TABLE of CONTENTS

A QUESTION OF MONEY

A SINGLE HAIR

LOVE IN AETHER

ONE FOGGY NIGHT

THE LESSON THE ANTS TAUGHT

THE FOURTH MAN

THE WORLD NEXT DOOR

A DOSE OF QUININE

THE CASE FOR THE PRISONER

A CALL ON THE PHONE

A QUESTION OF MONEY

ILLUSTRATED BY SEPTIMUS E. SCOTT

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLIII, Jan 1916, pp 237-242

THE wits of the Knickerbocker Club said that Clifford Ommanney's summer cigarettes were invariably taken off the ice, and that Sylvia Vandyk inevitably slept upon a couch filled with the down from the wings of tropical butterflies. This, of course, was the Western way of spelling the last word in refined civilisation and luxury. As a matter of fact, in Sylvia, on the one side, and Clifford, on the other, were represented the apogee of their respective parents. Time out of mind Père Vandyk and Père Ommanney had set out together from a "hayseed" village in the Far West fortune-seeking, and, like the Biblical character in pursuit of the traditional asses, lo, they had found it. In the course of time they had both married and settled down, and, in the words of Mr. Weller, Senior, Sylvia and Clifford were the results of the manoeuvre. They were plain, straightforward old men, who had never neglected an opportunity in the pursuit of the almighty dollar, and when they had anything to say in Wall Street, they were listened to with respectful attention. They were the financial grubs from which emanated those brilliant society butterflies respectively the hero and heroine of this veracious story. Sylvia and Clifford typified the apotheosis of commercial success.

In other words, they were two spoilt children of fortune—a young man after the heart of Charles Dana Gibson, and a young woman typical of America's best and most perfect type of beauty. And it is needless to say neither of them had ever done a day's work in their lives; they flitted from New York to Newport, from Paris to London, and from Rome to the Gulf of Florida, just as they pleased. They were immensely rich, immensely popular, and from the first the Four Hundred had received them with open arms. Apparently there was no fly in the amber and no crumpled roseleaf on the couch of down—that is, so far as the public knew. But on one point old Reuben Vandyk and his partner Amos Ommanney were perfectly firm. They had made their money together, and they knew the value of it, and not unnaturally they conceived the idea that, when they had done with it, those two vast estates should become one under the joint direction of the young people—in other words, they had made up their minds that the two must marry. By gradual stages this had become an obsession so great that Roman Fathers had issued their ultimatum. There was no immediate hurry, of course, but unless the young people came to a proper understanding, they were told quite firmly that they would have to look to themselves in the future, and that the vast accumulation of family dollars would pass elsewhere.

Now, had the young people been left to themselves, no doubt the trouble would have smoothed itself out strictly in accordance with the laws of Nature. Sylvia and Clifford had a genuine liking for one another—they had been friends and confidants from their childhood—and Dan Cupid, hiding round the corner, frowned to himself to see all the fine work he was putting in frustrated by two obstinate old men who thought they knew better than the astute son of Venus. As a matter of course, the two young people drifted apart—they were cold and distant to one another, and there were certain flirtations in other quarters which did nothing to fill the breach.

What the parents thought they kept to themselves. But they were none the less obdurate. It was about this time that they retired finally from business, realised their capital, chartered a yacht, and went off on a six months' cruise. Report had it that they contemplated the purchase of several islands in the Pacific, though there were others who said that they intended making a bid for some of the minor Balkan States.

Be that as it may, those two plutocrats sailed away into the sunset and never came back again. Months passed, but nothing was heard of the yacht, and the owners were given up for dead. It became necessary for Clifford Ommanney to look into his affairs, for even the son of a millionaire needs money sometimes, but apparently there was none to be had. To all practical purposes the wealth of the partners had vanished. Before they had set out they appeared to have sold everything and invested the proceeds in negotiable securities. Visits to banks and strong-rooms only tended to confirm the catastrophe. Beyond all doubt many millions of dollars in the way of bank paper lay at the bottom of the Pacific. Then for the first time it began to dawn upon Clifford that he was ruined.

He would have to get his own living. He pondered for a week over the best thing to take up, and then came to the deliberate conclusion that he was about as capable of keeping himself as the ordinary office-boy. It was not a pleasant summer that followed, and early autumn found Clifford fagged and run down—found him living on ten dollars a week and occupying a bed-sitting-room in a Brooklyn boarding-house. Yet he was young and strong; he had passed more than one winter trapping fur game in Alaska, and enduring the hardships of that life with zest and enjoyment, so that it injured his pride to find himself bound by the slavery of commercial New York.

It was about this time that he met Sylvia. She was coming out of the famous Flat Iron Building, carrying a note-book in her hand. She was pale and drooping. Gone were the Paris costumes, gone were the dainty shoes with their bejewelled buckles, and only the charm and sweetness of the girl remained. And Clifford stood before her, blushing and stammering like a school-boy.

"I guess," he said—"I guess that I'm the most selfish brute in New York. I forgot all about you. You were away at the time the trouble began, and somehow or other it got into my head that you were being looked after by friends."

"I have no friends," Sylvia said bitterly.

"Well, you need not put on frills over that," Clifford replied. "Nor have I. Not that I went looking for them with a gun when the crash came. Still, they did not exactly run after me, either. And to think I could not find a spare thought for you! You may not believe me, but it never occurred to me till this moment that we are both in the same boat together. Do you mean, to say yon are in an office?"

"That's what they call it," Sylvia said.

"And I'm in a dry-goods store. Dear kid, it's beastly!"

"So's the office, for that matter," Sylvia said, with a catch in her voice. "I ought to have tried for an outdoor job. I can ride and row and play golf; I can skate, and know all about ski-ing. There are lots of girls in America who would be glad to have me as a companion."

"Oh, hit me!" Clifford cried. "Now, why didn't I think of the same thing myself? I'm a perfect jay as far as business is concerned, but an outdoor life is a different matter. Now I've got an inspiration. You just come along with me and have some lunch, and we'll talk the matter over. We are up against it, Sylvia—this sort of life will kill us sooner or later—so I'm going to make a suggestion. You may think it a foolish one, but something's got to be done."

Sylvia made no objection. Clifford was not blind to the fact that Sylvia had not enjoyed a lunch like that for a long time. He saw the tinge of health come back into that exquisitely-cut face of hers; he saw the sparkle once more in the blue eyes, and the smile playing about the corners of her mouth. Of course, he had always known that Sylvia was a pretty girl, but for the first time he recognised that she was beautiful. The knowledge came to him with something of a shock. He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her; he had an insane desire to kiss the drooping red lips and look into those downcast eyes. Strange that he never felt like that before. However

"Now, listen to me," he said. "I've got about five hundred dollars—saved it out of the wreck—and I've got a little shanty up yonder in Alaska that I bought and fitted out three years ago, when I had a fancy for trapping. Heaven knows how much money I wasted on that place! You see, I got keen on the game. You remember I spent a whole winter up there. And when I'd finished, old Sol Punnett, my guide, told me that I knew as much about the game as he did. Of course, I was going back next winter, but I never did. Sol keeps an eye on the place, and writes to me occasionally. But there it is—a jolly old shanty, furnished with all sorts of luxuries in the way of patent stoves and cooking utensils. Why, there's an oil engine to run the electric light! Goodness knows how much in the way of stores, either. If I had that place in the Adirondacks, or on the Gulf of Florida, I could sell it for my own price. But fashion has not yet reached to Alaska, and there it is. And I am going back very soon."

"How perfectly splendid!" Sylvia cried. "If I were a man, how I should love to go with you!"

"You are going with me," Clifford said coolly.

"My dear boy, don't be ridiculous!" "It ain't ridiculous," Clifford said. "Now, listen to me, kid. If I stay here, I shall blow my brains out. If you stay here, you'll just fade away and die. Now, why should you do anything so foolish? Why not marry me? There need be no sentimental nonsense, or anything of that sort. We can regard it as a matter of business, just as you regard your office. You don't care for me in that way, and I don't care "

Clifford paused just there. It was rather difficult to swallow a piece of bread and that lie simultaneously.

"Very well, then," he went on briskly. "You want to get out of this, and so do I. By nature we were intended for the simple outdoor life, and as long as there are such things as social conventions, you can only come with me in the way I speak of. We always got on very well together—always good pals, and so forth. Now, what do you say?"

For a minute or two Sylvia said nothing. Then she stole a glance at her companion. How handsome he was, in spite of his drawn appearance and that shabby serge suit! And then Sylvia made a discovery that caused her to drop her eyes, and brought the blood flaming into her cheeks. But the tender mood lasted but a moment, and the joy of adventure gripped her.

"It's a bargain," she said. "I think that's the proper word to use—what the dramatist would love to call a marriage of convenience. I suppose you and I must have watched a score of such comedies in the Madison Square theatre. Only they generally lead to the gilt cage of splendour, worked out in the best manner of Sir Arthur Pinero. All right, Clifford. I beg to accept your offer of partnership, and the sooner we start, the better. I dare say we shall be quite as comfortable and get on quite as well as the typical happy pair in a conventional novel. To be quite frank, I should love it. And now you'd better get back to your work, and I'll return to mine. If I think much more about the open air, I shall grow sentimental."

The papers got hold of it, of course; there is nothing that escapes the eagle eye of the American journalist. And, really, it made quite a good story. It was a typically human document, full of dramatic possibilities, quite a little novel in its way. The special writers briefly sketched the careers of the dead-and-gone millionaires, and ended up with the hope that the plucky young couple would be as happy as they deserved. Sylvia read all this with cynical amusement, and her sense of humour responded to the quite large number of wedding presents, inspired, no doubt, by the story, and for which she was not in the least grateful. All she wanted now was to get away from New York, to feel the crisp, dry air on her forehead, and work. She told herself that she was happy enough, but with it all there was a certain gnawing little pain at her heart that never left her night or day. She was frank to admit to herself that she liked Clifford well enough—he was a husband to be proud of, with the trifling exception that he did not love her. And Clifford was in wild spirits. His eye dwelt with the pride of possession on that exquisite face and figure opposite him, but he had never kissed her, and the fact troubled him. He was aching to do so, but it did not seem to be like playing the game. Perhaps, later on—

The first snows of winter had already fallen before the hut was reached. There was a long journey across the wild and desolate track of country and through the gloomy pine forests before the itinerary was finished. And it was all new and delightful. Even the broad silence of it appealed to Sylvia. It was a pure joy to lie back in the sledge in a mist of furs, and watch those big dogs flying through the snow. And it was strangely fascinating to encamp at night under the lee of a rock, and watch the firelight flickering as the dogs lay round waiting for something unseen—wolves, perhaps, or the danger of the snows. And so by easy stages they made their way along until the hut was reached.

Here a big man with a face like leather— a man with a huge hooked nose and scarred face—awaited them. He was a taciturn, typical son of the woods, who never used two words when one would do, and yet a man who knew every inch of the country, and in whose ears every snowflake whispered a message. He had his own hut a mile or so away; he had merely come over to light the stove and give the new-comers a welcome.

From the first moment Sol Punnett was Sylvia's abject slave. He surrendered at discretion; he rejoiced in his servitude. There was practically nothing that Sylvia had to do except cook the food and wash up the plates and dishes. Sol would have even made the very beds if she had allowed him to do so. He was hewer of wood and drawer of water; he showed signs of rebellion when Sylvia objected to his coming along in the mornings, with the thermometer below zero, to light the big stove.

Outside it was grim and forbidding enough; outside lay danger stark and black as the throat of a wolf for any luckless trapper who failed to read the warnings of the skies, or who wandered too far from the trail. There was plenty of game to be had. It was exciting work doing the circuit of the traps on the snow-shoes, and dragging the furs of the mink and the skunk and the black fox and the ermine back to the camp. For it was a good winter, and, from a business point of view, a long way the best in Sol Punnett's recollection.

But never did he cease in his taciturn way to impress upon Sylvia the danger of the life. There were times at night when he sat by the stove, pulling at his pipe and telling stories of dire perils and imminent escapes. And they were always stories of one or two men up against the forces of Nature in her wildest and most cruel moods. He told of bright and sunny mornings suddenly changing to a whirling hell of white battalions raging down the valleys and carrying all before them. These things to hear, like Desdemona, did Sylvia seriously incline. And she learnt the lesson, too. She revelled in the life; her cheeks held the glow of health, and her beauty glistened like a star. But, in spite of it all, that queer little pain was still at her heart, though she could trap a fox with the best of them, though she could manipulate a team of huskies, and once, when Clifford had had a nasty fall, she had gone back alone to the hut, a distance of ten miles, for assistance.

And she had all that she wanted there— she had all the comforts and luxuries of life. The hut was lighted by electricity, they boasted a baby-grand piano and a huge gramophone with hundreds of records. And Sylvia turned up her nose in scorn as she thought of the women she knew, cooped up there in New York. But the pain was still at her heart, and there it stayed.

The winter was drawing nearly to an end; it seemed as if Nature was turning in her sleep, and before long there would be no further trapping to do. Then the adventurers could go further south and live on the proceeds of the season's work. There would be no more snow, probably, but old Sol shook his head.

"One more flurry, I guess," he said. "Always wind up with a display of fireworks. Then we can round up them outlying traps and take it easy for a spell, maybe."

It was a true prophet who spoke, for morning brought a blizzard from the north, waited on by a piercing cold, and for two days it was only possible to sit over the stove and eat and sleep. Then the frost shut down again, and sunset brought the steel blue into the vault overhead, with the promise of more snow behind it.

"We'll clear up those outlying traps in the morning," Clifford said. "No, you are not coming along, Sylvia. Just a bit too risky this time. And if we don't come back again, then you can take the other team of dogs and meet us."

It seemed a long morning to Sylvia and a still longer afternoon. The sullen sun had vanished, a thin powder of snow began to fall, and there was an ominous moaning in the pines on the shoulder of the hill behind the house. Then, with the force of a thunderbolt, the blizzard broke, and it seemed to Sylvia as if she were alone in the universe.

She bustled about the hut, scarcely daring to think; she wanted occupation to distract her thoughts. It was beginning to get dusk when something seemed to strike against the door; a hollow voice spoke from outside, With her heart in her mouth, Sylvia threw back the heavy timbers and dragged the limp form of Sol Punnett to the stove. As the grateful heat struck him, he opened his eyes and looked stupidly round him. There was a cut on his face, his left hand dangled uselessly.

"Accident with a sledge," he gasped— "'bout four mile away, just off the track by Three Pines. Dogs got out of hand when they was cut loose, and there you are. I've got a nasty jar, but your old man, 'is left ankle give out, and there he is. Can't move a yard without another sledge, and here am I 'bout as useless as a log! If you dare—"

"Oh, I dare," Sylvia said quietly—"I dare!"

She fought her way in the teeth of the gale to the shed at the back of the hut. There she wrapped herself in her furs and whipped the dogs into the traces. It was touch and go for a minute, but she was reckless and full of courage, and the huskies seemed to know it. The pain was gone from her heart now, and she could see the truth. The thing that she had tried to hide from herself was like a hand pointing from the falling skies. And then for an hour or more she battled along the headlong track of her great adventure, fought fiercely till her eyes were blind with tears and the breath seemed to be frozen in her body. But somehow she knew that she was fighting to win. She knew that the light would hold good for a good hour or more, and that with the wind on the backs of the dogs, and their eager noses turned homewards, the victory would be hers.

And presently she found what she sought —an overturned sledge and a man sitting by the side of it, doggedly shaking the snow from his furs. He looked up in a dazed fashion and wiped the freezing snow from his eyes.

"Good Heavens, is it you, Sylvia?" Clifford gasped. "My dearest girl, my ever dearest girl, do you mean to say It isn't even as if you cared for me—I mean, not in the way that I care."

He was so dazed and numb that he seemed hardly to know what he was saying, and yet the words rang sweet and true, and the light that cannot be counterfeited was in his eyes. Then Sylvia forgot the peril of the moment, forgot everything as she stumbled out of the sledge and threw her arms about Clifford's neck and drew his head down on her shoulder.

"It was worth it," she whispered—" worth all the danger, because now I know! And do you mean to say that all the time you have really, really cared?"

"Always, I think," Clifford said, "only I didn't know. You see, if we had not been brought up together, if we had met casually, as people who get to love one another do—"

He broke off abruptly, and Sylvia laughed. Then she stooped and lifted Clifford in her arms as if he had been a child and placed him tenderly in the sledge. There was not another word spoken as they made their way back again, with the grey wolves of the gale howling for their lost prey—indeed, there was nothing more to say. They were back again presently, back in the warm shelter of the hut, safe and sound and happy.

ABOUT a fortnight later, when the snows were melting on the hillside, and Sol Punnett was away clearing out the traps, two elderly travellers might have been seen wending their way in the direction of the hut. Then one of them looked in through the window and signed to his companion to approach cautiously.

"Looks as if it had come off all right, pard," he said. "Seems as if our little scheme had planned out all right. Now, if you take my advice, you will just wait?"

But the other man was taking no advice. Without ceremony he opened the door of the hut and walked in. There was a shout of surprise and welcome, and a moment later the trapper and his bride and the two long-lost mariners were all talking at once.

It was the strident voice of Reuben Vandyk that presently dominated the rest.

"It was all a put-up job," he said. "I got it out of a book. So we just put our money away quietly and hopped off on the yacht way down South. We changed its name— because why? We wanted to give you young people a chance to learn a few things, and then find yourselves, and now you 'ave! You can't get over the old people; you see, they always know best."

"No doubt," Sylvia laughed. "But if you knew everything, you'd realise there was some danger in it, after all."

THE END

A SINGLE HAIR

ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES CROMBIE

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLIV, Aug 1916, pp 337-343

WILFRED BARNES, eke of London University,M.D., looked despairingly out to sea. He was seated on the edge of a rotten verandah of a tumble-down bungalow on the margin of the Coral Sea down there, in the South Pacific, on the outer fringe of civilisation. In front of him was a stretch of white sand, with the whiter surf beyond, creamy and mantling in the sunshine, and behind him the swaying plumes of the palms, or, at least, they would have been the swaying plumes of the palms but for the fact that the little islet of Omolo lay in the centre of the anti-cyclone, and not a breath of air came to Barnes's almost atrophied lungs. He could feel the perspiration trickling down his forehead as he sat there cursing his fate and the imps of chance that had brought him all the way from London and Janet Blyth.

It was not his fault entirely. He had put his little capital into a practice largely built on bogus ledgers and apocryphal patients, so that, at the end of a year, instead of a comfortable living, with Janet by his side, he had found himself on the verge of bankruptcy.

When everything was disposed of, he found himself facing the world with a five-pound note, and looking a black future squarely into its forbidding eyes. Then, in a fit of despair, he had sold himself to Mark Gride, the eminent pathologist, for three thousand pounds. With the money went Barnes into practically three years' penal servitude, though he had not grasped it at the time. He had talked the matter over with Janet, and it had seemed to her that the opening was a good one. It meant, of course, three years' separation, with fifteen thousand miles of sea between them; but then Wilfred would be able to save every penny of the money, and, when he came back, be in a position to buy another practice more promising than the first one. And so Barnes had set his teeth grimly and come all that way to a little island on the edge of the Solomon Group, with the firm determination to make the best of things; and here he was, at the end of the first year, cursing his bonds and wishing, from the bottom of his heart, that Fate had never brought him in contact with the cold-blooded brute and unfeeling savage who was known to men as Mark Gride. Far better had he stayed in England and accepted a job as locum to some sixpenny doctor in the East End of London. And he had known something of Gride's reputation, too. The man in question had had a brilliant career at Cambridge and University College, where he had towered over his fellows like the intellectual giant that he undoubtedly was. But then he was ill-disciplined, intolerant, and brutal in his manner, and so callous in his methods as to bring him, in the course of time, before the Council of the College of Surgeons. There had been a pretty big scandal over some vivisection atrocities, and it was only Gride's amazing record that had saved him from professional disgrace. Fortunately for him, he was the possessor of ample private means, a mad enthusiast as far as his profession was concerned, a daring experimentalist and pioneer, and so it came about that he shook the dust of London from his feet and migrated to a region where he would be able to pursue his investigations in an atmosphere of greater freedom and less responsibility. And when he had offered the post of assistant to Barnes, the latter had jumped at the offer immediately.

The conditions were pretty stringent, too, though the pay was good enough. Barnes was to have three thousand pounds for three years' services, the money to be paid in one sum at the termination of the contract. If in the meantime Barnes decided to cancel the agreement, then he was to get nothing except his passage home. And if in the meantime anything happened to Gride, then the whole of the money was to be payable at once through the latter's solicitors in London, who had the necessary authority to deal with the case.

