messages from Lady Hermione Sudleigh, Wimple?"

"Very good, your ladyship"

—and then she breezed off.

It looked to me as though I had stubbed my toe pretty badly— apparently you never could tell when these human hens will turn round and bite you— and I took along the sad tidings as though I was walking on eggs.

The Earl took it rather better than I thought.

"It's only what was to be expected, Wimple," he said. "That's the reward for sticking to ginger ale and going to bed early. Well, we'll change all that now. A pal of mine has told me to put my pyjama trousers on a horse in the three o'clock this afternoon, and if that comes off—"

Pretty Polly won at fifteen to one. All that Esmond had done so thoroughly before was merely a curtain-raiser to what he now endeavoured to accomplish. He really set his mind on his work.

That night Esmond said he was eating at the Ritz. He didn't add where he was drinking. But judging by his condition when two taximen brought him in and dropped him carelessly on the carpet, he must have walked his feet off trying to find a place that had an entirely new gargle. Esmond had not only gone down for the third time, but he had stayed down.

Next morning when I went to see the wreck:

"What time did I come home last night, Wimple?"

"You didn't come— you were brought!" I replied severely.

"Was I—er—"

"You certainly were!"

"Ah, well! Funny thing, Wimple, but I rather had that impression myself. But at whatever sacrifice— at whatever sacrifice, I repeat, Wimple—the work must go on."

"So that I may know what to expect, may I respectfully enquire if you intend to make a habit of being brought home every morning at three o'clock by two taxi-drivers?"

Esmond looked thoughtful. "I should have thought that one could have done it. But why do you ask, Wimple?"

"So that I can make my arrangements, sir. To put a dustsheet on the dining-room carpet for one thing."

"The work must go on, Wimple," he repeated. 'Now that my aunt has definitely refused the olive branch which I held out to her, I must convince her that her flinty nature is driving me to the other extreme. Could you arrange that Lady Hermione Sudleigh should receive the information that two taxi-men deposited the body of her dutiful nephew on his dining-room carpet at three o'clock this morning, Wimple?"

"I should hesitate to do that, my lord."

"Well, well— but it will get round, it will get round. All these social reformers have large ears."

It happened on a Friday. At three o'clock in the afternoon, to be precise. It was just the sort of thing that could be expected to happen on a Friday. The front-door bell rang and I answered the door. Upon the step was an elderly female. By her umbrella and goloshes I knew her to be Lady Hermione Sudleigh. The goloshes must have been in her family for generations. Probably Lady Fantangel had worn them.

"You are Wimple?" she asked, in a hard, ringing voice.

"Yes, your ladyship."

But my voice quavered a bit. Whether she noticed it or not, she sailed right past me. I caught her at the door.

"The Earl is engaged at present, your ladyship. Will you please sit down?"

And I opened the drawing-room door.

"Engaged ? With whom is my nephew engaged?"

Ah, there she had me! As a matter of fact, the Bad Egg was just at that moment trying to do the gallant simultaneously to five chorus ladies from the Principality Theatre, who, by an unhappy chance, had all called at the same time. One had popped in through the basement.

"With some ladies, your ladyship," I said weakly. Yes, I know it was weakness, but this female had an uncanny effect upon me; the general effect of her was paralysing. When I offered to take the umbrella, she flourished it like a sword.

"Ah," siad Lady Hermione made a movement as though she had come to the surface to take a deep breath. "I will see my nephew now. Now, Wimple."

But I beat her to it. I only just had time, however, to whisper a few words in Esmond's ear before they faced each other.

"I have called to find that you carry on your iniquities in your own house— in the very home of the Dunheveds!" she boomed.

I must say Esmond came out very well. For the first time in my life I was proud of him.

"I fail to understand you, aunt," he replied, standing first on one foot and then on the other.

"It is too clear!" came the shriek. "Isn't all London talking of your conduct? Do not the newspapers print accounts? And now when I call I find you—"

"May I explain, your ladyship?" I put in; and turning sideways so that she couldn't catch my eye, I pushed on. "I stated a few moments ago, your ladyship, that the Earl was engaged with some ladies. I did not add, as I should have done, that these form the standing committee of the Chorus Girls' Social Reform Society. They called this afternoon to know if the Earl would consent to act as the honorary president of their Society."

I was now well in my stride and running well. I hadn't listened for five long years to a bishop talking to deputations for nothing.

"Acquainted as you are, your ladyship, with all the phases of social reform work," I continued, "you will, of course, appreciate the high honour which has been done the Earl; and the work, about which he is most enthusiastic—"

"Most enthusiastic!" said Esmond.

"About which, as I have said before, the Earl is most enthusiastic, is extremely valuable. It is a well-known fact that chorus girls are not only subject to many insidious temptations about which the great mass of thinking people in this country have no knowledge, but that they are also peculiarly prone to colds in— in various parts of their body, owing to extremely draughty dressing-rooms, where they are herded together in a most reprehensible manner."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw that she was listening. On I went.

"I speak with feeling, your ladyship, because I was once a chorus girl— I mean, I had a very near and dear relation who was a chorus girl. She died in the young flower of her life, your ladyship—"

"How very sad, Wimple! I had no idea."

Esmond did his bit. "Of course not, aunt. Living the secluded life you do, how could you possibly know under what dreadful conditions these poor girls have to live ? But I am determined to cuddle— cherish— the high hopes which they have reposed in me. The one drawback is lack of funds. Still, I shall do what I can."

"I should like to meet these poor young persons," said Lady Hermione.

By this time I was on my way to warn the beauty chorus waiting in the next room. "Quiet, ladies, if you wish to save the Earl's life and reason," I told the chatterers, who wanted to know why Esmond had so basely deserted them. As briefly as possible I explained the position, and then, lorgnette to eye, in walked Lady Hermione, followed ,by her adoring nephew, the Earl of Dunheved. "

"Er— these are the ladies of the committee, aunt," said Esmond.

The committee smiled very sweetly.

"Pleased to meet your ladyship," they simpered. The committee sat down— on chairs. Not one of them so far forgot herself as to try to sit on Esmond's knee.

"We will have tea, Wimple."

If that chit Joy Tressider hadn't winked at me as I left the room, I should have had fears. But when I came back Lulu de Trayne— her real name was Minnie Dawkins, if I remember rightly— was telling her ladyship all about the horrors she had encountered once at Wigan.

"And there were mice, your ladyship," she concluded. Lady Hermione Sudleigh rose. She rose with the dignity of a cash customer at Harrods.

"Esmond, I will send you along a cheque," she said. "This wonderful work must go on. I am determined upon it. No, don't let me detain you any longer. Wimple can see me to the door."

End

Table of Contents

1: The Ship That Saw a Ghost / Frank Norris

2: The Golden Bean / Beatrice Grimshaw

3: The Fairy Godmother / Edward Dyson

4: That Parson / A. E. Dingle

5: The Crime of Miss Wilks / Capel Boake

6: Old Man Murtrie / Don Marquis

7: A Game With Death / Mark Hellinger

8: The Crime Trust / Edgar Wallace

9: The Return / Sherwood Anderson

10: The Dreams in the Witch-House / H. P. Lovecraft

11: Too Far South / John Arthur Barry

12: Golden Bars / Max Pemberton

13:  Daphne / Guy Boothby

14: The Land Where There is no Death / Stephen Vincent Benét

15: Cool Air / H. P. Lovecraft

16: The Predicament of De Plonville / Robert Barr

17: The Ideal / Stanley G. Weinbaum

18: Egging on Esmond / Sydney Horler