And then there followed for Barnes a year of hideous nightmare that racked his soul and filled him with the lust for slaughter a dozen times a day. For out there, in Omolo, Gride could do as he liked. He had his menagerie of beasts and reptiles, monkeys and the like, upon which he experimented with a cold-blooded mclassity that amounted almost to mania. Indeed, in a fashion, the man was mad. He had no fear of the College of Surgeons before his eyes out there, and he seemed to revel in a refined cruelty which might possibly have been accounted for by the fact that between his spells of scientific research he had heavy bouts of drinking that brought him frequently to the verge of delirium tremens. The year was passing in a review before Barnes's eyes as he sat there, wondering if it was possible for flesh and blood to stand it any longer. A score of times he had made up his mind to quit the whole thing and return home without being a penny the better for all he had done. And then the vision of Janet would rise before his eyes, and he would grip his teeth and string himself to go on to the bitter end. Even then he probably might not have done so, had it not been for Denton.

This Denton was a cheery American naturalist attached to Columbia University, who was out there, in Omolo, studying the local butterflies. Perhaps he hated Gride as much as did Barnes, but his philosophy was a little wider than that of the Englishman; and, besides, the American was not called upon to take any part in those mumbo-jumbo rights and sacrifices of blood that Gride's seared and blackened soul revelled in. Still, he was a tonic to Barnes, and a sympathetic companion who kept him going from day to day.

He came on to the balcony now with a glorious puple-and-gold butterfly on the palm of his hand. It was a new and rare specimen, and his shrewd grey eyes twinkled as he contemplated it.

"Well, how are we getting on?" he asked cheerfully. "How's old Moloch this morning?"

"Infernally bad," Barnes said moodily. "He hasn't been sober for the last three days, though signs are not wanting that he is coming round. I've had a ghastly week, old chap—perfectly ghastly—an orgy of blood and cruelty that has made my very soul retch. And not a pennyworth of ansesthetic on the island, except the morphia that Gride uses to soothe his nerves after one of his outbreaks. I wouldn't mind if there were, but when I see those poor brutes—I tell you, Denton, I'm an infernal scoundrel to go on with it! And yet what can I do? I have sold myself for a price, and. Heaven knows, I am earning every penny of the money!"

As Barnes spoke, Denton jerked his thumb significantly over his shoulder, and a moment later Gride appeared. He was shivering from head to foot in spite of the heat, his strong, intellectual face was green and ghastly, his chin was dingy with a five days' beard. And yet, though he was racked and broken by the brandy he had been drinking, the man's mind was clear and vigorous enough, and his great, strong will was dominating his tortured body.

"You were talking about me," he said suspiciously. "Oh, I can guess what Barnes has been saying. Let him grumble as much as he likes, I've got him all right. He is a sort of Jacob serving for Rachel. Ha! Ha! Go in the house and mix me a 30 injection of morphia. We are going to be busy to-night, Barnes. You had better clear out, Denton, and don't come here again till I send for you."

"It's a cordial invitation," Denton drawled, "and I shall have much pleasure in availing myself of it."

The American sauntered off with the butterfly in his hand, and the ghastly wreck with a five days' beard turned angrily upon his unhappy assistant.

"You just drop that," he said. "I'm sick of your whining. You are my servant."

"Your slave," Barnes said bitterly.

"Well, perhaps that's a better word. My slave for the next two years to come, and don't you forget it. Not that I am complaining about the way you do your work. Why, good Heavens, man, there are scores of young doctors who would give their heads for a chance like yours! Look what I've taught you! Look what you will be able to teach the snivelling sentimentalists in England when you get back! And yet you whine and whimper because I put a knife into a strapped monkey, without an anaesthetic, as if he were a human being. Look at Crim yonder! Is he any the worse for what he has gone through?"

As Gride spoke, he pointed a trembling forefinger to a chimpanzee perched on the edge of the balcony. The monkey seemed to know by some instinct that he was under discussion, for he chattered and gibbered and scolded in Gride's direction. As a rule. Grim was mild-mannered enough, and for Barnes the intelligent beast had quite an affection. But Gride he hated at the bottom of his simian soul. He had known what it was to come under the Professor's knife, and even at that moment, as he turned, Barnes could see the recent stitches of a comparatively new wound between the ape's shoulders.

"I wouldn't drive Crim too far, if I were you," he said. "Some of these days he'll do you a mischief. And he's powerful enough to do so, despite his gentleness."

Gride laughed harshly.

"I've flayed him a score of times," he said. "He'll never do any mischief—he hasn't got pluck enough. And I am not going seriously to hurt the best subject I've got. Now go and get me that morphia, and I'll show you something presently that no pathologist has ever dreamt of before. I'm going to show you a new serum; I am going to show you an absolute certain cure for cancer. You know" what I've been doing with that little banana monkey Mini. She's full of it. I'm going to cut her throat —it's the only way of doing it—and then you will be part-discoverer of the greatest healing power in the world. And yet people whine and snivel over vivisection, and pretend that the whole of humanity had better suffer than some furry little beast should be tortured. Then I'll have a shave and a bath, and we'll open a case of champagne for dinner. Now, get a move on."

Barnes came out presently with a hypodermic syringe, and injected the morphia into the arm of his chief. In less than a minute Gride was a new man. The green tinge left his cheek, the haggard look faded from his eyes, he paced up and down the verandah with the air of a man to whom the secrets of continents are revealed. Then he went into his own operating-room, and came back presently with a tiny monkey in a cage. He had under his arm a small leather dressing-case containing a set of razors and the necessary implements of shaving. Then, without a word, he took the tiny simian from its cage and laid it face upwards on bis knees. With a hand as steady as a rock, he drew the edge of the shining blade across the monkey's throat. There was just a little gasping cry, with a creepy suggestion of humanity in it, and the tiny creature lay dead.

"Behold, you see there is practically no flow of blood," Gride said, in the tones of a man who is demonstrating some everyday problem. "Not more than a tablespoonful altogether. But the precious serum is there on the fur, and we can easily cultivate from that. Simple, isn't it?"

"Horrible, ghastly!" Barnes shuddered. "But look at Crim! Take care of yourself!"

All this time the chimpanzee had been watching the proceedings with an intelligence almost weirdly human. He hopped down from his perch and advanced towards Gride with hands clenched and eyes aflame with anger. Then his mood seemed to change, for be stooped and picked up the razor and ran his paw along the edge much as a man might have done who is in the act of shaving. He dropped the weapon again, and, with a quick, strangled cry, disappeared in the hanging foliage of a palm. Something seemed to grip Barnes by the throat.

He stood there, holding himself in hard and sweating from head to foot with the nausea and horror of it. Not that it was anything fresh, but there were moments of high nervous tension, one little episode piled upon another, till it seemed to him that he could stand it no longer. He saw Gride stoop, and with a surgical knife cut the little blood-stained patch of hair from the dead monkey's throat, and place it carefully in a tin specimen case, which he dropped into the pocket of his filthy dirty linen jacket, together with the razor with which the thing had been done.

To Gride it was nothing, merely a trivial incident in the day's work. He lay back in the big basket-chair and half closed his eyes, for the morphia had him in its grip now, and the man was worn fine by the need of sleep. He could see nothing of the contempt and anger in Barnes's eyes. And yet, had Gride been possessed of one touch of humanity, one shred of human feeling, then a greater man he might have been. As it was, he was a kind of scientific Bismarck, with all that individual's brutal contempt for anything or anybody that came between him and the goal of his desire. He had all the massive intellectuality, too,, with the spiteful cruelty of a Marat, a highly organised machine with as much sensibility and feeling.

He closed his eyes, and muttered something to the effect that he needed sleep, and that on no account was he to be disturbed.

"All right," Barnes said. "And if you die in your sleep, I shall thank God for it."

"Yes, it would be a good get out for you," Gride chuckled. "In the meantime, go on with your dinner, and don't worry about me. And tell Cosmos I want him."

The middle-aged Kanaka boy who cooked and cleaned and did for the two Englishmen emerged from his black hole at the back of the bungalow and stood to attention.

"I am going to sleep for an hour, Cosmos," Gride said. "Don't disturb me anyhow. Bring out my shaving glass and the soap and some warm water, and put it on the table there, so that I can shave when I wake."

The Kanaka complied obediently. He placed the tackle by the side of his master. He stropped the razor and laid it on the table convenient to Gride's hand. The latter might wake up in an hour, or he might sleep there all night, as he frequently did after one of his drinking bouts. For the moment he was worn out, body and soul. When the fiery spirit reached him, he would drink for two or three days at a time, eating nothing and working night and day, forced on by driving pressure that he could not resist. In these abnormal conditions his brain was at its best and brightest. Then Nature would call a halt, and after a dose of the blessed nepenthe he would frequently sleep the clock round.

And these were times that Barnes looked forward to, hours that he had entirely to himself to think and dream and plan for the future. He was turning matters over in his mind now as he pushed his chair back from the dining-room table and lit his pipe. How much longer could he go on like this? he wondered. Would it be possible to continue to the end of his servitude? Or should he throw up the whole thing and go back to Janet, and tell her that he had failed? An hour or so passed; the great full tropical moon crept np over the edge of the lagoon and flooded the sweating palm beach with a light as bright as day. There was silence everywhere, and not a sound to break it save the murmur of the tide on the sand and the hum of insects in the air. Then presently Cosmos, in the black hole that he called his kitchen, began to sing some weird Kanaka song, and Barnes was glad, for there was something near and companionable even in the nigger's voice. Then his own storm of black thoughts began to drift away, and he stepped out through the open window into the flooded glory of the perfect night. How far away from strife and trouble it all seemed, how peaceful and attractive!

Gride still lay there, with his long legs outstretched and his big, massive head thrown back against the cushions of his chair. He was in for a night's sleep, evidently. Probably he would not wake again till far into the next day. He was as still and rigid as the fringe of palms behind the golden beach—almost ominously still, Barnes thought. Some night he would die like this, for the man had an aneurism of the heart, and he had always declared that, if the trouble gripped him at the same time as he was in the midst of one of his drinking bouts, he would go out like the snuff of a candle. Almost in a spirit of hopefulness—an emotion of which he was slightly ashamed—Barnes approached the man who held him in bondage. Then he staggered back with a choking cry in his throat.

It was practically daylight, and every little detail stood out clear-cut as a cameo. Gride lay there. Barnes could see his head thrown back, and his throat cut from ear to ear. The keen blade had swept through the carotid artery and had penetrated almost to the spinal column. The dingy linen jacket and the discoloured shirt were stained with blood, already beginning to congeal, and from this Barnes judged that his brutal taskmaster had been dead an hour or two. A few yards away, on the edge of the verandah, lay a bloodstained razor, as if it had been hurriedly thrown down there by the assassin in his flight. But for this evidence, Barnes might have concluded that Gride had taken his own life; but no man could have inflicted such a mortal injury upon himself and at the same time flung the lethal weapon so far away. No, beyond a doubt. Gride had been murdered, and Barnes's first fierce emotion was one of gladness.

Then he took a pull at himself, and his reasoning faculties began to assert themselves. Who could have done this thing? There were only six people on the island altogether—two inoffensive Kanaka boys besides Cosmos and the three Europeans— and from the moment that dinner had been served, Cosmos had not moved a yard from the kitchen. A wild desire for human companionship gripped Barnes like a plague. He stepped down from the verandah and fled like a hunted thing in the direction of the hut where Denton had made his headquarters, and where he gave employment to the other Kanaka boys. The American was seated outside his shanty, smoking a green cigar and drinking some cool, seductive-looking mixture from a long tumbler by his side.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "You look a heap troubled. Sit down and have a drink."

"Gride has been murdered," Barnes said hoarsely. "He went to sleep on the verandah instead of coming to dinner—you know his way—and when I went out just now, I found him with his head almost severed from his body."

"Not much loss, anyway," Denton drawled.

"Very likely, but that isn't the point. Who could have done it? Not Cosmos, I swear."

"And not my boys, either, for they haven't been outside the hut ever since I came back. It seems to lie between you and me, Barnes. I suppose you haven't seen red yourself—"

"I see red every day," Barnes said bitterly; "but my hands are clean, thank God. I can't think. I am wearied and worn out, and my brain is numb. Come over to the bungalow with me, like a good chap, and see what you can make of it."

But it was very little that the American had to suggest. They carried the dead man into his room and covered him over with a sheet, and then Denton began to ask questions.

"Tell me everything," he said, "and don't omit any detail, however small. There aren't many details in a case like this, and, if you don't mind, I'll take this razor home with me. I should like to put it under my microscope, and don't you forget that I am some naturalist as well as a collector of butterflies, and I know as much about this amazing household of yours as you do yourself. Now, there's only one thing for it. You go quietly off to bed and sleep, if you can, and I'll come and talk it over with you in the morning, and if you take my advice, you'll have a few grains of morphia yourself. If ever I saw anybody who needs a drug, you are the hairpin in question."

It was about eleven the following morning when Denton lounged up to the bungalow, cool and collected as usual, with a smile on his face and a general suggestion of being master of the situation.

"Well," Barnes said wearily—"well?"

"I think I've got it," Denton said. "I worried it all out last night, and I found something on the handle of that razor that confirms my suspicions. Where's Crim?"

"Oh, how do I know? And what on earth has the chimpanzee got to do with it? As a matter of fact, I haven't seen him this morning."

"Now, you just come with me and bring a gun. When we have found Crim, I'll go on with the story."

Since the previous evening the chimpanzee had not been seen. He had not even come in for his breakfast. They found him presently high up in the centre of a clump of cocoa-nut palms, from which he nodded and chattered and showed his teeth in defiance. He seemed to be filled with a rage and terror that was quite foreign to his usual friendly and peaceful demeanour. Without a word, Denton raised his gun and shot the simian clean through the heart.

"That's as good as murder!" Barnes cried, aghast. "What did you do that cold-blooded thing for?"

"Waal, I guess we couldn't haul Crim up before a court of justice," Denton said. "We couldn't bring him before a jury and the rest of the fixings. In these parts, when you meet a murderer, you just shoot him. It's rough-and-ready justice, but it's just as effective. And I shot your chimpanzee, because he it was who murdered Gride. Not that I care anything about Gride, but when an animal takes to that kind of thing, he never stops. Now, look here, sonny, it's like this. When you told me all those details last night, I began to see my way. To a certain extent I was rather fond of Crim—he was as near a human as makes no matter, and he hated Gride almost as much as you did. Look how the poor brute had suffered at the hands of that cold-blooded piece of human machinery. Look at the times he has been operated upon without an anassthetic, and him big and strong enough to strangle Gride as easy as I can stick a pin through a butterfly. I tell you, Crim was waiting his chance. Didn't he see the little banana monkey have its throat cut? And wasn't everything ready to his hand when Gride went to sleep on the balcony last night? Why, it was as if that chap had been giving Crim an object-lesson. And Crim took advantage of it. He watched Gride till he went to sleep, and then he took the razor and cut the throat of the man that he had hated and feared and loathed more than anything that crawled on earth. And he had his revenge all right."

"Seems almost incredible," Barnes said. "But how are you going to prove it?"

Denton took an envelope from his pocket.

"I told you I was a naturalist," he said. "Anyway, I've studied the habits of the simian, and I know what he's capable of. Besides, I took that razor home last night for a purpose, and in the haft I found what I expected to find—a few hairs, which I have examined under the microscope. And those hairs came from Crim, beyond the shadow of a doubt. And I think that ought to satisfy you, as well as it satisfies me. At any rate, you are free now, and if any man ever earned his money, that man's name is Wilfred Barnes."

THE END

LOVE IN AETHER

ILLUSTRATED BY G.C. WILMSHURST

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLIV, Jun 1916, pp 15-20

ANGELA of the sea-grey eyes lay in her little white bed, dreaming in elusive golden and purple patches. That is to say, she was not asleep; she could see the moon shining in through the parted dimity blinds of the cottage window, and she was not in the least afraid, though she was quite alone in the house. She was used to that now, accustomed to do most of the housework for herself, with the aid of an occasional help from the village down there at the foot of the moorland. She ought to have been desperately unhappy, but she was not, because she was young, and it was the spring of the year, with the daffodils blooming down there in the garden, and the wallflowers filling the air with their fragrance. And, besides, she had just sold her last lot of drawings, and she had commissions enough to last her well into the autumn. And therefore—

She was swaying gently backwards now; she was getting the dreams into focus. There was the old home, the crazy, tumble-down old vicarage with its walled-in garden, and then the lych-gate of the church, and a grave under the shadow of the big yew tree: "Sacred to the memory of James Dysart, twenty-seven years vicar of this parish." Then a solicitor, dry of manner, keen of face, who had suggested things. Ronald must go on at Cambridge, of course. It would be rather a pinch, but, if Angela thought she could live on her art work, it might be managed. And then the tiny cottage amongst the heather that she had learnt to love so well. After that, again, Ronald, self-reliant, brilliantly successful, and boyish and innocent as ever, was back again. He had carried everything before him. Everybody said that his scientific research showed marked originality; that wireless telephone of his was going to mark an epoch. It would bring him not only fame, but wealth as well. And all this at the end of only two years at Cambridge.

And, after that, the advent of Philip Service, and, behold, a new and dazzling world opened itself up at Angela's feet. For the Greek god had come, the prince had touched her on the lips, and a woman stood where, the day before, a child had walked delicately. It seemed too good to be true, too good to believe, that this Olympian should have stooped to take her by the hand.

He was so handsome, so marvellously, brilliantly clever. Already he was spoken of as the coming surgeon; already he had mastered the secret of Ronald's wireless telephone. But he was poor; he wanted a thousand pounds. With that, then all the world would lie in the hollow of his hand.

How had it all come about? Dreaming there, Angela was striving to place the threads together. By some hypnotic process her little capital had found its way into his hands; indeed, it seemed to her that she had forced it on him. And then there had been some terrible scandal in connection with a series of vivisection experiments, researches so cold-blooded that even Service's fellow-surgeons had been aghast. The man was diabolically clever, they said, but absolutely inhuman. There was a scandal, of course, followed by a prosecution, which Service did not wait for, but took himself off disdainfully to America. He would come back, he said, when the British public returned to their senses. He had merely written this to Angela; he had gone without seeing her, saying that he would be back in the autumn.

It hurt Angela, pained and outraged as she was, to hear people say that Service was a brilliant blackguard. But she found it out later, when Ronald foamed into the cottage one night and cursed Service homerically. The marvellous new wireless telephone had never been properly protected, and that scoundrel had actually taken out a provisional patent in his own name.

Angela could see the white, wet face of her brother as he stormed up and down the stone-flagged floor of the little sitting-room. He would follow that rascal to the ends of the earth; he would not be content until he had taken the thief by the throat and wrested the spoil from him. He did not care what happened to himself—he was reckless of the future. And so he went on the hot adventure, and Angela was alone.

In the little room next to hers, where Ronald had worked, the delicate little instrument still stood. It was little more than an ordinary receiver hedged about with concentric rings and a multitude of little steel points, a kind of miniature generating-station of aether and eon and other strange forces of which Angela knew nothing. But she did know that many a time she had conversed with Ronald from that little room to a point on the moor some ten miles away. She had listened in some confusion to his learned dissertation on air waves and dynamic forces which, when properly tuned one to the other, would make this service a practical proposition all over the world. There was one other man who knew something about it, but Angela never learnt his name.

She was getting over it now; the light had come back into her eyes, and the elasticity into her step, and there was only one terror that haunted the purple and gold flashes of these moonlit dreams—Service was coming back again in the autumn. She feared and disliked him now, but, if he did come back, then assuredly he would exercise the old hypnotic power over her again. He had loved her in his own peculiar way—loved her as if she had been a specimen in some collector's case possessed by no other student of entomology. It was hateful to be loved like that.

Then the dreams became more personal and tender. It was a glorious moonlight night, with the scent of the daffodils faintly sweet through the open window, and the knowledge that the world was very far away. And then—then the wireless telephone began to ring.

Angela was not in the least frightened. In her fancy, it was as if the fairies were calling. Someone in a world far away was speaking to her; and, so far as she knew, the secret working of that telephone was known only to Ronald and the man who was now thrashing his way to San Francisco in a tramp steamer round Cape Horn. She rose from her bed and took a dressing-gown from her wardrobe. For here was something like an adventure, and curiosity gripped her firmly by the arm. She unhooked the receiver and placed it to her ear. Then she spoke.

"Hello!" she said. "Hello! Who is speaking?"

"One moment," a voice said at the other end. "This—this is rather unexpected. Then it is true. Really, I beg your pardon. Would you mind telling me where you are?"

"This is Minehead, in Surrey," Angela said. "And you?"

"Does it really matter?" the voice asked. "Oh, well, I am somewhere on the West Coast. Wireless. You see, I have been making experiments with telephones. I did hear a legend, a few months ago, that a bright particular star up at Cambridge had got in front of me. I have not the least idea what his name is, but it occurred to me that you might be able to tell me."

"I can tell you nothing," Angela said coolly.

"Oh, quite right, quite right. I ought not to have asked. Still, you can see what a thrilling episode it is. Between you and me, we ought to shake the world. It is high time, too, that woman came into her own."

"You are sure you are talking to a woman?"

"Of course. A young woman with a voice like silver."

"Do you want me to end the conversation?"

"Oh, don't go—please, don't go! It was abominably rude of me, but I feel so tremendously—well, bucked! There is no other word for it. And you must be young and beautiful—you could not be anything else with a voice like that. There, I can't help it. I have fused all the elements of science in a crucible to-night, and out of it I have evolved a shining pearl. I suppose you did not know that scientists could talk like that. Ah, if you'd only tell me your name!"

"I should much prefer to have yours."

"Oh, don't let's spoil it. This is the original romance—this is science harnessed to fiction. And between the two of them they have produced the tenderest story in the world. No, I don't usually talk like this. Perhaps to-morrow night—"

"Oh!" Angela exclaimed. "Really, sir!"

"But don't you see we must," the other voice urged—"in the cause of humanity, progress, civilisation. I cast my bread upon the aether, and it comes back to me like this. We are like two children wandering in a verdant forest—we are on the eve of great discoveries. Oh, I must go on! And I know you will help me. You see, there is no one else in the world that knows what you and I do. It is our secret—yours and mine. I won't ever ask who you are; I won't try and find out where you live—that is, until you give me permission. Now, do forgive me and say that I can speak to you again."

Then the voice trailed away into nothingness. For some time Angela waited in vain. She was just a little excited, a little amused, and not in the least displeased. And it was a pleasant, manly voice that had been ringing in her ears. Perhaps to-morrow night, perhaps And then she fell asleep.

"Are you there, Electra? Are you there?"

"Even so, Ariel." Angela smiled. "Even so."

"Ah, we are getting on," the voice at the other end said. "Let me see, now. Correct me if I am wrong. This is the fourteenth night since the spirits of the air first brought us together. Is that not so, Electra?"

"I suppose I ought to feel flattered," Angela said.

"No, don't. I am in deadly earnest. Every day that goes by brings with it some fresh and startling discovery. I know now that the wireless telephone is a practical proposition. My dear Electra, we shall be rich beyond the dreams of avarice."

"We! " Angela cried. "We! Well—"

She regretted the impulse a moment later. It would have been far better to have ignored that word.

"Well, why not?" the other voice said coolly. "There will be money enough in it for all of us. To your brother the larger share, of course, as the original inventor. And yet here am I, five hundred miles away from you, without even knowing your name, or exactly where you live, or even what you look like. But stop. I do know what you look like. You are young and slender, and you have the true artistic mind. You have the most glorious red-brown hair and a pair of eyes blue or grey, as your mood changes. You have a heavenly smile and a little tiny dimple in your left cheek."

"You have dared to come and spy here!" Angela cried.

"Not so, Electra. I really did deduce all this from that beautiful voice of yours. Anyway, you have answered my question. I wonder if you would send me a photograph? Stop—half a moment! I have to attend to my wireless... Are you there?... Oh, yes, that's all right. Now, if I were a mercenary man, I could make a good deal of money. There are times when I have priceless information hours before it reaches the markets of the world. For instance, I have just heard—No, perhaps I'd better not tell you that, because it is a Government secret. But nearly every night I have done my best to spoil to-morrow's paper for you. Don't go away yet. If ever I come down to Surrey—"

Angela put down the receiver and went to bed.

The golden days were drifting on, the daffodils were faded, and the roses in the cottage garden were in full bloom. From time to time Angela had certain fragments of information from her brother. From one port it was a letter, and from another a postcard. He was hot on the track of Service now; he hoped to catch him up at San Francisco within the next few weeks. Then he would take the rascal by the throat and drag those papers out of him. He would have a lawful assignment if he had to force it at the point of a revolver, and then he would come back home and take his proper place again. Service was on board the Danube, and Ronald was only a few days behind him.

This was interesting and exciting enough, but there were also brief letters from Service to the effect that he was coming back in the autumn—indeed, he mentioned the actual ship by which he intended to return. And as Angela read these messages, her heart sank lower and lower, and the blossoming of the roses in the garden ceased to interest her. She thought of the fall of the autumn leaves and the golden crimson of the bracken. She felt cold and miserable. Her eyes were open now; she wanted to be free and unfettered, and she knew only too well that, once Service was back in England, he would exercise all the old hypnotic influence over her. The man was utterly unscrupulous, but so long as he lived he would still keep that sway, and sooner or later the prison doors would close, unless—unless— She smiled as the thought occurred to her. It was all utterly illogical and absurd, no doubt, but a man with a voice and cheery optimism like that of the mysterious Ariel must be capable of big things. Now, supposing that Angela told him a little more—supposing that she told him the whole truth! And she would do it—she would do it that very night.

And that was why she never mentioned it. The roses were finished, and July was dead and gone, and the scarlet dahlias flamed in the garden, with the story yet untold. It was a little dank and cheerless outside, and a fine rain was falling on the red tiles of the cottage.

"Hello! Hello! Oh, yes. It's you? But why so sad? Is something troubling that dear mind of yours?"

"How do you know that I am sad?" Angela asked.

"I know it because every inflexion of your voice to me is a study in emotions. I know it because I love you, dear Electra, and the time has come when I cannot be happy without you. And you know it, too. It is three months now since I heard you speak out of the darkness, and if you do not care for me—"

"Well, sir, go on. Why this modesty?"

"Oh, I was going on all right. If you had not got to care, then we should never have had all these intimate conversations. I have told you everything, as I believe also that you have told me—well, as much as a woman ever tells."

"I ought to be angry," Angela said, "but—but I'm not. I ought to have told you long ago that there was somebody else."

"Oh, I guessed that," the other voice said cheerfully. "But you don't love him. If you do, I will put my transmitter down and not say another word."

"Please don't go away," Angela said faintly. "I—"

"Darling, I knew it! And we are going to be the happiest couple alive. Now tell me all about it."

"Oh, you really are!" Angela laughed unsteadily. "And I have never even seen you; but even if I had— Oh, it's impossible! I promised another man—"

"Yes, but you don't love him. I'll go further, and say that you very much dislike him. You are afraid of him, that's what it is. Sweetheart, a girl with a dimple like that in your left cheek must not be sacrificed in this cold-blooded fashion. Now, let me see. Let me send him about his business."

"But you can't—he is on the sea."

"But not a sailor. He could not be. No sailor would make love to a girl who disliked him. Now, let me come and see you. We'll talk it over, and then you shall write him a letter. If you like, I'll put another one in the same envelope. And I'm a dreadfully hefty chap, and I can box a bit, too. If you don't believe it, ask any old Oxford man if Cyri—But I very nearly gave myself away then. Do let me come and see you."

"No," Angela said firmly—"at least, not yet. Oh, you don't know what you are saying; you don't know what forces you are up against. And I can't talk to you any more to-night."

Angela dropped the receiver and crept miserably back to bed. There was a way out here, perhaps a desperately foolish one, but a way out, all the same. Was there ever anything in the shape of comedy more illogical and absurd than this? To give her heart and her confidence to a man she had never seen! And yet she must escape; she must follow the line of the least resistance. And with this she fell asleep.

"Well, I'm waiting for you to speak."

"How dreadfully hard your voice seems! Anyone would think that you were angry with me. If you only knew how lonely I am, and how unhappy, I am sure—"

"Dearest, forgive me. I am getting so beastly restless. I have been working very hard, too. In a few days I am going to take my holiday, and I can't return here until that letter is written. It must be done, and the sooner the better. Now, do tell me where I can find you. I feel like a restless bird that has migrated in the spring in search of his mate. You can imagine the condition I'm in when I am reduced to poetical similes like these. Now, I'll give you just one week to make up your mind. At the end of that time I shall come down and decide, and bring my wireless telephone with me. Then I shall call like a bird from every hill until the voice of my mate responds to me. If you don't respond, then I shall know you don't care. My dearest girl, was ever science yet mortgaged for so sweet a purpose?"

"Have you ceased to be quite practical?" Angela asked.

"My own Electra, why mock me? But you're quite right. One must be practical sometimes—which reminds me. I am afraid I have got some bad news for you. Did not you tell me that your brother had sailed in the Danube?"

"Oh, no!" Angela cried. "His boat was the Dniester—"

"That's all right, then, because I heard half an hour ago that the Danube had gone down off the coast of Chile in a storm, and that only one man had been saved—one of the crew. Here, hello, hello! Where have you got to?"

But the receiver had fallen from Angela's hands, and the tears were wet upon her cheeks. It had come, then—the freedom that she had longed for—and come, too, in a way that made her more than half ashamed of her gratitude. Strange, indeed, that this information had reached her from such a source. It seemed to her as if she were in two moods—a queer blending of misery and unhappiness. But be that as it might, she could not speak to the man at the other end any more to-night. She could not speak to him at all. She tried to more than once on the following evening, but her courage failed her; and for three nights those mysterious, long-reaching, ariel fingers set the sound waves in motion, but the bell in the little room spoke in vain. Then, as the days went on, Angela's balance and common-sense came back to her. It was absurd to go on in this way; she must speak to Ariel again, and tell him exactly what had happened. But how much easier it would be for her to do this when they sat side by side in the shadow of the pine forest, and he could hear the story of her life from her own lips.

And yet she could not do it. Another day or two passed by, beautiful August days, with the heather in bloom like a purple sheet upon the moorland, and down below the cornlands turning gold and mellow in the sunshine. It seemed to Angela that she could only sit at the door of the cottage and dream. For the last week she had done no work. She was hardly conscious of the fact that she had just lunched, and—

And then the telephone bell began to ring.

She flew up the stairs, eager, anxious, and trembling. Something strange must have happened—something dreadful and unexpected. Her lips shook as she spoke.

"What is it?" she whispered. "What is it?"

"The bird looking for his mate," the other voice said. "Did I not tell you what would happen? For three days I have been seeking, seeking; but something was wrong with one of the concentrics, and I could not call you."

"Where—where are you now?" Angela stammered,

"Well, to keep up the bird simile, I am fluttering over Surrey. Darling, I must be within a few miles of you. At the present moment I am seated on the top of a high piece of moorland that seems to be far away from the rest of the world. I can see the Channel on one side, or what looks like it, and the glorious woods on the other, and apparently there is no human being within miles. Ah, if you were only with me now!"

"Do you know the name of that place?" Angela asked, in a small voice. "Is—is it far from here?"

"Dearest, how should I know? But, as a matter of fact, the place where I am seated is known by name to me. I got it from an honest shepherd who passed just now with a flock of sheep. He says the place is called Ledge Point."

A queer little laugh broke from Angela's lips. Her heart was beating wildly, the grey eyes gleamed like stars.

"There is no evading you," she whispered. "Now, if you will turn your eyes towards the west, down at the foot of a great clump of pines you will see a tiny red-roofed cottage. And if you could see like the bird can, then you would also make out a figure in a cotton dress and a cotton sun-bonnet, and that figure is me. You are not more than half a mile away, Ariel, and I can't quite realise it yet."

"Sweetheart, don't waste another moment of this glorious day. Shall I come to you, or will you come to me? I can see the path lying plain across the moor."

"I think," Angela said demurely, with a suspicion of a lilt in her voice, "I think that, in the circumstances, it will be far better for us to meet half-way."

THE END

ONE FOGGY NIGHT

ILLUSTRATED BY DUDLEY TENNANT

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLIII, May 1916, pp 797-802

A PLUME of smoke drifted under the great glass dome of Slagborough Station as the Northern Express came slowly to a standstill. It was getting late now, and station was almost deserted. The blue flare of the big arc lamps picked out the lettering on the posters so that they seemed to dance in an eddy of colour, as seen through the half opaque curtain of fog which for the last two or three nights had lain over England like a pall. It was an unusual time, of year for a visitation of that kind, being nearly the end of March, in the last quarter of the moon, so that the nights had been very dark.

The express crept along the platform like a green-and-gold snake that is full of fire, for the electric lights were turned on, and here and there the blinds had not been lowered. Along the platform, almost alone, came the ticket collector, for this was the first stop since the express had left London, and no further examination of tickets would be made that side of Newcastle. The express in question was not a corridor train, but consisted of three Pullman cars and a number of first-class carriages. As the collector passed along from the engine downwards, he came at length to a compartment the blinds of which were drawn, so that it might have been assumed that the compartment in question was empty. But it was no business of the man on duty to assume anything of the sort, so he opened the door and mechanically uttered his parrot cry. The compartment was empty, except that one passenger was huddled up in a far corner, with his head upon his breast, as if he had lapsed into slumber. He was an elderly man, clean-shaven, and dressed in a suit of black—a business man, obviously, probably a merchant or something of that kind. Three times did the collector repeat the request, then he crossed the carriage and laid his hand on the sleeper's shoulder.

A moment later, white and shaken, he was racing down the platform in the direction of the guard's van. That individual, important in his blue and silver, was only waiting for the signal to start.

"Well, Joe," he said impatiently, "what is it?"

"I dunno," the ticket collector stammered. "But there's a passenger all by 'imself in a first-class carriage dahn there, and 'e's dead. Looks to me as if 'e'd bin murdered. There's blood all over 'is shirt-front an' on the floor. I goes in to ask 'im for 'is ticket, an' there I finds 'im as I'm telling you. Anyway, the pore chap's dead."

"Murdered be hanged!" the startled guard exclaimed. "That's impossible. Why, the train 'asn't stopped since we left London, an' there wasn't no murdered man in the train then, I'll take my oath. Besides which, if anybody'd murdered 'im, 'ow could 'e possibly 'ave left the train?"

"Well, then, 'e's murdered 'isself!" the ticket collector said hoarsely. "You come along an' see."

Now, time and express trains wait for no man, and it was only a few minutes before the compound engine was on its way again. The dead man had been removed, and, pending an inquest, the body had been locked up in one of the waiting-rooms. It was some days before any clue to the identity of the deceased was made public, and then it transpired that he was a certain Jabez Thornton, a comparatively well-known business man, who had an office in London, and who resided practically alone in a small house on the borders of Essex. A few more details came out at the inquest, but not many. To begin with, the dead man Thornton was travelling to Newcastle, as the ticket found in his pocket showed, and there was nothing with him in the way of luggage, not even so much as a hand-bag. He had joined the train in London, of course, and his ticket had been examined and clipped on the platform, previous to the departure of the train, in the ordinary way. There was nothing on the body besides a watch and chain and purse and a pocket-book containing a few letters addressed to Thornton in the ordinary way of business.

At the adjourned inquiry the only witness called was the dead man's housekeeper, Maria Flinn. According to her evidence, her master was an exceedingly reticent man, who never spoke to her except when absolutely necessary. He was in the habit of going to London most days, and invariably returned to his cottage by tea-time. He seemed to care nothing what he ate or drank, he had no friends and no weaknesses, and it was his invariable custom, whatever the weather was like, to go for a walk after tea and return to supper at nine o'clock. Mrs. Flinn never knew whether her master had come back or not. Occasionally he would go off after breakfast, and remain away for two or three days without saying a word to her about it. It was her duty to get the meals just the same, and if they were wasted, it was no business of hers.

On the night of the tragedy Thornton had gone out as usual, and when ten o'clock came and he had not returned, the housekeeper locked up and went to bed as usual. She was not in the least alarmed, because the same thing had happened before. No doubt her master had gone to London by one of the numerous suburban trains, with a view to catching the Northern Express, and presumably, when he did that sort of thing, he picked up his portmanteau, or whatever he took with him, at his office. Certainly he had left the cottage in plenty of time to get up to London and catch the Northern Express, which left the terminus shortly before seven o'clock.

For the present, this was all the public were likely to learn. It was not a particularly interesting case, and made no definite appeal to popular imagination. To begin with, it transpired that Thornton was a money-lender as well as an ordinary business man. He had a dingy office in the City, where he was practically unknown; he only employed one clerk, and that a mere drudge, who really knew nothing about his master's affairs. For some reason or another, he had taken his own life, and there was an end to the mystery so far as the general public was concerned.

But Inspector Thomas Fadden, of Scotland Yard, who had the case in hand, was by no means of the same opinion. To begin with, his investigations snowed him no reason whatever why that hard, grasping old man should put an end to his own life. There was nothing about him to indicate any tendency of the kind. He was a man who lived by line and rule, with one object in life, and that the piling up of money. His business as a money-lender appeared to be somewhat extensive, but that branch of the concern had been carried on entirely by the dead man at his cottage, through the medium of the post office. Apparently it had been the one enjoyment of his life.

Obviously this was not the type of man who committed suicide. And if he had stabbed himself in the left breast, as people seemed to imagine, then what had become of the weapon? Thornton had been killed by one clean stroke that must have taken instantaneous effect, and, this being so, it was certain that he would have been in no condition to struggle to his feet and throw the knife out of the window. Moreover, the window was fastened and the blinds down, when the body was found, and there was no evidence whatever of a struggle. Thornton had lain back in the corner of the carriage as peacefully as if he had been asleep. There was nothing whatever in this evidence even to suggest suicide.

But, on the contrary, Thornton was alone in the carriage, the blinds were down, and the door opposite the platform was locked, and, moreover, there was evidence to the effect that the train had not stopped between London and Slagborough. How, then, had the crime been committed? Obviously, not in London. On a crowded platform, with brilliant lights, it would be impossible for anybody to commit an offence like this and escape detection. Fadden was clearly puzzled, but at the same time he clung obstinately to his theory that the man in the corner of the first-class carriage had been murdered. But how—why—when? Fadden would have given a good deal to know.

As yet he had not carried out his intention of going down into Essex to examine the dead man's effects, with the intention of finding some clue there. Instead, he haunted the railway stations, and made the lives of the officials there a burden to them. The best part of a week had elapsed before he stumbled, more or less by accident, on a piece of information which he ought to have had days before. It came through a platform inspector, and dropped from his lips as if it had no value whatever.

"What's that you're saying?" Fadden asked.

"Oh, it's nothing," the official said carelessly. "I was only sayin' to the superintendent here that after to-night there'll be no occasion to stop the Northern Express outside Foxhill Tunnel any longer."

Fadden forced himself to smile.

"Isn't Foxhill in Essex?" he asked. "Isn't it just this side of Withington?"

"Oh, yes, that's right. We've bin makin' some repairs in the tunnel, which have been delayed by all the fog we had last week. You see, we've got a big gang of men working there, and as one of them was seriously injured a little time ago, we had to pull up the trains this side of the tunnel for two or three minutes, and whistle so that those chaps could get out of the way. It often happens in foggy weather."

Fadden said nothing; he was too busy with his own thoughts. Then he turned to the man on the platform and asked a question.

"Look here," he said, "I have got an idea that might help me. Where is the carriage now in which the body of Jabez Thornton was found? If it doesn't happen to be running, I should very much like to have a look at it."

"Oh, of course we know which it is, but I don't suppose it's in the yard at present. Come in here to-morrow evening about tea-time, and I'll have it slipped for you."

"I will," Fadden said emphatically, "I will."

To the ordinary eye the carriage conveyed nothing. Fadden, however, examined it with the greatest care, especially the woodwork on the inside frame of the windows, and, when he had finished, he smiled with the air of a man who feels that he has not been wasting his time. And yet, outwardly, what he had discovered did not appear to amount to much. It was merely that some time, more or less recently, someone had apparently pasted a sheet of paper over the window of the carriage door—a sheet of white paper—which had subsequently been torn away, leaving nothing but just the corners of the paper where they had been pasted. But this discovery kept Inspector Fadden very busy thinking for the next hour or two, during which time he was on his way to Withington, with a view to spending an evening, if necessary, inside Thornton's cottage.

So far, nothing had been disturbed. The police had the key of Thornton's safe—which they had taken possession of directly his identity had been established—and the same key was at that moment in Fadden's pocket. He had not told anybody, and Scotland Yard had been equally reticent, that a large sum of money in notes, which Thornton had drawn on the morning of his death, and had taken with him down to Withington, was missing. So far, no close examination had been made of the mass of papers which were still lying on Thornton's desk. But it was quite another matter now, and it was more than possible that an inspection of those papers would lead Fadden a long way down the road which he had begun to travel since he had heard that for several nights during the past week the Northern Express had been pulled up at the entrance to Foxhill Tunnel. That the authorities had not informed Fadden of this, the latter regarded as a piece of incredible stupidity; but, on the other hand, the average railway official is not exactly a good judge of the value of criminal evidence.

At any rate, Fadden plunged into his task with fresh zest and interest. At the end of an hour he had thrown most of the papers aside as quite useless for his purpose, and had concentrated his attention on a letter which he had found lying on the blotting-pad. It was quite a clean blotting-pad, with no mark upon it except the figures 18975, jotted down on one corner of the grey pad in pencil, evidently a memorandum of some kind made by Thornton just before his death. In his methodical way Fadden took down the figures in his pocket-book. Then he proceeded to read the letter. It was headed "19, Queen Street, Gray's Inn Road," and, in a neat, feminine hand , ran as follows:—

DEAR SIR,

I enclose you a five-pound note herewith, which, I regret to say, is all I can do for the moment. I know it is only half the amount I should have sent as promised, but I have been disappointed to-day with regard to some money I expected for my last lot of designs, and you shall have the other five pounds on Sunday. I pray you not to be hard upon me, because, if I lose my little home here, my child and myself will be turned out in the street to starve. I know my husband treated you badly; I know that he robbed you of money by giving you a forged cheque, and that you cashed it for him. But he is not entirely bad, and there was a time when he was as good a husband as any woman might wish. He has been very unfortunate lately, and for a long time has been unable to procure an engagement on the music-hall stage. You know how clever a lightning artist he is, and he cannot be out of work for long. He hopes to get an engagement in Newcastle next week, when he has promised to send me some money. As soon as he does, I will forward you the whole of it. I implore you not to be hard upon ine, for the sake of the child.

"Yours truly,

"MARY GAYLORD."

There was a memorandum scribbled across the letter, just the words "take proceedings to-morrow." Fadden smiled grimly as he read the note.

"A hard man," he murmured, "a cruelly hard man. And that letter speaks for itself. It's a whole human tragedy in a few lines. Now, let me see. Here is a man whom Thornton could have prosecuted at any moment, a man who owed him money, and whose wife was doing her best to pay it off. Inside this letter was a five-pound note, and the letter reached Thornton, according to the postmark, a few minutes before he set out on that journey from which he never returned. I wonder what became of that five-pound note? It isn't in the safe, because there was no money found there at all, so that the fiver in question was probably stolen with the other notes, or possibly all that money was on Thornton at the time he was killed! Here, stop a minute. Now, I wouldn't mind making a small bet that these pencilled figures on the blotting-pad represent the number of that five-pound note. It's just what a careful man in a hurry would do. It's no clue, of course, but one never knows when these things are likely to prove useful. There are no trivial details in our business."

It was an hour later before Fadden turned into Queen Street and asked for Mrs. Gaylord, at No. 19. He found himself presently talking to a little, faded woman with a very white and pathetic face, that must have been pretty and attractive before care and trouble had aged it so terribly. The woman's eyes had a suggestion of fear in them as she stood before Fadden in a neat little sitting-room, waiting for him to speak. There were signs of the grimmest poverty all round him—signs which were more or less contradicted by the somewhat substantial cold meal that stood on the table.

"What can I do for you?" the woman asked fearfully.

"Well, I don't know that you can do anything," Fadden smiled. "At any rate, you've nothing to be afraid of, though I have told you who I am. Now, I am inquiring into the death of a man named Thornton, and it is my business not to leave anything undone. You know the man I am speaking of, of course—in fact, you and your husband owe him money. I know that because I have seen a letter from you to him, enclosing a five-pound note. It may save a good deal of trouble if you tell me where you got that money from."

"From Barker's, of St. Paul's Churchyard," the woman said simply. "I work for them— at least, I do designs for them in colour. On the day I sent that money to Mr. Thornton the firm paid me five pounds in gold, and I got Mr. Gange, the grocer at the corner of the road, to exchange it for a note. You see, I am so poor that every penny is important to me, and that is why I did not send a postal order."

Fadden nodded thoughtfully. So far, he was quite satisfied that the woman was telling the truth—at any rate, it would be an easy matter to verify it—and, of course, he was aware of the fact that that piece of precious paper had reached Thornton previous to his death.

"I don't want to hurt your feelings," Fadden went on, "but I gather from that letter of yours that your husband has obtained money from Thornton by false pretences, and I take it you have been paying it off by instalments."

The woman's sensitive face quivered.

"That's quite true," she said. "I have been paying it off for two years, and cruel hard work it has been, with my husband out of employment most of the time. And that man made me promise to pay double the money. Ah, he was a hard man, was Jabez Thornton!"

"So it seems," Fadden said dryly. "And is your husband out of work now? Has he sent you anything lately? Your supper-table rather suggests that he has."

"Well, he did. He wrote to me from Newcastle, where he is now employed at a music-hall, and he actually forwarded me a five-pound note. It's in the letter there on the mantelpiece at the present moment. In the ordinary way, I should have forwarded it to Mr. Thornton, but, now that he is dead, there is no such great hurry, and whoever comes into his money will never be as cruelly hard as he was."

"We'll hope not," Fadden said. "Now, I am a police officer, and whatever you say to me is in confidence. It may save you a good deal of unpleasantness, and me one or two journeys, if you allow me to see that letter. I am not suggesting that I have any charge against your husband, but, you understand, I like to clear up things as I go along."

The letter was handed over without the slightest hesitation. It was a careless, heartless epistle, written in an unsteady hand that told its own tale, and enclosing a five-pound note, with an intimation that there was plenty more to come, and that the writer had struck some mysterious vein of extraordinary good luck. There were no regrets and no inquiries—in fact, there were not more than a dozen carelessly written lines altogether. Still, Fadden turned it over in his hand thoughtfully before he replaced the note inside. Then, just, as he was doing so, the number in the corner struck him.

Now, Fadden was a man with a good memory, he was trained to observe trifles, and, above all, he understood the necessity of keeping himself well in hand on all occasions; but, hardened as he was, he had to bite his lips to keep back the cry that struggled in the back of his throat. For here, beyond the shadow of a doubt, was a real tangible clue. The numbers on the note exactly coincided with those that Thornton had pencilled on the corner of his blotting-pad. It was one of those coincidences that the police so often meet with, and which have been the means of sending more than one scoundrel to the scaffold. For beyond question the bank-note which Mrs. Gaylord had earned by the sweat of her brow, and had sent on to her hard taskmaster on the day of his death, had found its way back to her husband within a few hours of the tragedy, and in return he had sent it on to the woman who, all unconsciously, was handing him over to justice. Without another word Fadden passed over the letter and walked out of the house.

He knew exactly what to do now. He had the address of Richard Gaylord in Newcastle, and there he proceeded on the following day. Quite as he expected, the man he was in search of was unknown in any of the music-halls on Tyneside. He found him presently at a small public-house, breakfasting in a little sitting-room. The man was bloodshot as to his eyes, and unshaven, and obviously had not yet recovered from what he himself would term "a thick night." He looked up uneasily as Fadden entered the room.

"What's your business here?" he muttered.

"My name is Fadden, and I am an inspector from Scotland Yard," the detective said crisply. "I have a warrant for your arrest for the murder of Jabez Thornton at Withington, in Essex, on the night of Tuesday last week. You can make any statement you like, but it will be used in evidence against you. When I have handed you over to the police here, I am going round to Wharf Street to arrest your accomplice, Venner."

The man sitting at the table fell forward with a cry. He collapsed into his chair, a pitiful picture of fear and terror. There was no sign of a light left in him.

"It's all up," he groaned, " and I thought we had worked it so cleverly, too! That devil has had me under his thumb for years. And Venner was in his grip as well. We paid him for what we did twice over already. But how did you know that Venner was in it with me?"

Fadden smiled mysteriously. As a matter of fact, he was going to arrest the man called Venner purely on suspicion. He knew that these men were never to be found far apart, and that they had been under the eye of the police for years.

"Oh, all right," Gaylord said sullenly. "You needn't say, unless you like, but how did you find it out?"

"It wasn't as difficult as it looked," Fadden said. "Now, you knew all about Mr. Thornton's habits—you knew that he was fond of walking about in the dark along the country lanes, and that one of his favourite strolls was over Foxhill. You probably waited for foggy weather, and hung about near the tunnel, so that you could waylay your victim in a lonely spot and murder him. I suppose your idea was to get hold of his keys and rob his safe when he was out of the way. But you were saved that trouble, because Mr. Thornton had a large sum of money in his pocket when you killed him. But it really was a brilliant idea to take advantage of the foggy weather, and your knowledge that just then the Northern Express was stopped outside the tunnel. Now, one of you hung about and committed the murder, whilst the other one went to London and took a first-class ticket to Newcastle. Whoever that was secured a carriage to himself by a judicious half-crown to a railway porter. Then over the carriage window on the proper side was pasted a piece of tissue-paper with holes made in it for identification purposes. When the train pulled up in the fog, it was an easy matter for the man in the first-class carriage to get out, knowing that his accomplice was waiting for him, and manage to get the dead man's body into the compartment. The clipped railway ticket was placed in his pocket, and the door carefully closed. It really was a fine idea, and, but for an accident, the truth might never have come out. But, unfortunately, on the day of Mr. Thornton's death, he received from your wife a five-pound note on account of your debt, and this the recipient recorded. That five-pound note was in his pocket with the other notes when he was killed. The big block of notes you and your comrade have not dared to get rid of yet, but you sent that fatal fiver to your wife, and then I knew beyond question that you had a hand in that crime. You can correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think I am. And now, if you have anything to say—"

"It's all up!" Gaylord muttered hoarsely. "I did it, right enough, and I don't know that I regret it, either."

THE END

THE LESSON THE ANTS TAUGHT

ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES CROMBIE

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLV, Dec 1916, pp 101-107

CROSFIELD looked across the camp fire at his friend Norton with the light of battle gleaming in his eyes. They were away up there on the veldt, not a hundred miles from Kimberley, and the fruits of three years' unremitting toil lay in the hollow of Crosfield's hand. To the untutored eye they represented no more than half a dozen round stones like big marbles, but an expert would have had no difficulty in recognising the fact that those pebbles were diamonds of the purest quality—six bits of glorified glass that represented a king's ransom.

To all practical purposes these were the absolute property of the partners, though lawyers and people of that kind learned in the mysteries and devious ways of legislation might have held a contrary opinion. At any rate, there they were, and between them they represented a fortune of something on the outside of a hundred thousand pounds. They represented something more than that—they stood for the entire worldly wealth of those men, they stood for three years' unremitting toil and danger, thirty-six sweating, blistering months endured under a tropical sun and accompanied by every hardship and danger that is known in the vocabulary of the pioneer. Those dull stones meant peace and happiness in England, home and friends, and everything that those two had set out to win for themselves. And yet there was much to be done before Crosfield and Norton found themselves on the high seas in search of English woods and meadows and all that life holds most dear. Hence the hard glitter in the eyes of the two men, hence the fact that they were discussing the future in whispers with the air of conspirators against the law.

"What do you suppose they are worth?" Norton asked.

"Well, there ought to be fifty thousand pounds for us each here," Crosfield replied; "and, by every moral law, these stones belong to us."

"It isn't moral law we've got against us," Norton said dryly. "You may depend upon it that that rascal Blatter won't leave a stone unturned to get those diamonds back. He knows by this time that they are in our possession—in fact, he told me so last night. When D'Jin came here and sold us our own stones, we ought to have kept him and taken him down to Cape Town with us. It is fatal to have paid him before we had booked our passages."

"What's the boy been up to?" Crosfield asked.

"Well, you paid him fifty pounds for smuggling those stones through, didn't you— fifty pounds to a greasy nigger boy who has never previously seen a gold coin in his life? And what does D'Jin do? Bought himself a couple of wives and a bunch of cattle, and set up as a local magnate. Of course, Blatter was on him like a shot. He guessed at once that D'Jin had been handling diamonds, and he laid out for that conceited nigger. As far as I could gather, D'Jin gave the whole show away, and, when you were out after springbok this morning, Blatter came over here, foaming with rage, and asked for his stones back."

"They are our stones right enough," Crosfield said, "and if D'Jin did find them, they were on our land."

"Yes, but Blatter is prepared to swear that when he took this holding off our hands, we sold him the patch of blue ground as well. And he has got some sort of a map to prove his claim, and he is prepared to swear that the blue ground that runs from Hodder's Spruit to Hagfontein is part of his purchase. He says he bought all the land that Jan van Beers trekked in 1874, and that slim* Dutchman is ready to back him up. There's only one thing to be done."

[* slim (Afrikaans) - bad, nasty, worthless. ]

Crosfield's lips tightened ominously. They had sunk every penny they had there, and it was only quite lately that they had found traces of diamonds on that hitherto despised patch of ground of theirs; and this corner of the property they had reserved when, sick at heart and in desperate need of money, they had sold their holding to the wily Karl Blatter. But that slim German had known what he was doing, and he had laid his plans accordingly.

"So that's the game, is it?" Crosfield said, when he had heard everything his partner had to say. "Old man, I am not going to fight that fat blackguard in the local courts, and I am not going to give up those stones, either. They are as much my property and yours as the rifle that I hold in my hand. If we made this a legal matter, I can see that we are done. We shall never be able to stand up before all those perjured witnesses, and, so far as I can see, we have got everything in the way of diamonds that the blue clay yonder is likely to yield us. I can see the little place I'm after at home in my mind's eye as I sit here now, and you've got a girl over yonder, and I've got a girl yonder, and—well, I needn't say any more."

Crosfield lighted his pipe and set about preparing the simple mid-day meal. But there was danger ahead, and he knew it perfectly well; but the knowledge only gave zest to the adventure. And how near that danger was, transpired a little later in the afternoon, when the adventurers, sitting round their camp fire, were intruded on by a stranger, who came across the river riding a useful-looking horse, and who dismounted without further ceremony.

He was a stranger to the partners, a hard, lean, muscular man with grim jaw and penetrating grey eyes. From the way he rode, and from the fashion in which he carried himself, the partners rightly judged that the stranger had seen service.

"Good evening," he said. "Maybe you're not knowing who I am? But me name's Commissioner Costigan. An' I believe I am talking to Mr. Crosfield and his partner?"

"You've hit it," Crosfield said. "I don't remember ever having had the pleasure of seeing Captain Costigan before, but I am pleased to meet. 'The Goat' after all these years."

The stranger threw back his head and laughed heartily.

"Bedad," he said, "an' ye have the advantage of me! I haven't heard that name since I was at Eton, twenty-odd years ago. And, now, shure I know you both. Wasn't I in the boat with you the year we won that Ladies' Plate at Henley? And if me eyes don't deceive me, that's Nobby Norton? Well, well, it's a queer old world we live in. And when I was faggin' for you both all those years ago, it's little I thought I should ever be out here, chasing niggers and hunting round after Old Etonians who had so far forgotten themselves as to be robbing a hard-working German—bad luck to him!—of the fruits of his toil."

Five minutes later the old school-fellows were sitting round the camp fire, exchanging reminiscences. Then, as the shadows deepened, the merry twinkle died out of the Irishman's eyes, and he grew serious.

"Now, listen here, boys," he said. "I rode over to-day, knowing that you were clean and decent Englishmen, to see if I couldn't put this matter right. I suppose you know that I could have brought half a dozen troopers, and have had you locked up. Now, I know that one of you has got those diamonds on him, and, for your own sake, I am going to ask you to hand them over."

"We are not denying it," Norton said quietly; "but those stones belong to us. You know that Blatter is a blackguard, and that we have been swindled."

"An' who was sayin' you were not?" Costigan demanded. "But I must report the matter, and once you are in Cape Colony you will have no 'Goat' to look after you. And, mark my words, you will live to be sorry for it."

"We are going to risk all that," Crosfield said.

"Very well, me boy, then I won't say any more. Shure, there's no finer detective force in the world than the I.D.B. Preventative Force at Cape Town. Do you mind Jimmy Forsyth, who was in Caxton's House? Yes, I see you do. And a cunninger young devil never got out of an imposition. Well, he took a hand in the sport, and to-day he's serving ten years' sentence on the breakwater at Cape Town. I know it's hard, but it will be harder still if you try to run what you've got in your pockets through the harbour at Cape Town."

With which Costigan filled his pipe again and began to talk about other things. It was getting late now—so late that Costigan accepted an invitation to share the evening meal and a blanket for the night by the camp fire. And, as he talked on, Crosfield, opposite him, grew more and more quiet and thoughtful, as if he were debating some heavy problem in his mind. He sat there gazing into the fire, until presently Norton, who knew his every mood and fancy, saw a sudden gleam in his eyes and the faint whimsical smile that trembled on his lips.

"Costigan," he said suddenly, "you were always a good sportsman. Did you ever shoot an elephant?"

"Bedad, I never did," Costigan replied.

"We've spotted two," Crosfield said. "There's a big rogue of a chap that's done a lot of damage here. Now, I've got a couple of elephant guns here and a box of shells, and we might have a cut at him. Are you game?"

"Faith, I never laid hands on an elephant except in kindness," Costigan said solemnly; "but I don't mind acting as an umpire. So if you'll put me in a comfortable place with a pair of good glasses, it's happy I'll be to oblige you."

"That's all right, then," Crosfield said. "We'll show you a bit of sport, and then we'll all go down country together."

"It's leavin' here you are to-morrow?" Costigan asked.

"What's the good of staying?" Crosfield retorted. "We've sold our property, and the sooner I'm back in England, the better I'll be pleased."

"It's no good, old fellow," the Irishman said solemnly. "Blatter has sold his rights in your late property to the Diamond Fields Amalgamated, and they'll have your gore, if it costs them a million. There's too much of the rich red blood of Israel in that clan for you chaps to butt up against. But there— I've warned you enough already!"

"We're going through with it, all the same," Crosfield said doggedly. "Give me those cartridges, Norton."

Norton fished out a box of shells and the two elephant guns, and for the next quarter of an hour or so Crosfield was busy with a file and a small vice, which he attached to a broken bench. He was making dum-dum bullets, he explained; he was going to run no risks, so far as that rogue elephant was concerned, and, besides, he was just a little doubtful as to the driving power behind those German-made explosive bullets.

"They're all right, as a rule," Crosfield explained, "but occasionally a shell fails to explode, and you can't afford that sort of melodrama when you are fooling with an African elephant."

Costigan replied that it was all the same to him, so long as he was watching the sport from a safe distance through a pair of glasses, and with that the camp fire was made up for the night, and the three men rolled themselves up in their blankets. Very soon Costigan's regular breathing testified of the fact that he was asleep. Norton turned over and edged himself a little nearer to the side of his companion.

"What's the little game, old man?" he whispered.

"You leave that to me," Crosfield replied. "We are going to the Cape, and there were going to stay as long as the authorities care to detain us. But they won't find those stones, because they will be hidden where no man on earth will ever find them, and you can gamble on that."

Not another word would Crosfield say. They breakfasted leisurely enough the following morning, and, everything being ready, proceeded to call the handy Kaffir boy D'Jin into their counsel.

News had come in that the big rogue had raided a mealie field by the side of the waterhole during the night, and he was now resting in a patch of scrub half a mile or so on the other side of the stream. This being so, it would be no great matter to rouse the big beast and drive him in the direction of the scrub.

"All right," Crosfield said. "You can go and work the beast round to the scrub, and dig a pit in front. Do you hear? If anything goes, wrong, he will flounder into it, and we shall have him safe. Directly you get a move on, one of you boys had better come back and look after the ponies. They'll be on top of the knoll yonder. Off you go."

Crosfield led the way, closely followed by Norton, whom he posted on the left, whilst he himself went forward, being the better shot of the two, and took up his position upon the far bank of the stream opposite a belt of deep, swampy ground that bordered the patch of scrub in which the Kaffir boys declared the elephant was lying.

"Now% you stay here," Crosfield directed, "and wait. If he does break this way, you'll be able to stop him, though it's long odds that he will come straight across the brush directly he catches sight of me. I suppose Costigan's got a good view from the knoll yonder."

"He ought to be able to see everything, and there is no better pair of glasses in the colony than mine."

Crosfield crept on until he had come to the spot where he intended to take up his stand. Already on the far side of the swamp the Kaffir boys were moving in the scrub. The noise of their cries came down the wind, and Crosfield smiled grimly as he heard them. Then the patch of reeds opposite him seemed to move bodily, and a moment later the big elephant loomed in sight. He was obviously alarmed and uneasy, for he was trumpeting wildly as he came blundering towards the bush, his head up and his big tusks gleaming in the sunshine. Then he canght sight of the man standing there, and charged down upon him violently.

Apparently the scrub was less holding than Crosfield had anticipated, for it merely served to check the speed of the great pachyderm. He came ambling across the brush before Crosfield could get his rifle to his shoulder; then the huge beast swerved to one side, and kicked up his enormous legs like some colt might have done.

It was a broadside shot now, and obviously it was up to the marksman to get his prey behind the ear. He fired one shot, then another, and another, and as Norton heard it he started uneasily. To his trained ear there was something wrong, something perilously inadequate in the bursting charge of those shells. Three times more did Crosfield fire, and neither shot was followed by the clear report that should have gone with a properly-filled cartridge. It was obvious, too, that beyond arousing the elephant to a pitch of pain and madness, no vital mischief had been done.

It was up to Norton now to take a hand swore aloud. He was cursing that ineffective German ammunition by all his gods. He would have shouted to his companion, but already Crosfield had realised the danger.

He dropped his gun and sprinted along the open in Norton's direction as if all the fiends from the bottomless pit were after him. At the same time the practically uninjured elephant caught sight of his quarry, and charged after him through the scrub. Then, just as Norton got in a shell between the two wicked little eyes, the big rogue pitched forward and crashed headlong to the bottom of the pit that D'Jin and the other boy had so cunningly prepared for him. He lay there a huddled mass of flesh, past all mischief now.

"Well, that's the last time I ever use a German cartridge," Crosfield exclaimed. "What did you think of it, Costigan?"

"Be jabers, not much," Costigan grinned, "and it's glad I am that I didn't take a hand at the game. What are you going to do now?"

"Let him lie where he is," Crosfield said. "Of course, we are going to give you the tusks as a souvenir of the occasion, and a nice little present, too, if you only knew it. Get 'em off, D'Jin. And throw a few boughs and a big log or two over the brute's body. If you do the work properly, it'll be quite safe as far as any prowling beast of prey is concerned."

"What's the game, boss?" the grinning D'Jin asked.

"Well, I want that skull, at any rate. We are going down south presently, and we'll come back for it in a month or two. If you do what I ask you properly, the ants will see to the rest. What's that, Costigan? Oh, yes, you'd hardly believe it, but within a few weeks there won't be a scrap of that elephant left, once the ants get to it. When we come back, the skeleton will be polished as white as ivory. And now, then, we'll get down to the Cape as soon as D'Jin has finished."

It was three days later when, still accompanied by Costigan, the two friends crossed into Cape Colony by train. They were met on the border by a man who gave his name as Buckley, and who informed them, in a curt official way, that they could regard themselves as his prisoners on a charge of offences committed against the I.D.B. Act; also that in this particular case the information had been laid by the representative of the Diamond Fields Amalgamated. To which Crosfield listened with a smile on his face, and the information that the authorities could do as they pleased. Neither he nor his friend had any diamonds about them, nor were they ready to admit that they had ever handled anything of the kind. To all of which Buckley listened with a twinkle in his eye and a request to know if there was anybody in Cape Town who would be likely to come forward and offer bail. Crosfield responded that he didn't care, and that, so far as he was concerned, he was not prepared to ask favours from anyone.

For the next few weeks Crosfield and Norton spent their time as guests of the Government. They were searched with a thoroughness that allowed no loophole for escape, they wrote no letters, and were permitted to receive none. And so far no regular charge had been made against them, for the simple reason that there was no material evidence to go upon. But they were treated well enough, and had nothing to grumble about beyond the loss of their liberty.

It was only after they were released that they realised how thorough the search had been, not only as regards their persons, but also as concerned the neighbourhood from which they had come, and, indeed, Costigan subsequenUy reported that D'Jin had grown thin and haggard under the merciless cross-examination to which he had been subjected. But everything comes to an end in time, and there came a day when the adventurers were released, and were told that they could go where they pleased.

"Back to where we came from, perhaps?" Crosfield asked the discomfited Buckley politely.

"You can go to the devil, as far as I am concerned," that worried official responded. "Let me tell you this. I've been at this game for fifteen years, and I've had some bright intellects through my hands, but this is the first time I've been badly done. And if ever we meet in England, where you'll be safe, I shall be greatly obliged if you will tell me how the thing was worked."

"England's a long way off," Crosfield said. "But if we do meet there, perhaps you'll come and dine with Norton and myself at the Oxford and Cambridge Club, and then we might find ourselves in a position of greater freedom and less responsibility. For the present, good-bye, Buckley."

Ten days later the two friends were back again within half a mile of the spot where they had given their futile exhibition for Costigan's benefit. They had ascertained the night before, from the grinning D'Jin, that nothing had happened of any importance during the last month or so, and that, so far as he knew to the contrary, the body of the elephant was still in the pit that he had prepared for it. He was fain to admit that he had not been near the place himself, to which characteristic confession Crosfield listened with a smile. He dismissed the Kaffir presently, and, with Norton, made his way across the bush in the direction of the spot where the skeleton lay. It was just as he had expected. The ants had done their work thoroughly enough, and down there, in the bottom of the hole under the logs and brushwood, was a great gleaming heap of bones picked dry and clear. And Crosfield nodded approvingly; his smile was almost irritating to his companion.

"Now, perhaps, you will tell me what the game is," Norton said. "Why this interesting ceremony?"

"Well," Crosfield smiled, "we have come after our diamonds, which I told you were so safely hidden that no man could find them. And so they are. They are down there in that hole under that heap of bones. Ants can destroy most things, but they, can't eat diamonds. Now, don't stand there staring at me. Lend a hand and get all those logs and brushwood away, and help me to remove the skeleton. And go gently, because in the dust there the diamonds are lying, or we are the two unluckiest chaps in Africa to-day."

It was all done at length. The bones were carefully removed, and then Crosfield, on his hands and knees, began to sift amongst the dust. At the end of half an hour he straightened himself up and held out a trembling hand to his companion. In his grimy hand lay the six precious stones, the diamonds beyond the shadow of a doubt. Norton could do no more than gaze open-mouthed at his friend, and wait till the latter explained.

"It was like this," he said. "When Costigan turned up, I thought we were done. I had the diamonds on me, and he knew it. Of course, he played the game like the good fellow that he is, but he had his duty to think of, and it was a case of his wits against mine. And I knew perfectly well that he was not in the least likely to lose sight of us until he had handed us over to Buckley. If we had attempted to get away, he would have taken out a warrant for our arrest. So the obvious game was to go down to Cape Town and bluff it out. But that was no good unless we could save the stones. Then the inspiration came to me as the three of us were sitting here round the camp fire. Under Costigan's very eyes I extracted part of the bursting charge and shoved the diamonds into the cartridge cases in place of the bullets. Everything was in our favour—that bit of brush might have been placed there on purpose. So, when the time came, I just fired those stones into the shoulder of our four-footed friend and left the rest to chance. My idea was to come back here when those chaps yonder had to admit themselves beaten, and pick up the stones just as we have done. The odds were a million to one against anybody finding them in the meantime. At any rate, I knew those lazy Dutch devils wouldn't, and—well, there you are. There's only one thing now, and that's to get home."

"Not through Cape Town," Norton grinned.

"Not much," Crosfield said emphatically, "though I don't suppose they'd touch us again now if we did go that way. Still, we'd better be on the safe side. So I suggest that we make our way across country to Delagoa Bay and join a tramp steamer there. Carried unanimously?"

And there, down in Cape Town, Chief Inspector Buckley is still trying to puzzle out the manner in which those diamonds eluded him and found their way eventually to Chicago, where they now adorn the white throat of one of the greatest heiresses whose father ever made his pile in pork.

THE END

THE FOURTH MAN

ILLUSTRATED BY SEPTIMUS E. SCOTT

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLIV, Nov 1916, pp 702-708

HE lay there with his head on his hands, spent to the world and weary to the verge of collapse. He had drifted in, earlier in the evening, out of the whirl and flurry of the blizzard, and, though the snow had melted from his cap and the bulky fur coat about his shoulders, his heavy boots were still caked and white, for the heat of the stove struck upwards, and even those in the corner of the saloon playing euchre steamed and stewed in the moisture, though their feet were almost frozen as they sat. Outside, a white world tossed and moaned; outside, the gale volleyed and hissed against the window-panes, and the reeling world trembled and staggered before the force of the storm. Beyond the saloon was a clump of pines, that bent and tossed before the stress of it all, and groaned and shivered like human bodies in agony. For the time, at least, the little mining camp on the Ekon River was wiped out, everything was at a standstill, and the miners gathered in the saloon, driven there for warmth and company, had taken their lives in their hands in crossing the shoulder of the bluff that lay not a quarter of a mile away.

There were, perhaps, twenty-five of them altogether, rough and uncouth men gathered from all parts of the world in search of the grinning little yellow god for whom they were all prepared to pledge their souls. In the vernacular, it was a pretty tough crowd, and, for the most part, every man there was content to hide his name under some modest pseudonym. There were Jakes and Bills and Broncho Charlies, full of rough friendship for one another, and yet each prepared to cut the other's throat cheerfully for the sake of that same grinning little yellow god that sets men mad and fires all the worst instincts that beset poor humanity.

But for the time being, at any rate, the fitful fever of the chase had faded out of men's minds, and they were huddled together there in the saloon for warmth and sporting companionship, like so many wild beasts freshly fed and watered, and for the moment at peace with all the world. Half a dozen of them lounged against the bar, talking and smoking, whilst the rest, poring over their greasy and fly-blown cards, were lost to their surroundings in the tense excitement of the moment. So it had come about that the tired and sodden waif lying there with his head on the table had drifted into the saloon without exciting the least curiosity, and without a word of greeting from anyone. He had poured a measure of some fiery spirit down his throat, he had eaten wolfishly, like one who has fasted to the verge of collapse, then he had thrown his head forward upon his hands, and was sleeping now as if the end of the world had come, and as if he were no more than a microcosm floating in illimitable cosmos. Just now and again a miner flung a glance at him over his shoulder, and the bar-keeper smiled carelessly. No one wanted to disturb him—every man had been through the same thing himself more than once—and if the sleeper had a story to tell, then they would hear it all in good time. And so he slept and slept while the gale roared outside and the pines tossed like things in pain.

Then the door of the saloon opened again with a flurry of snow and a keen, icy draught that set the stinking kerosene lamps dancing, and three other men entered. They glanced carelessly about the room through the low, drifting smoke for some point where they might rest, for they, too, carried the marks of the storm, and for the most part seemed to be almost as spent and weary as the sodden fur-clad figure lying there with his head on the table. And it was to this table they drifted eventually, and sat down and were calling for drinks, which were brought to them, and paid for by the big man with the clean-shaven, hatchet face and the keen black eyes. The big man had come in with a smaller man by his side—a smaller man who walked close by him, so that their coat-sleeves seemed to touch—and a close observer might have observed that there was reason for this, inasmuch as a link of steel bound one left wrist to the right of the other. Still, there was no ostentation about this connection, and apparently the big man with the glittering eyes was doing his best to shield the fact from general observation. The third individual slouched behind the other two, looking repugnant and truculent enough, though his eyelids drooped ever and anon, and there was a nervous grin on his lips that bespoke a mind none too much at ease. Had a novelist who knew the ropes been present, he would have said that here was the sheriff in possession of a prisoner, and that the third man making up the group was the informant who had brought the arrest about, in which the novelist would have been entirely correct, for the Sheriff, Michel Thornton, had just arrested George Setro for the murder of Jim Cuddis, and the man with the shifty eyes stood as King's evidence. And Setro, as he dropped into his chair opposite the slumbering man, knew that his shrift was short, and that, unless a miracle happened, rude justice would be dealt him before daylight, and his place in the cosmic scheme know him no more. All of which was mighty hard upon Setro, for the man was innocent, black as the evidence was against him, and he was fighting hard for his life.

It was quite characteristic of that rough-and-ready locality that sheriff and prisoner and leading evidence for the prosecution should sit round the table and drink together much as if they were partners in some lawful enterprise. And as they sat they chatted, more or less in a friendly manner, taking no heed of the sodden stranger who snored upon the table. And as to the rest of the men gathered there, they hardly glanced up from their cards, and the new-comers were forgotten.

"What's the next move?" the prisoner asked indifferently.

He put the question carelessly, but he was far from feeling as indifferent as he appeared. Characteristically enough, he had no emotion of animosity against the man to whom he was linked by that slender steel chain. All the rage and fear and anger that boiled within him were kept for the other man with the uneasy grin, who had talked glibly enough as they had come along on that perilous journey through the snow, for Setro, the Englishman, had an uneasy sort of feeling that it was this third man who had brought about all the trouble. But for the moment, at any rate, he took a pull at himself as he turned eagerly to Thornton, the Sheriff.

"Waal, I hardly know," Thornton drawled. "You see, it all depends. Stands to reason as it is my duty to take you down to Carton City. But to get there, we've got to pass through the Gulch, and if the boys there take matters in their own hands—waal, I guess they'll save the State the trouble of putting you on trial. Because, you see, Jim Cuddis, he was some popular down there in the Gulch, and the boys are annoyed with you, Setro, and they ain't making no secret of the fact. So I calculate that they'll take matters in their own hands."

The prisoner was grimly of the same opinion. And the worst of it was that appearances were dead against him. For a year or more he and Cuddis had been partners up yonder on the snow-line, where they had lived, almost apart from the rest of humanity, working their successful claim, and merely going down to the Gulch from time to time in search of provisions. In that inclement region for long periods together the partners were cut off from the rest of the world by the ramparts of the winter snows, and when, in the early spring, the first break had come, the man with the shifty eyes had gone up into the hills to see Cuddis on business.

He had come back at the end of a month or two with a strange story. He had found the miners' shack deserted, and no sign of Cuddis or Setro to be seen, but he had discovered, half a mile from the hut, the skeleton of a man with a bullet-hole in the centre of his forehead, and, from certain bits of evidence picked up in the vicinity, he had been forced to the conclusion that this was the skeleton of Jim Cuddis, picked clean by the wolves and the birds of prey that hovered over the mountains. At the same time there was no trace of Setro to be seen, and for many months no man set eyes upon him. Beyond doubt he had murdered his partner and gone off East with the heavy burden of gold dust which had been cleaned in the claim during the past year or so. And the man with the shifty eyes was indignant. He professed to be on intimate terms with the murdered man, and, indeed, he was known to have transacted business with him on several occasions. According to his story, he had gone up to the mountain to meet Cuddis in connection with an investment that the latter was contemplating, and in conjunction with which he held the papers, and it was this action on the part of the man with the shifty eyes that had led to the discovery of the murder.

The strange part of it was that, knowing his own guilt, and having got safely away with the plunder, Setro should have the temerity to return. Very likely he had come back for more spoil which he had been forced to leave behind him at the time he had committed the crime. The excuse that he had gone to England on business in connection with his partner and himself was held to be weak and flimsy, and, indeed, the more Sheriff Thornton examined it, the more damning did the admission seem, especially as Setro obstinately declined to divulge precisely what that business was.

"Better own up," the man with the shifty eyes suggested. "And there ain't much time, for sure. When the boys down at the Gulch lay hands on you to-morrow, they won't give you another chance. Let's have it, Setro."

"You shut up, Philpin!" Setro said savagely. "It isn't as if your hands were too clean. It's the truth I'm telling you, Sheriff, whether you believe it or not. When I came down from the mountains about a year ago, my partner was alive and well, and I thought it was all right till you came and laid hands upon me yesterday. I don't care what Philpin says—he's a poisonous skunk, as everybody knows. And I'm not saying he didn't see my partner from time to time when I was away, and I'm not saying that he didn't put some of his affairs in Philpin's hands. Still, if you give me a chance, I can prove that I was in England the best part of last year."

"There won't be time, sonny," the Sheriff said grimly. "And, besides, that don't prove that you didn't bore a hole in your own partner. He must have been lying dead there in the snow months before he was found. Still—"

Setro shrugged his shoulders helplessly. It would take months to prove the truth of his story, and he knew the boys at the Gulch well enough to feel that they would not wait as many hours. And, again, what was there to gain by betraying the confidence of his old partner? What avail to tell these rough-and-ready men that Cuddis had been an Englishman who had left his country under a cloud in circumstances that precluded his return, and that he had a daughter in England who had just left school, and that he (Setro) had gone all those miles to see her and explain exactly how matters stood? Of what avail to tell them that he and his partner had been successful beyond their wildest dreams, and that he had managed to clear up the trouble at home, and had come back to take Cuddis to the Old Country once again? Or that a pair of dewy grey eyes had looked into his with something more than gratitude in them, and that those grey eyes were drawing him like a magnet even at that hour of his deadly peril? So he sat there shrugging his shoulders indifferently, with the bitterness of death in his heart, and a growing feeling at the back of his brain that the whole thing had been set up for him by the man with the shifty eyes, who could have told a good deal more if he had pleased, but who was bent upon getting him out of the way; and if once this was done, then Stella Cuddis would never see a brass farthing of that gold for which the partners had worked so hard. It was all over now, the Fates were against him, and it was useless to struggle any longer.

His mind had suddenly grown vividly tense and clear. He was conscious of the acrid smell of the smoke in the saloon, the heavy breathing of the gamblers as they bent over their filthy cards, the mingled smell of sour humanity and the reek of cheap spirit. And this he saw all the more clearly because he knew surely enough that this would be his last outlook on life, that had grown all the sweeter and cleaner since his visit to England. As he bent forward, he could feel the packet of letters— those warm, affectionate letters from Stella Cuddis—crackling in his. breast-pocket. He found himself, in his heart, envying the sodden wisp of humanity lying there with his head on the table, unconscious of the grim tragedy that was running its course within a few feet of the straggling grey hair fringed round the edge of his battered fur cap. And as Setro looked up and caught the nervous grin on Philpin's face, he had a wild desire to reach over and batter those repulsive features out of all human semblance. Then the Sheriff spoke again. There was no feeling in his speech.

"Yes, you'd better own up," he said. "The cards are all against you, Setro."

"Do you think so?" Setro asked. "Well, I don't know. Seems to me that it's only Philpin's word against mine."

"And the evidence," Thornton went on. "Don't you go forgetting that we found the body of your partner with a hole in his skull. I ain't denying he'd been dead for months, and I ain't sayin' as how he wasn't picked clean by the crows and the timber wolves. But there he was, and you'd cleared out without sayin' nothin' to a soul. An' you comes back in the same quiet way without goin' near the Gulch, an' it's bad, Setro, it's bad."

"I'm not denying it," Setro said curtly, "and I am not blind to what's likely to happen when we get back to the Gulch. But, as I said before, it's only Philpin's word against mine. And how long has he had a reputation to be proud of? Is there one of the boys would sit down and play a game of cards with him? Is there one of them who wonld trust him as far as they could throw him? And that's the creature who wants the world to believe that my good old partner trusted him, and told him that he was afraid of me!"

"And so he did," Philpin protested. "Sent for me, he did, in secret, when you was down at the Gulch. And what he says to me was this: 'I'm not trustin' my partner Setro no longer. He's plannin' to rob me, an', mark my words, one night he'll put a bullet into me and skip with the boodle. An' I wants you to be my friend, Philpin. I wants you to take all these papers and documents, an' act for my relations in case I meet with an accident. There ain't no one to know this but myself, an' if I do pass in my checks, an' Setro comes along, talking about accidents an' snivellin' over the dear departed, you can just confront him with this here letter wot I've written and signed for you, an' makin' you my executor.' An' that's wot he says, an' I've got the letter to prove it."

Setro listened calmly enough; he was holding himself in now, conscious of the new peril that lay before him.

"You've got that letter in your pocket?" he asked.

"You bet I have, sonny," Philpin replied.

"Written by Cuddis himself?"

"I see him do it. In my presence it were, and handed over to me in the exact words wot I told you."

For the first time since the men had been sitting round the table Setro smiled. He was about to speak, when the man seated there with his head on the table stirred uneasily, and his right hand lay exposed for a moment before it slipped down listlessly to his side. Setro seemed to gurgle in the back of his throat, and his whole body twitched convulsively as if something were choking him. Then he grew calm again.

"I am not denying that it sounds convincing," he said. "But if it comes to that, let me put it in another way. I told you just now that I went to England on business, and that's as true as anything I ever said. And no one knew I was going, and why, except my own partner. But you found it out, Philpin, and used the knowledge for your own purposes. And you had plenty of time to work out your scheme while I was away. I am not accusing you of anything yet, but I can make out a case, too, if the Sheriff isn't in a hurry, and I don't see how we can leave the saloon before daylight. You went up to the shack in the early part of the winter, and you lured poor old Cuddis up there over the back of the divide. And you left him there amongst the snows—left him in the cache where we had stored food for distant expeditions, left him there treacherously whilst he slept, and got away with the dogs and sledges in a snowstorm, so that the trail would be obliterated. I say you did all this deliberately, knowing full well that you had abandoned a good man and a good friend to certain death, and then you came down to the shack. You found Spotted Fox there "

"Spotted Fox!" Philpin stammered. "Who's he?"

"The Indian trapper who worked for us from time to time, and helped us in the summer. Oh, come, don't tell me you never heard of Spotted Fox!"

"I seem to sense the name, Setro."

"Of course you do. Now, what I suggest is this: You shot Spotted Fox before you came down to the Gulch, just on the heels of the first big snowfall of the year, and the trail was nigh wiped out, and you shot that Indian deliberately, knowing that his bare bones would be found after the long winter was over, and knowing that the boys would assume that it was the skeleton of my old friend and partner, Jim Cuddis. With that idea uppermost in your mind, you shot Spotted Fox through the brain, and left him there outside the hut, and waited for me to come back again. And all through a long winter you had the time to drop your poison by degrees into the ears of the boys, and build up your case against me, knowing perfectly well that I should come back again. Isn't that true, Sheriff? Hasn't this man been with you again and again with scraps of circumstantial evidence against me, and stirring up the boys to lynch me as soon as I showed my face in the settlement again?"

"I ain't denying it," Thornton drawled.

"Very well, then. Mind you, I'm not bringing this accusation deliberately against Philpin, but what I am trying to prove is that a case can be made out against him as black as his case against me. After all, it's a pure matter of surmise in either respect. And if it comes to clean records in the past, then I'll back mine against Philpin's any day."

"That's so," the Sheriff said impartially.

"I'm obliged to you," Setro said dryly. "And don't forget that the man who accuses me has admitted that he himself found the skeleton of my old partner. And he has declared that Cuddis left everything in his hands, and that in certain circumstances my partner's wealth belongs to him. And I'm not denying that there is plenty of that wealth. We worked hard, and, between us, Cuddis and myself must be worth close on a million dollars. My share is in England, but most of Cuddis's money is in the bank at Carton City. And this man claims that he has the right to deal with every penny of it."

"So I have," Philpin said parenthetically.

"The right conferred upon you by a letter written and signed by my partner, and handed over by him months ago."

"You've played the ace," Philpin grinned.

"Very well, then. For the moment I am prepared to admit that the statement is true. But now tell me, either of you, what has become of Spotted Fox? Where is the Indian who was always hanging around the shack, except for the month or two when the snow was frozen hard, and he was out looking after his traps? Where has Spotted Fox vanished? What has become of him? He knew the country well, he was a man of infinite resource, and no snow or cold had any terror for him. He was an honest man, too and gold had no temptation for that faithful Indian. Then where is he? What has become of him? Why isn't he here to give evidence? I'll tell you. Because he's dead. Because he was shot by that yellow-faced scoundrel grinning at me, for the reason I have told you, and my dear old partner is lying somewhere up in the mountains, where he was treacherously lured to his death by Philpin, and where some day he may be found. But not yet—not yet. Not till I have paid the penalty of a crime I never committed, and yonder greasy ruffian has got away with his ill-gotten gains beyond the reach of the rightful vengeance of the boys. And there's just a chance that Cuddis is not dead at all; there is just a chance there was food enough in the cache to keep him alive till the summer, when he may return too late to save the gold he has struggled so hard for. And I tell you why he has slaved and worked all these years, denying himself everything except the mere necessities of life. There's many a good man here has proved himself to be a man who dare not show his face where he was bred and born."

"That's so," Thornton said candidly. "I don't mind saying that I'm one of them myself."

"And that is Cuddis's case," Setro went on. "He didn't leave much in England behind him that he missed, but he had a child—a girl of whom he was very fond. And nothing was good enough for her. His one idea was to make her a lady, and, by Heaven, he did it! It was to see her and explain everything that I went to England last year. And when I saw her—well, I could understand my partner's feelings."

The Sheriff looked up eagerly, scenting romance.

"You don't mean to say," he asked, "that you and she—"

"What business is that of anybody's?" Setro asked fiercely. "But it's true, all the same. And if you lay violent hands upon me— Still, it's no use talking like this. And I've done. I've got no more to say."

"Because there ain't nothin' to be said," Philpin sneered. "I've got the letter in my pocket—the letter wot Cuddis give to me when he told me I was the best friend he had in the world, and asked me to look after his affairs."

"Written and signed by himself?"

"Yes, pard, and in my presence, too."

"You lie, you dirty dog, you lie!" Setro shouted. "Cuddis never wrote a letter in his life. He never learnt to write. He could only read simple words. Out of your own mouth you are convicted, you murderous reptile!"

The man sleeping on the table suddenly raised his head and smiled at Thornton.

"Guess that's true, Sheriff," he said. "I never could write, more shame to me. And it seems to me as if you've got that steel bracelet on the wrong wrist."

THE END

THE WORLD NEXT DOOR

ILLUSTRATED BY G.C. WILMSHURST

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLIV, Sep 1916, pp 383-390

IT was a beautiful prison in which Angela Patton lived, but it was a prison, all the same. Not that she had done anything wrong, from the point of view of the Draconian creed, but, to begin with, she was alone and friendless in the world, a slim, little, somewhat fragile creature, with the heart of a poet and the mind of a child who has yet learnt something in the hard school of adversity. She knew the bitterness of the bread of charity, and though the bread that she ate now was thin and white and exquisitely buttered, it was as if it had been dipped in the waters of Marah and flavoured with servitude.

She was fair enough, and sweet in her own dainty way, with a pleasant smile and a wistful glance in those grey eyes of hers, so that the young man who came from the library occasionally to change Sir John Osborne's books, and who had an artistic mind of his own, compared her to the Huguenot maiden in Millais' famous picture—in which the young man from the bookshop was entirely right, and wiser than he knew. For the rest, she was discreet and sane in her maidenly way, and those deep grey eyes of hers were pensive and thoughtful and full of a quiet intellectuality, that touch of soul which was one of her greatest charms. In happier circumstances she would have been beloved and popular, and, perhaps, when the good fairy came along, she was marked out to be the happy mother of children and the helpmeet of some good man, who would have loved her, and never been conscious of the fact that she was growing old.

As it was, she was a girl who had been educated, ever since she could recollect, in a big institution devoted to the orphans of artists and literary people and other improvidents who take no heed of the morrow, and are content to gather their rosebuds as they blossom casually by the roadside. For Angela had lost her parents many, many years ago, and of them she had only the dimmest recollection. There had been a little mother with blue eyes and a mass of golden hair, and a tall man with a brown beard, who made everybody laugh, and whom everybody liked, even the tradesmen who waited upon his doorstep in vain for the promised cheque that never came. But all this was a tangled mass of recollection, like a half-waking dream in the early sunlight of a summer morning. And now Angela was secretary and amanuensis to a selfish old valetudinarian, who wrote books that nobody read, and sent learned treatises to newspapers that never published them. The work was easy enough, for Sir John confined his efforts to two hours in the morning, so that Angela had the rest of the day to herself. She had her own small suite of rooms, and a servant to wait upon her, so that she was free to devote the balance of her time to her own literary work. Some day or other she would make a reputation as a writer of short stories, and then she would turn her back upon this lonely, dreary London, and take a delightful little cottage in the country. That was her dream, the one thing she had to live for; but it was a long way off yet, for the acceptances were few and far between, and the balance in the savings bank was a long way short of the hundred pounds which Angela had decided must be the amount of her capital before she cut herself adrift from Queen's Hostel, the old house in Chelsea where her employer lived. Meanwhile she was entirely alone in the world, not exactly unhappy, for she ived in an atmosphere of her own, but full of those vague longings and ambitions that every well-balanced girl in the same condition must feel.

It was a delightful atmosphere, too, a glorious old house hidden away not far from the Chelsea Embankment, a house that, in its day, had been famous as the twin residence of a man who had writ his name large in history, and whose tragedy had inspired many a writer of romance—a glorious old house, with big, rambling rooms with oak panels and painted ceilings, and quaint ingle-nooks with the same Jacobean furniture, none of which had been disturbed for the past century or two, and in itself represented a fortune. As a matter of fact, the Queen's Hostel had originally been two houses thrown into one, and now it was two houses again, the exact counterpart of one another, and somewhere on the wide landing, with its bedrooms leading from a broad gallery, was a panelled frame of a doorway which had once given access to the premises which, in the modern phrase, was now merely "next door." And it was this world "next door" that interested Angela so deeply, and around which she had spun more than one of those delightfnl little fantasies which had found their way into print, and which had induced one discerning editor, at least, to ask for more.

Angela had not the least idea who lived next door. She could have found out, of course, by consulting "The Post Office Directory," but that prosaic proceeding would have taken the romantic flavour out of it altogether. She liked to imagine that the white-haired lady next door, with her tall, commanding figure and black silks and flashing diamonds, was a French marquise of the old nobility, who had come there to hide some secret sorrow, and it would have been a terrible thing to have discovered that she was Mrs. Smith or Jones, or that she was the widow of some City knight who had made a fortune in cheese or butter, because the lady next door looked the part to perfection. She was wealthy, beyond the shadow of a doubt, for she had a houseful of servants, and a big car or two, in one of which she drove out most afternoons. Then there was an extremely nice-looking young man who came to the house next door most days, and who occasionally accompanied the white-haired lady on her drives. That a deep affection existed between these two, Angela had no doubt. She could see that from the way in which the two tenderly embraced when they met, and parted, for the young man did not live in the house, and occasionally he did not come near for days together. Quite half a dozen of Angela's short stories were written around the white-haired lady next door. And the romance was heightened by the fact that no other visitors called, so far as Angela could see.

And so it was that the whole thing grew upon the girl. It was the one spot of light and romance in her life, the one little link that connected her with the great world beyond. And so there gradually grew upon the girl's mind an almost overwhelming desire to know the lady next door. This was not idle curiosity on Angela's part— merely the working of the artistic mind in its search for the necessary material. Angela knew that the house next door was the exact counterpart of the one in which she lived—she had found out that her neighbour had purchased her house, as Sir John had done his, just as it stood, with its beautiful furniture and artistic treasures intact—so that she was enabled to visualise in her romantic mind a good deal that was going on upon the other side of that piece of panelling. She knew, too, that in the large room looking into the quadrangle the lady next door had her own sitting-room, in which was a piano, for many an hour had she stood on the landing there, listening to the strains of Chopin and Mendelssohn and the elder musicians, that came from the other side of the oaken barrier. And Angela was filled with a longing desire to see what was going on in the world next door. She had a sort of uncanny consciousness that her own escape into the golden universe of flowers and sunshine lay that way.

And one sunny afternoon she made a great discovery. The rays of light played upon the wall, and it was in these circumstances that Angela found out that what she took to be oak panelling was really a sliding door. It was some little time before she could get it to work, but she succeeded at last, and as the quaint-carved woodwork slipped back in its socket, she found herself gazing with wondering eyes into a room beyond.

It was not a very large room, and had evidently been divided at some recent period from the rest. It had all the same charm of age and mellowness as the remainder of the house—a room panelled with oak throughout, the walls lined with beautiful velvety soft mezzotints and quaint cabinets of blue china, with a square Persian carpet on the floor, and in the centre a writing-table, on which stood a photograph in an old silver frame. In one corner of the room was a small-model grand piano littered with music, most of it in manuscript, faded with age and faintly scented with lavender. It was all so beautiful and restful, all so home-like and inviting that, just for the moment, Angela forgot that she was a trespasser, and a mere curious spectator should have had no business there at all. She stood there, forgetful of all this, drinking in the beauty of it eagerly, heedless of the fact that she might be discovered at any moment, and then she stole across the room and bent eagerly over the photograph. This was so conspicuous and arresting that she felt instinctively that it must be something, some dominant note which, perhaps, had a bearing on the white-haired lady with the sad face. And then Angela forgot everything else in the thrill of a great and arresting discovery.

For the photograph was that of her own mother. She could not have been mistaken, because, upstairs in her own bedroom, she had another copy of the same picture, the one thing that she had left to remind her of her mother and the days which had now become no more than a blurred and occasionally tear-stained memory. The photograph was inscribed with the words: "Yours affectionately, Angela," and nothing more.

How long Angela stood gazing down at that picture, she did not know. It might have been ten minutes, it might have been an hour. Then she came back to herself with a start, and, with tingling cheeks and a flushed face, she suddenly realised the enormity of her offence. She closed the panel behind her again and fled incontinently to her bedroom, her cheeks ablaze and her heart aflame, and tingling from head to foot with all the dread delight of one who has made a great discovery.

For here was romance indeed—romance warm and palpitating to the finger-tips, a charming mystery beyond anything she had ever evolved in that nimble little brain of hers. She took out her own photograph of that dead mother of hers from her slender store of secret treasures, and any lingering doubts she might have had in her mind were set at rest. And then, for days to come, she pondered over this strange thing, wondering what the connection could be between that misty mother of hers and the sad-faced lady next door.

She was like a child who has wandered into a new and strange world—a world full of tender romance and mystery—much as if she had been another Alice. But though all this was delightful, it led Angela no further. Then gradually she found herself entering into the heart of the conspiracy. Every spare moment at her disposal was devoted to watching the movements of the lady next door. She became acquainted with the stranger's name. She was a Mrs. de Courcey, a widow, who was supposed to have had a good deal of trouble in her time, and who devoted her large fortune to works of charity. And more than once, when Mrs. de Courcey was out, Angela timidly made her way through the sliding panel into the mysterious room next door. She must have gone there a dozen times at least before the accident happened. She knew now that there was a spring attached to the sliding panel, and, when the great disaster happened, the panel had been pulled so far back that the spring refused to act, and the heroine found herself a prisoner in that delightful room, quite in the approved manner of dramatic precedent. In vain she struggled, till her finger-tips were sore and her nails were broken. She ventured out on to the landing, but a maid in the hall below drove her back into the oak-panelled room again, frightened and hunted, half unconscious with fear. And there she waited, till at length, almost with a feeling of relief, she heard a faint footfall coming up the stairs before the door opened again, and the nice-looking young man with the pleasant face entered. He stood for a moment with his back to the closed door, startled and surprised, and yet with something in his eyes that was almost fear.

"Who are you," he asked, "and how did you get here?"

"I-I don't know," Angela stammered. "Of course, I do know, but it's so difficult to explain. You see, I live next door. I am Sir John Osborne's secretary, and he dictates all his work to me. And I—I wrote stories in my spare time. The old house appeals to me, and I have thought about it till I have come to live in a sort of romance of my own. And I wanted to know Mrs. de Courcey so badly. She looks so kind and gentle, and I haven't a friend in the world. But that's not explaining. I discovered a few days ago, when I stood on the landing, that what I thought was panelling was really a sliding door leading from one house to the other, and I tried to see if I could open it. I did open it, and found myself in here."

Angela paused, with the colour flaming in her cheeks. She was conscious of a desire to suppress the whole truth. The pleasant-faced young man smiled with an imp of mischief dancing in his dark eyes.

"To-day, you mean, I suppose?" he asked. "Well, no," Angela faltered. "To be quite truthful, I have been here several times. I come when Mrs. de Courcey is out. And I didn't realise what a shameful thing I have been doing till you came into the room. Do you believe me?"

"Of course I do," the young man said. "When you look at me like that, I must believe anything you say. And, after all, there is no harm done. And I want you to regard me as your friend. I want you to tell me everything. For instance, has that photograph standing on the table anything to do with your visits?"

Here was the touch of romance again, here was the hero who had placed his finger unerringly on the very heart of the mystery. Angela felt herself expanding like a flower.

"How did you guess that?" she asked eagerly.

"Surely you must be aware of the extraordinary likeness between yourself and that photograph," the young man said. "If you were dressed in the same way, and your hair was, done in the same fashion, you might pass for the original. And that's why you startled me so much when I came into the room. And I suppose you don't know that this room is a shrine, and that photograph there stands on an altar. But of course you don't. Perhaps I had better explain. Mrs. de Courcey is a distant relative of mine—in fact, she believes that I am her only relative in the world. She is very rich and kind-hearted and charitable, as I know, because she honours me with the spending of all her money. Some day it will come to me as a sacred trust, and I think I shall know what to do with it. You see, I happen to have money of my own, and therefore I have no ulterior motives. But when I knew Mrs. de Courcey first—twenty-five years ago—she was very different to what she is now. She was a woman in the pride of her beauty, witty and accomplished and much sought after—proud, too, as proud as a Lucifer. She married a man older than herself, and from him she inherited her fortune. He died in the course of a year or two, and left my relative with an only child, a daughter. It seems strange that I should be telling you these things, after I have only known you for a few minutes, but you will see presently how necessary it all is."

"I think I see it now," Angela murmured. "I am beginning to comprehend. And presently I will try and make you understand that I am not what you take me to be."

"I don't," the young man said, with a whimsical smile. "I want you to know how delightful and charming the whole thing is, and how glad I am to meet you in this unconventional fashion. It is the most charming story in the world! And to think that, if it had not been for the accident to that panel, we might never have met! Let me confess I know something about you. I have seen you going in and out of the house next door, and, being a young man of—er —susceptible temperament, I made a few inquiries. I know the sort of life you must lead with that selfish old beast Osborne. But I had never before met you face to face. If I had, I should certainly have stopped you, at the risk of giving offence, and asking you if you were any relation to the artist who was known as Giles Patton." "He was my father!" Angela' cried. "I knew it. I knew it directly I saw you standing there, like a beautiful picture in an old oak frame. And I knew, too, that my gracious lady downstairs had found what she has been praying for in this sanctuary of hers any time in the last twenty years. It seems almost like a sacrilege for us to be standing here, like two figures in a modern comedy, in a shrine which is devoted to tears and penitence. And now, my dear Angela —your mother's name was Angela—cannot you guess the name and identity of the lady who rules this house, or shall I—"

"No, no," Angela cried, "don't spoil it like that! I have dreamt some beautiful dreams in my time—dreams which I have in vain tried to put down on cold paper, but they never satisfy me afterwards. Let me tell you. That photograph is my mother's, beyond all doubt. I have one, too, in my bedroom, and more than once I have compared them. And now I know that Mrs. de Courcey is my grandmother."

"Of course. No other conclusion could be possible. There could be no other ending to a romance like this. Won't you sit down? You have a right in this sanctuary, if anybody has."

Angela was thankful enough' to drop into a chair, for she was trembling from head to foot with the surprise and joy and happiness of the moment, and the whole world was swaying unsteadily about her. Two unshed tears stood in her eyes.

"You are very, very good to me," she said, "and I am not used to it. You don't know what it is to find a friend when you have lived all your life amongst strangers, who regard you as a mere unit in a garden of children. For, you see, my mother died when I was very small, and my father followed her very soon afterwards. And then some artist friends of his managed to get me into a school which looks after the orphans of painters and musicians, and then I became a mere number. I suppose I was always shy and retiring, so that I was forced into a sort of world of my own till the time came when I had to get my own living. But, oh, if you only knew how lonely it was! It wasn't that the other girls were unkind, but that they did not understand me, because they could not enter into my little kingdom. And then, in the fullness of time, I came here, where, at any rate, I have a comfortable home and a not uncongenial occupation. And I have time on my hands to write my little stories and realise my ambition of saving a hundred pounds to take a little cottage in the country. I don't know why I tell you all this, except because you are so kind and sympathetic, and my heart is calling out for friendship."

The young man broke in hastily. He could see that Angela was on the verge of tears, and her frankness touched him.

"Oh, yes, I understand," he said hastily. "Mine was largely a lonely youth, too. And now it is my turn to speak again. Your mother met your father at an art school, and fell in love with him. Of course, that was long ago, in the days when your grandmother was full of family pride and in the zenith of her popularity. And when she found out everything, she was furious. She was still more furious when Giles Patton ran away with your mother and married her. And from that moment mother and daughter never met. Outwardly, at any rate, Mrs. de Courcey did not seem to feel her loss—she never mentioned anything to her dearest friends—but the wound rankled and festered, and went deeper as the years rolled by. For behind that outward coldness Mrs. de Courcey dearly loved her only child, and the time came when she fought with her pride and conquered it. All too late. When she set out to find your mother, it was only to discover that the erring daughter was dead, and that the cause of all the mischief was dead, too. Inquiries were made about you, but you had been taken away by another Bohemian, who was also dead, and Mrs. de Courcey was under the impression that you had eventually disappeared somewhere in the wilds of Australia. She spent any amount of money in advertising for you, and, no doubt, if an effort had been made to hide you, you would have been found; but, as no such thing had happened, it was impossible to trace you. The police told us at the time that such was often the case. And so Mrs. de Courcey, humbled and chastened, gave up the world, and came to live in this quiet street, where I could look after her, and she could spend her time and money in helping the very class of people to which you belong, or did belong a few minutes ago. And now you must come down and see her. She has not been out for a day or two—in fact, she is confined to her room at the present moment. You are not afraid to come, are you?"

"I am horribly afraid," Angela confessed through her tears. "What will she think of me when she knows?"

"She will see that it was the hand of Providence. When you come to think of it, it can be nothing else. Now, come along, and make a noble old soul happy."

Angela found herself presently in a big, sunny bedroom on the far side of the landing, standing blushing before an armchair, in which the grey-haired lady with the sad face was seated. She looked white and frail, but she looked whiter still as her eyes fell on the girl's flushed face. She half started to rise, and dropped back into her seat again.

"What does this mean, Edgar?" she asked. "Is there something the matter with my eyes, or is this child—"

"Now, pray be calm," Edgar de Courcey said soothingly. "The most extraordinary and amazing thing has happened. I went upstairs just now into that sanctum of yours to fetch down the photograph, as you asked me, and what should I find there but the original itself. Here is the original as she must have looked twenty years ago, staring, as I found her, at her counterpart like a beautiful little ghost. Yes, you've guessed it. This is your grandchild, Angela Patton."

"Indeed, indeed, I am," Angela said. "Can you ever forgive me? And yet I cannot regret the vulgar curiosity that led me into your sitting-room."

"You had better explain, Edgar," the grey-haired lady said faintly. "I am afraid I don't quite understand."

The young man proceeded to tell his story. He told it well and humorously, with artistic little touches that served to check the tears and bring the smiles back again to the lips of both listeners. And when he had finished he faded quietly and unostentatiously from the room, leaving the two women alone, with Angela seated on a stool at her grandmother's knee, and the slim, white, faded hand, with its flashing diamonds, resting tenderly on the girl's sunny hair.

"It is all so wonderful," Mrs. de Courcey murmured, "that I can hardly believe it. All these years I have been praying for a miracle something like this—praying in the illogical way that woman does, and almost despising herself in her own heart for her romantic folly. And yet I knew that you were in the world somewhere. I knew that you would come back to me, and give me back some of my lost youth and the happiness that I deliberately shattered, if only my penitence were deep and sincere enough. And Heaven only knows how deep and sincere it has been. It was my pride that held me back—a pride that I look back upon now with horror. It is the coldest thing that a woman can hug to her heart, and well I know it. But I won't say any more about it now. I can guess what sort of a youth yours has been, and it shall be my task to wipe out the recollection of it. You must come to me at once—you must tell your employer that my need is greater than his—then we will go off to a delightful house of mine in the country that I am longing for, and where I never go, because your mother was born there, and there her happiest days were spent. And we will take Edgar with us—Edgar, the good and kind, whom I cannot do without. And perhaps, later on, when you come to know him better "

Angela smiled behind her blushes. And, when the proper time came, it was Edgar himself who saw to that.

THE END

A DOSE OF QUININE

ILLUSTRATED BY STEVEN SPURRIER

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLV, May 1917, pp 731-736

GORDON HARLEY was thinking it over. He sat there alone outside the camp, on the high ground overlooking the fever-stricken valley, where that distinguished patriot Don Miguel del Carados was constructing the railway which was eventually to make the State of Tigua prominent amongst nations. But that was a long way off yet—as far off as was the civilisation that the soul of Gordon Harley coveted. Just at that moment—in fact, at any moment during the last month or two—he was fed up with the man who had lured him away from Western joys to this, the most beautiful and at the same time the most monotonous spot on the continent of South America.

And that fat and oily Spaniard had been so plausible about the whole thing, too. He had painted Tigua as a sporting paradise—just the very place for a man of means who was looking for things to kill; just the sort of thing for a man who had recently come into a lot of money, and who had turned his back joyfully on the medical profession, and who hoped never to handle a stethoscope or study the colour scheme of a human tongue again. This had all taken place one starry night in the patio of a Charlestown hotel, where Del Carados was taking in stores for his pet railway. And, besides, he wanted a doctor badly. There were fifteea hundred workmen of sorts on the railway, mostly natives, with a few Europeans gathered without testimonials from various quarters of the globe, and if there was one drawback to that earthly paradise in question, it was an occasional outbreak of malaria in the rainy season.

"You come, along with me, my friend," the Spaniard had said. "You come and stay just as long as you like—a week, a month. I will put you up, and you shall be my honoured guest. The valley is a sporting paradise."

And Harley, having nothing else to do, and in the first flush of his new fortune, had gladly consented. He had come there by sea, of course, and up a yellow river flowing through a swampy country to the valley where the few miles of rails were under construction. It was a tedious journey, and a somewhat intricate one, but Harley had not worried himself much about that at the time, for his mind was full of jaguars and crocodiles, and such wild game, and, indeed, for the time being, he had all the sport he needed.

And then gradually the truth began to dawn upon him. Those fifteen hundred or so of men who toiled and sweated in that mango swamp, where the miasma rose at evening, and the whole universe reeked with the smell of rotting vegetation, were no more than so many prisoners. They were well fed, it was true, they had strong things to drink and pungent tobacco to smoke, and, as to the few Europeans, they were perfectly happy in the knowledge that they were well outside the long arm of the law. But without money it was impossible to get away. Even if they had possessed the necessary funds, it would have been equally difficult, because nobody but Del Carados and one or two of his trusted Mexicans knew the secret of the way down the river, for the Rava had many tributaries, and all but one of them led to the mud swamps, which meant desolation and death and the feasting of the vultures that abounded there.

But all this had come to Harley gradually. There was nothing brutal about the Spaniard, nothing of the slave-driver, for he was inclined to be fat and scant of breath, and, moreover, possessed a fine fund of humour of his own. He was candid, too. The scheme was to complete the railway up there into the mountains, and bring the copper ore down to the coast to be smelted. Once this was down, then the copper proposition was placed on a paying basis. This represented considerable wealth to the little tin Repubhc of Tigua, and in time much kudos for Del Carados, who began to see his way to the presidency of that delectable Republic, For Del Carados was a politician more than a statesman, which comes to much the same thing, and is a better paying proposition in the long run. And Del Carados had no ambitions. He did not want statuea in his honour, he did not hanker to become permanent President of the Republic—six months' manipulation of the national treasury funds filled up the measure of his ambition. In fine, he was a cheery, fairly good-natured rascal, who loved but two things in the world—his own comfort and a particularly fiery brand of Scotch whisky which was known in violent circles as the Clan MacTavish.

It was impossible, therefore, for anyone to leave the valley of the Rava River and the work on the railway save at the Spaniard's good-will and pleasure. He was essentially monarch of all that he surveyed, and before very long, it became quite plain to Harley that he might, unless some extraordinary piece of luck came his way, regard his appointment as medical officer to the forces as a permanent one. In other words, he was as much a prisoner as the humblest labourer who wielded a pick or a spade.

So far, there had been no outbreak of hostilities between the two men, though they perfectly understood one another, and Del Carados would smile his most genial smile when Harley crept back into the camp after three days' absence, a mere mass of skin and bone. Despite his weakness, and the fact that he had been looking death in the face for the last twenty-four hours, he had spoken his mind quite freely to Del Carados as they sat in the latter's hacienda over the evening meal. A bottle of the Clan MacTavish stood hospitably on the table, but Harley had waved it aside contemptuously.

"Now, listen to me," he said. "I have had about enough of this. I came here for two or three weeks as your guest, and to do a bit of shooting, also to act generally as a doctor until you could get someone to replace me."

"I could never do that," the Spaniard said genially. There was a menace in his tone at the same time.

"Oh, that's what you mean, is it?" Harley said between his teeth. "Well, it's just as well we should understand one another. I am a prisoner here. You know I can't get away without your consent, and I suppose I can stay here and rot, for all you care. I am not concerned with your native workmen, because they are happy enough, and as to your European scum I hold no brief. But you're a blackguard, Del Carados, and you know it. If you have no sort of sympathy with me, you might, at any rate, send those Americans down to the coast."

"And do without my evening's entertainment," Del Carados said, with a pained expression. "They came here cheerfully enough. I found them at Charlestown, stranded high and dry, with not a dollar between them. And am I not paying them fifty dollars a week? What more would you have?"

"Well, you are promising them fifty dollars a week, but Mrs. Vansittart tells me that neither she nor her husband have ever seen the colour of your money. Send them off, at any rate."

Del Carados smiled as he rolled himself a fresh cigarette. The humour of the situation evidently appealed to him. The Americans in question were two vaudeville artistes who had found themselves stranded owing to the backsliding of a manager and the subsequent disappearance of the treasury. They had been literally starving in Charlestown when the genial Spaniard had found them, and were only too glad to avail themselves of his glowing offer, which, it must be confessed, had been painted in alluring colours by one who was an artist in words. They sang and danced and played the Spaniard's jangling piano for his amusement night after night, what time he sat listening, soaked in his beloved Clan MacTavish, and applauded with large-hearted generosity and fine discrimination. The engagement of these people had been a stroke of genius on Del Carados's part, and he was not anxious to see the last of them.

"No, no, my friend," he said. "They are quite happy here; they have been happy here for nearly a year. What more could they have? They are well paid and well fed, and they have only to amuse me for an hour or so after dinner. And look you, Senor Harley, don't you go too far. We have been good friends up to now, but—"

And so for the moment Harley gave it up as a bad job. He was sitting out there, in the afternoon, under the shade of a big palm tree, chewing the cud of sweet and bitter reflection. He was contrasting himself, in his soiled and ragged linen suit, with the happy man who had set out, a year ago, to see the world, rich in health and pocket. And here he was, just as much a prisoner as if he had been legally sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. And there was no escape; he had tried that once, and he had no stomach to repeat the operation, for the horrors of that eight-and-forty hours in the mango swamps, with the snakes and the mud and the dull speculation in the eyes of the crocodiles, was still upon him. It was no wonder, therefore, that Del Carados was prepared to take risks, for he was safe enough, and far beyond the reach of any pro-consul.

Harley took a photograph of himself from his pocket and gazed at it with the sentimental eye of one who regards the features of some beloved dead-and-gone departed.

"And so that's me!" he murmured. "Good Heavens, impossible!"

"I was just asking myself much the same question," a voice broke in, as a woman came down the slope and seated herself by Harley's side. "I don't think my friends in New York would recognise me, Mr. Harley."

It was the vaudeville artiste who called herself Muriel Vansittart who spoke. She was slight and pretty enough, light-hearted and vivacious in the ordinary way, but pale and thin now, though there was a certain gleam of courage in her eyes that Harley had learnt to admire.

"Yes, it's pretty rotten, isn't it?" he said. "But what can we do? Try and escape? I have had some, thank you. I prefer to stay where I am."

"Yes, I know," the woman said. "Bill and myself—that is, my husband, Vivian Vansittart—have had over a year of it. Mr. Harley, I am going out of my mind. I can't put up with this much longer. You don't know what it's like when the rainy season comes on. The weather breaks up suddenly, the glass drops about twenty degrees in five minutes, and half the camp is down with ague. They would have been all dead long before now if it wasn't for the quinine. Why, I've seen them swallow as much as would stand on a dollar! I haven't had it, and Bill hasn't had it, because we are both absolutely T.T. But it's dreadful, and I can't stand another rainy season here."

"Pretty close now, isn't it?" Harley asked.

"Yes, the rains may come at any time. Now, Mr. Harley, listen to me. I have got an idea. You're a doctor, and know all about drugs. You have the run of the store, and you do pretty well what you like. Oh, I have worked the whole thing out; I have been lying awake at night, thinking it over for a week. Now, supposing one of these early nights, when that fat old scoundrel is enjoying himself and is full of whisky, you drop a few grains of something soothing in his glass."

"What good would that do?" Harley. asked.

"Oh, I am coming to that presently. Now, I've been making inquiries, asking artless questions, and I have discovered that Del Carados has only got two cases of whisky left. In about a week he will be sending down to the coast for another supply."

"You mean we might try—"

"Oh, no, I don't mean anything of the kind," the actress said impatiently. "Now, whisper!"

For a minute or two Mrs. Vansittart murmured eagerly into Harley's sympathetic ear. Gradually a smile that was cousin to a grin creased his lean, brown features.

"Well; it's worth trying," he said at length. "It's risky, but Del Carados would do anything rather than go short of the Clan MacTavish. We'll try it the very first day that the weather shows signs of breaking up."

That night, as they say on the cinematograph picture screens, the thermometer dropped nearly a score of points, and for a space Harley was busy in handing out doses of quinine to the shivering natives who clamoured about his hut. Then he crossed over to the hacienda and dined more or less riotously with his genial host and the two American artistes. It was nearly midnight before the Clan MacTavish had got in its genial work, aided by a few drops from a bottle in Harley's drug store, and the Spaniard slept peacefully in his chair. A few moments later the carefully-guarded key of the storeroom was abstracted from his pocket, and for the next hour or two Harley and his companions were exceedingly busy. Then they went off to their respective quarters, hoping for the best.

It was well towards midday before the Spaniard burst into Harley's hut. He was wild and unshaven, untrussed as to his points, and generally bearing about him the unmistakable signs of what is graphically described as "the morning after the night before." The illuminating metaphor can go no further.

"What you've done?"he foamed. "You've robbed me, you've swindled me! You break into my storeroom, you steal all my Clan MacTavish, you evaporate every grain of quinine! Is it a joke? Because it is like to be expensive. You dog, you tell me where those go, or I shoot you!"

The Spaniard's careful English had disappeared in the stress of his emotion. He was truculent enough, but at the same time there was an imploring gleam in his eye that was not distasteful to his prisoner.

"Oh, so you've found out, have you?" he said coolly. "Well, now, listen to me. You can shoot me, if you like, you yellow dog, and you can murder that plucky little American woman and her husband, but it won't bring your whisky back again, and you can't live without it. You'll be dead in three days without your diurnal bottle of Clan MacTavish. And that's not the worst of it, my cheerful old sport. You let those peons know that you've run out of quinine just at the beginning of the rainy season, and they'll tear you in little bits. Now, take my advice and look at the thing in a rational light. You lured me here under false pretences, and made a prisoner of me, just as you did those two American artistes. You haven't the least intention that any of us shall see the coast again until this railway of yours is finished."

"You will never see the coast again!" the Spaniard hissed " You will all be shot in an hour!"

"Oh, I don't think so, dear old thing. You daren't do it. Just think of having to live without your beloved whisky for a whole fortnight! No more long amber-coloured drinks dashed with soda and cooled with chunks of ice, no more happy evenings when you are beautifully fuddled with that comfortable Charles Dickens sort of feeling under that big yellow waistcoat of yours! My dear chap, you really couldn't do it. Now, don't check that natural humour of yours, but try and recognise the funny side of the situation. No drinks and no quinine, and a big riot amongst the peons the first time the glass goes down! Look here, I'll make a bargain with you. I've worked the whole thing out, and it's just like this. You send us down the river this morning as far as the Great Mango Delta. Give us a canoe and some provisions and one of your paddlers to put us on the right way. When we get down to the delta, we shall be all right. Now, if you'll do that, I'll promise on my word of honour to send you back word where the quinine and whisky are to be found. If you like to refuse, and you think you can do without your beloved Clan MacTavish for a fortnight, and you don't mind running the risk of being torn to pieces by the peons, well and good. It's for you to say."

Del Carados swore and threatened, he wept and cursed, and called down the vengeance of all the saints in his calendar on Harley's head, but the latter merely smiled. Then the Spaniard went away with a final threat of instant dissolution, only to return in an hour or two, looking more haggard and dejected than before, and prepared to make terms. He came with the Americans, possibly in the shape of hostages, but they were both as determined as was Harley himself. And so another hour or two passed in fruitless negotiation, till lunch-time arrived, finding Harley still master of the situation.

"It's no use," he said. "We've had this over half a dozen times already. And my friends here are just as determined as I am. Now, sit down, like a sensible man and the born humorist that you are, and talk the matter over. Have some lunch; help yourself to some of that chicken."

"I could not eat a mouthful," Del Carados said, in hollow tones. "I have eaten nothing to-day. My mouth, he is parched, and my tongue, he is dry as a piece of leather. Now, come, my dear friend, this joke has been carried far enough. Tell me where that whisky is, and where you've hidden the quinine, and all shall be forgiven."

"It is forgiven now," Harley said drily. "Even your bitterest enemy would be sorry for you if he caught sight of that face of yours at the present moment. But it's no good, Del Carados. We can't die more than once. Neither can you, but your death promises to be a lingering one."

Del Carados collapsed into a chair and openly bewailed the day that he was born. He tore his hair, he lapsed into strange tongues in a vocabulary that suggested the past master in the art of profanity, but all to no avail,

"If I could do that," Vansittart drawled, "guess I could command a record salary in one of the New York theatres. Say, Don, what's your figure for a course of lessons?"

Del Carados sat up suddenly. There was a certain air of dignity about him now as he spoke.

"I am beaten," he said., "Other great men have been beaten before me, but few of them know how to recognise it. Ladies and gentlemen, you have got the best of the future President of the State of Tigua. Behold, I capitulate—it shall be just as you desire. But before I accompany you myself as far as the Great Mango Delta, in the name of Heaven, I implore yon to find me one little drink, a ghost of a one "

"Not a drop," Harley said firmly. "No, the sheen of Clan MacTavish shall not shine for you until you have earned it. Now go off and get everything ready."

It was barely an hour later before a properly equipped and provisioned canoe dropped down the river, past the alligator swamps, in the direction of the delta. At the prow two stalwart paddlers were being urged on by the dejected Spaniard, whose melancholy, however, did not seem to interfere with his flow of expletives, so that it wanted still an hour to sundown when at length the Mango Delta was reached. From this point the Spaniard and his peons would make their way back on foot, and Harley calculated with grim amusement that Del Carados would have earned the cherished Clan MacTavish before he got it.

"We shall be quite all right now, Don, thank you," he said. "The way is clear enough. Now, you and your men had better get out, and we will tell you where to find that which is lost. You tell him, Mrs. Vansittart."

There was a pleasant smile on the little actress's face and a sparkle of amusement in her eyes as she leant forward and addressed the man standing on the bank.

"You won't have very far to look," she said sweetly. "You'll find your two cases of whisky hidden away in the storeroom behind other empty cases; and, as to the quinine, it is packed up in blue paper parcels and mixed with your sugar rations. You'll know it by the taste easily enough. You see, we hadn't any time to hide the stuff anywhere else, and we knew perfectly well that the storeroom was the last place where you would look for it. Good-bye, Don Miguel del Carados, good-bye, and, if we ever meet again, then I'll probably stand in the witness-box and give evidence against you. You don't look particularly happy now, and you'll look less happy still when an American gunboat comes nosing up the river, asking awkward questions."

Del Carados, from the bank, made a profound bow in his best Spanish manner, but the smile on his face was a sickly one, and the language that he used under his breath is, perhaps, best left to the imagination.

THE END

THE CASE FOR THE PRISONER

Published in The Queenslander, Saturday, 1 September, 1917.

Ellis, standing in the doorway, gave a little sigh of admiration, with perhaps a tinge of envy in it. He could see a room half in shadow and half in the subdued light of the shaded lamps, a flicker of blue and orange from the clear fire, and by the side of it a woman, lying back in a deep, cosy chair.

Colonel Henderson's wife owned frankly to 40 years, and perhaps all the more joyously because she looked at least a decade younger. Her face lighted up now and again, and her lips parted in a smile at some remark by the man who sat at her side, with his long legs stretched out towards the cheerful blaze.

Colonel Henderson was a good ten years older than his wife, though she refused to admit it. He was a fine figure of a man, lean and well-knit, and his hair and moustache bore no trace of grey. Yet he had seen hard service in many lands, and his D.S.O. had been fairly won during the Boer War.

Ellis advanced into the room, and made his presence known. It was good to see the light of pleasure in Molly Henderson's blue eyes, and feel the grip of the Colonel's hand. It was good to sit there facing the cheerful blaze and listen to news of mutual friends. Then gradually the conversation lapsed, as it will between friends, and a long silence followed. It was Ellis who broke it first.

"Well," he said, "you have not asked me how the search has progressed."

The Colonel shrugged his shoulders just a little impatiently. "Oh, the Odyssey," he said. "Aeneas in search of the sentimental idea. My dear fellow, I have never had any sympathy with this scheme at all. To begin with, I can see nothing to be gained by it. Your brother is dead. And he has lain under the veldt now for nearly 13 years. His wife may be dead, too, for all you know. For the sake of argument, let us grant that she isn't. Say you find her, what are you going to do then?"

"Give her back that money," Ellis said. "It belonged to her, and I shall never be satisfied till she has the whole 20 thousand back again."

"Wasn't it more than that?" Henderson asked.

"Well, at one time it was, much more. We heard from Capetown that my brother was married, and that his wife had settled her money on him, but my mother and myself would not have known her if we had met her in the street. Well, she left her husband, heaven knows why, and Philip was heartbroken about it. Then the Boer War broke out, and we gathered from my brother's letters that his wife was entirely in sympathy with the foe. Finally he was left alone, defending his farm with perhaps a couple of English men, and supplying Kitchener with valuable information. And what did that woman do? She left the farm at dead of night, and deliberately betrayed her husband into the hand of the foe. They shot him as he was writing home to tell my mother this, and the unfinished letter reached us in due course. And you laugh at me because I have made it the business of my life to find that woman and give her money back to her. Is not that so?"

"Well?" Henderson said, half wearily. "Go on."

"Well, I am going to make a deliberate accusation against you, George. I am going to challenge you to deny that you know where Philip's wife is to be found."

Molly Henderson lifted a smiling, questioning face to her husband.

He smiled in turn. "I am not going to deny it," he said. "I can't—at least, not till Geoffrey has produced his proofs."

"I can do that," Ellis said, grimly. "Now, as you know, I have been travelling about the Transvaal, hunting for information for the last two years. But the war had removed so many landmarks. Whole families had been wiped out, and people disappeared in the most mysterious manner. Then I got hold of a Cape boy, an old man who remembered my brother, and he took me to the farm, where he died. In one of the ruined buildings I discovered a mass of documents in my brother's handwriting. And amongst them was a common luggage label. It was written by a woman and addressed to Colonel George Henderson at Paarburg, to be called for, and the initials in the corner were those of my brother's wife. A date is on that label, the very day that the woman I am in search of abandoned her husband to his fate. And if you want any more, let the thing speak for itself."

Very quietly Ellis laid the torn slip of paper on the table. Henderson picked it up and examined it carefully.

"I am not denying anything," he said. "I should say, without a doubt, that that label was addressed by your brother's wife, and it would be futile to deny that I am the Colonel Henderson in question."

"Then she did write to you!" Ellis cried, eagerly.

"You can't force me to speak, you know," Henderson said. "For many reasons I deplore this discovery of yours, and yet I cannot tell you why. Give it up, Geoffrey. If that money weighs on your conscience, give it me, and I will see that it reaches its destination. The woman you seek doesn't want it; indeed, I know that she wouldn't touch a penny of it. And I warn you that you will not get any further."

Ellis listened in moody silence, and then turned eagerly to Molly Henderson for sympathy.

"Won't you help me?" he implored. "Dear Molly, George cannot resist you, if you ask him."

"I do ask him," Mrs. Henderson whispered.

Henderson bent and touched his wife's forehead gently. "Listen," he said. "A woman comes to me in the hour of her distress, and appeals to me for protection. Does it matter whether she is good or bad; does anything matter beyond the fact that she is a woman? She came to me, knowing that I was prejudiced against her. She came in peril, with the stigma of the spy upon her. And because she appealed for my protection I gave it her, and I have never regretted it. You know that, Molly, don't you?"

"We have discussed the matter many times," Mrs. Henderson said, with a little catch in her voice. "Don't think we are callous or heartless, Geoffrey. We have not deliberately deceived you. We always hoped that you would forget, and that one of these days some nice girl——"

"There's a nice girl, now," Ellis said, moodily. "But you know I cannot speak to her yet."

"You are a fool," Henderson broke out. "A sentimental fool, who is wasting his life in the pursuit of shadows. And with that I have no more to say."

"I will make one more appeal to you," Ellis persisted. "You suggested just now that there might be a girl somewhere for me, and I have told you that there is. You say you are anxious for my future happiness, and yet all the time you are doing your best to prevent it."

There was something like pity in Henderson's smile, something sad in the expression in Molly's face.

"Well, Molly!" Henderson asked. "Geoffrey has made an appeal to you. What are you going to say?"

"It would be far kinder to say nothing," Molly Henderson murmured, after a moment's hesitation. "As you suggested just now, let sleeping dogs lie."

"But why?" Ellis protested. "Can't you see what a living tragedy the thing is to me?"

"Supposing you were a woman who had done something in the past and had suffered for it," Henderson suggested. "It is always the woman who suffers, you know, always the woman who pays. She may be living out her life in some remote part of the world, she may be the wife of some good fellow who knows nothing of that closed volume. She may be absolutely and entirely happy. You wouldn't grudge her that happiness?"

"What decent fellow would?" Ellis asked. "But is this fact or fable?"

"It's founded on fact, any way. And don't run away with the impression that your brother's case is unique, because more than one Englishman with a Dutch wife paid a similar penalty during that campaign. And the Boers are our blood brothers to-day, mind. I am going to ask you to listen to my story, and perhaps, when I have finished, you will not be so anxious to injure a person whom you have never seen, and who is known to you only by the name of Ruth Ellis."

"The story is worth listening to," Mrs. Henderson murmured.

"I will go back to a few months before the war," Henderson began. "I was in Cape Colony, remember, before the fighting began. And there I met a man whom I will call Trevor. He was a very charming and delightful fellow, a typical, well-bred Englishman, with the public school hall-mark upon him. He had plenty of ambition; perhaps he was a little too ambitious, for he rejected one or two excellent openings on the ground that they were not good enough. As a matter of fact, he was wasting his money, and was just a little too much inclined to spend his evenings in the club billiard-room, when he met a girl. I didn't know her then, but I heard she was a good type, and that her people were wealthy. They got married, and went up country, precisely as your brother did. I heard from him from time to time, though I never met his wife. You see, it was just then that we in the army began to see the red light ahead, and very full our hands were in consequence. But I did not lose interest in Trevor, and he wrote to me frequently. He was always the type of man to show his feelings; he belonged to the emotional class that must have sympathy. His letters gradually changed in tone; he was not getting on with his wife. He complained that she was frivolous and thoughtless, and fond of admiration. She hated the lonely life; there were violent quarrels and passionate scenes, and very vividly they were described. Trevor was a born novelist—anybody who read the letters would have known that. And I am bound to say that I took them all for gospel. They were deucedly convincing.

"I got those letters regularly," Henderson went on. "'They culminated some months later after the war broke out, with the declaration that the woman had left her husband and gone back to Capetown. After a bit, she was back again; indeed, the same thing happened twice more, and then Trevor was killed by a handful of wandering Boers during one of his wife's periodical absences. I thought I'd heard the last of her, but I was mistaken. Late one night an orderly came to me with the information that a woman had called on important business. It was a queer place for a woman, that desolate region, and I must confess that my curiosity was aroused; so the lady came into my tent, and introduced herself as Mrs. Trevor.

"She was quite candid; she knew perfectly well what her husband had written to me, for she had read every line of his letters before they were despatched. She spoke utterly without bitterness; she spoke as one who had suffered in silence at the hands of a madman. It was the old, old story. Trevor had taken to drink—the worst type of drunkard, the man who has savage spells with sober interludes. Geoffrey, I cannot convey to you in as many words what that poor woman had suffered. She had never left the man of her own accord, she had stood by him as long as it was safe; and had fought for his soul. And when she fled in fear of her life, and Trevor was writing whining to me and cadging for sympathy, he was sending her the most passionate and imploring letters, promising her anything if she'd only return. And her return from time to time was none the less noble, because he had killed all her love long ago. She was with him to the end. It came after a scene of violence greater than any that had preceded it, and she, a woman, was left all alone on the veldt. Trevor was shot at daybreak by the roaming Boers I speak of, and, at the last moment, conveyed an impression to me that he had been the victim of treachery on the part of his wife. But I know better; I have chapter and verse for everything I am telling you in my safe yonder. I don't suppose you would care to see it, and, in any case, it is no business of yours. And I think that's about all, Geoffrey."

Ellis looked up with a lack-lustre eye. He only dimly comprehended what all this was leading to.

"A sad story," he murmured. "But I don't see the application of it. It sounds like poor Phil's life over again, in a slightly different form. But, then, poor old Phil did not drink, and he would not have hurt a fly. Good heavens! you're not insinuating——"

"You are very blind, Geoffrey," Mrs. Henderson whispered.

Ellis collapsed trembling into a chair. "Heavens! Is it true?" he cried. "Is it true that all these years I have been sacrificing my life for one so unworthy? But it must be true. Forgive me, Molly, for all the pain I have inflicted upon the one woman who, after my mother, I love best in the world. And how am I going to tell her the truth?"

"Why tell her at all?" Molly Henderson whispered. "Phil's wife is dead. Ruth Ellis died of a broken heart, and lies in her grave out there on the veldt, Molly Henderson, thank heaven, is a different person altogether. And now, Geoffrey——"

Ellis advanced towards the speaker and placed his hands on hers. Then he lifted them to his lips. "Everything is buried on the veldt," he said. "And you will never hear me mention this again. I should like to come back in a day or two, when I feel more able—you know what I mean. And if I leave you now I am quite sure."

He was gone. The door closed behind him.

Henderson laid his hands on his wife's shoulders, and looked down into her eyes. "That was brave of you," he said. "He would never have got the story from me. Still, if you think it is for the best——"

"Oh, yes," Molly Henderson smiled. "It is good for him that he should hear the case for the prisoner. And I am sure I shall never regret that the story has been told. Geoffrey will tell nobody, not even the girl who is waiting for him. And, George, I think it was for her sake that the story was told."

THE END

A CALL ON THE PHONE

Published in The Queenslander, Saturday, 22 December, 1917.

All day long the stuffy little court house had been crowded with perspiring humanity eager to hear every word of the proceedings against Edgar Warner. True, up to then it was only a preliminary inquiry, but every man there felt that Warner was being tried for his life. Hour after hour the inquest dragged on till the dusk of the summer evening faded into night. Still the listeners sat patiently on, heedless of the flight of time. They were waiting for Warner to give his evidence, as he had expressed the intention of doing. The coroner had another engagement on the morrow, so that he was prepared to sit till midnight if necessary.

The facts were fairly simple. Mr. William Tuson had been found dead in his library. Obviously, he had come to a violent end. A blow on the head from some blunt, heavy instrument had fractured his skull, and, according to the medical evidence, he had died instantly. Tuson was by way of being a money lender, and he had a reputation for hardness and sharp practice in Langford. Warner was a musician and a song writer, and it was generally known that he had some grievance against Tuson over some business matters in which Warner roundly declared that he had been swindled. There had been a violent quarrel and subsequent litigation, followed by a threat on Tuson's part of making Warner a bankrupt. Certainly Warner was in the moneylender's debt—he had failed to meet an acceptance as it became due, and the acceptance, torn in two pieces, had been found in Warner's garden behind some bushes, the suggestion being that Warner had stolen the paper after he had made away with his creditor.

He denied stoutly that he had seen Tuson on the night of the tragedy. Tuson was known to have been alive and well at 11 o'clock in the evening in question, the insinuation being that Warner had called upon him after that hour, when everybody was in bed. Warner stoutly maintained that after supper he had not left his house. He was in the habit of staying up very late composing and playing, his wife and the one maidservant, on the contrary, always retiring early. In consequence of his very late hours, Warner had his own bedroom, so that he could sleep when he pleased. On the night of the tragedy he had been writing from 9 o'clock till half-past 1, when he retired. He declared that he had never been outside the house. But he had no means of verifying this statement. It would have been the easiest matter for him to have been away any length of time without the members of his household being any the wiser. It was on this evidence that Langford had come to the conclusion that Edgar Warner was guilty of the death of William Tuson. He had killed the man in order to obtain possession of that acceptance and thus destroy all evidence that he was in debt to the moneylender.

But there was one more witness to come. It was getting very late when a slim little woman in spectacles stepped up to the tables to give her evidence. Her name was Maud Matty, and her occupation telephone operator at the Langford exchange. She remembered the night of the murder quite well—on that evening she had been on duty in the exchange. About half-past 11 she had had a call from No. 110, who gave the number 166 as the one needed.

"What does this refer to?" the coroner asked.

"No. 110 is Mr. Warner's number, sir," Inspector Hames explained. "No. 166 is the number of Mr. Tuson's telephone. We regard this evidence as being of great importance."

The tired, perspiring audience thrilled. Most of them knew exactly what this meant. On the night of the murder at half-past 11 Warner had called up the dead man—the man subsequently found dead.

"Really!" the coroner exclaimed. "Are you quite sure of this, Miss Matty?"

"Quite certain, sir," the witness said quietly. "I took the call myself. I heard a question asked."

"You listened?" Warner put in eagerly. "You listened to what was passing?"

"Not exactly that. But I could hear. You called up Mr. Tuson and gave your name. You asked Mr. Tuson if you could see him at once for a few moments, and he gave you a reply to the effect that it was very late, but if you came at once he would see you."

The audience swayed with excitement. This was a dramatic surprise that they had not expected. Warner stood up deadly pale and defiant, his angry eyes challenged the witness. But she stood there coolly and collectedly, and evidently quite sure of her ground.

"I am prepared to swear that I never used the telephone all the evening," Warner cried.

"You will be good enough to be quiet," the coroner said. "The witness must not be interrupted. Now, Miss Matty, is there any possible proof of this?"

"I recognised Mr. Warner's voice," the operator proceeded. "In a small exchange like ours we get to know the voices of our subscribers quite well. Mr. Warner has a slot machine and he cannot call without putting in a penny. The call and the pennies are recorded automatically. There were five calls that day altogether, and if necessary, sir, you can come and see for yourself. The instrument cannot make a mistake."

Warner had no question to ask. He was utterly taken by surprise at the dramatic evidence; he could see how terribly it told against him. And here was some deadly mechanical contrivance that could not possibly be gainsaid. He could feel the rope about his neck.

"May I say a few words?" he asked when the witness had disappeared. "May I give evidence now?"

"I should strongly advise you not to," the Coroner said significantly. "If you will be advised by me, you will be legally represented at the next hearing. Have you any more witnesses, Inspector?"

"Not to-night, sir," Hames said. "I propose, with your permission, to take an adjournment at this point. Since the last witness came and volunteered her evidence yesterday, I have been making inquiries. I think it would be in the interests of the inquiry, and possibly in the interest of Mr. Warner also, if I asked him a few questions. I should like to know if he is right or left handed."

A general smile followed this apparently inconsequent query. But Hames was perfectly grave. The more astute amongst the spectators began to scent further dramatic complication here.

"I am right-handed," the puzzled Warner said. "I will write a few words if you like. And Inspector Hames knows that I am a right-handed cricketer and fisherman."

"I had forgotten that," Hames smiled. Warner was a local celebrity as a cricketer. "Now will you tell me if you happen to be deaf in the left ear?"

Once more a puzzled murmur ran round the room. Warner shook his head vigorously. He was not deaf in either ear, and he was prepared to undergo any fair test to prove it. With the right ear closed, Warner could follow a whispered conversation some fifteen feet away. Hames smiled with the air of a man who is perfectly satisfied with the condition of things.

"That is more than sufficient for my purpose," he said. "I shall be obliged sir, if you will order an adjournment of the case till Monday morning at 10 o'clock."

It was most exasperating for the audience, of course. They were turned out just in the moment when the case had assumed its most exciting form. And what did Hames mean by asking those extraordinary questions? They could not possibly have anything to do with the inquiry. As they filed out into the coolness of the night they morally condemned Edgar Warner to death. The coroner beckoned Hames to his side as he packed up his papers.

"I suppose you have worked all this out?" he said. "Still, after the evidence offered to-night, I was rather surprised that you did not apply for a warrant. On the girl's testimony, I should certainly have granted one."

"Then you regard Warner as guilty of the crime, sir?" Hames asked.

"Certainly I do. The evidence is absolutely overwhelming. It is all on record, too."

"Yes, I admit that," said Hames thoughtfully. "Now I am bound to confess that until Miss Matty came to me, and volunteered her evidence, I regarded Warner as guilty. Everything pointed that way. The finding of that torn acceptance was almost conclusive. It was after Miss Matty had told her story that I came to the conclusion that Warner had nothing whatever to do with it."

The coroner shrugged his shoulders. He could not follow the logic of it at all. It was strange to him that the most damning piece of evidence on the part of the prisoner should be construed into one of the main planks of the defence. Hames was a very smart officer and worthy of a better place, but he was carrying his modern methods and ingenious deductions too far.

Hames hurried along and caught up Warner as the latter was turning into his gate. The house was close on the roadside, with the hall window flush with the road. To keep out prying eyes, stained glass of sorts had been put in the window, but when the hall gas was fully on a dim outline of the interior could be seen. It was possible to make out the stair carpet and certain objects in the broad window ledge. One of the most conspicuous objects there was the telephone that had caused all the trouble.

"May I come in for a few minutes?" Hames asked.

"If you like," Warner replied, none too graciously. "There is nobody in the house. Directly people began to talk—as they did almost before the breath was out of Tuson's body—I sent my wife to her mother and the maid to her home. I have been doing for myself ever since. I suppose you haven't come for me?"

"No," Hames said. "On the contrary, I am here to assist you if I can."

Warner turned into his study. His hands trembled as he lit the gas.

"I am an innocent man," he cried passionately. "I swear to you in the presence of my Maker that I was not out of the house on the night of the murder. It would be an easy thing, quite the prudent thing, to admit having sent that telephone message and to declare that I changed my mind after. All this flashed across me in court to-night, and I could have done it easily. But I never sent that message. If this is to be my last word on earth, I never sent it, Hames."

"My dear sir, I am perfectly well aware of that," Hames said quietly.

Warner gazed at the speaker, as if doubting his meaning.

"You are one of the very few who regard me as not guilty?" he asked.

"I am certain of it," Hames said. "Mind you, I thought so at one time. I thought so until, curiously enough, the most damning evidence of all was tendered against you. Then I began to ask questions. I was about your house last night for an hour or more. I saw something, a little thing, that gave me an idea. That is why I asked you those questions to-night. If you had been deaf in your left ear I should have regarded you as guilty. As it is, I know that you are quite innocent."

"Oh, I give it up," Warner cried impatiently. "The thing is too wildly farcical for me. What on earth has my normal faculty of hearing got to do with it?"

Hames passed the question. All that would come quite plain in due course, he said. Meanwhile he wanted to know if Warner had used his telephone lately?

"As a matter of fact, I haven't," Warner explained. "It hasn't been used since the night of the murder—and not by me then, despite what the—girl from the exchange said. We had no occasion to call anybody, and by 11 o'clock in the day after the murder, my wife and my servant had left the house. I have not spoken to anybody over the line since. I am a poor man, as you know, and I look at a penny twice before I put it in the slot. It would have been different if that blackguard Tuson had not robbed me. I have discharged that bill that was picked up over and over again by music that I gave to Tuson for a song. He detained an opera of mine to which he was not in the least entitled. That rascal was the ruin of me. But that has nothing to do with it whatever. Why are you so anxious to know all about the telephone?"

Hames led the way out into the hall. The telephone stood in an angle on the broad window-ledge with the latticed panes behind it. The receiver hung over on the right hook.

"Now look at that," Hames said, as he pointed at the fact. "Why does the receiver hang on the right-hand hook? It should hang on the left. If you were left-handed it would hang that way, of course—in fact, it would be impossible to replace it in any other way. The obvious way is to ring with the right hand and put the receiver to the left ear. If you are deaf in the left ear you would reverse the receiver. Now, you are not deaf in the left ear and yet the receiver is reversed. I noticed this as I was prowling about the house last night—you can see the instrument quite plainly when your hall gas is lit. Now, you may say that this is a ridiculous detail. As a matter of fact, it is very important—for you. Miss Matty's evidence, which is going to hang you in the opinion of Langford, is going to save you in mine. What a remarkably lucky thing it is that you are not deaf in the left ear!"

And more than that Hames refused to say. For the present he was going entirely on theory, and even the most ingenious theories are apt to be misleading.

"Of your innocence I am assured," he said. "I am going to prove it before long, but I must do this thing in my own time and in my own way. I have a lot still to do to-night, but before I go let me give you one word of advice. Don't touch your telephone. On no account send a message."

Warner gave the desired assurance, and Hames went his way. For the next hour or so he remained closeted with his detective staff. Being on the outskirts of a large seaport, Langford contained a floating population of undesirables in the lodging-houses and in the public houses, and it was as to the doings of these that Hames was interested. He wanted to know if any of them had been flash of money lately. It was in the course of the next morning that Hames sifted a mass of information on this point and began to see his way to act. He took the train as far as Sandmouth, and presently entered the office of the telephone company and asked to see the manager.

"I'm Inspector Hames from Langford," he said. "I will take it for granted that you know something as to the mysterious murder of Mr. Tuson, sir? Or shall I explain?"

"No occasion at all," the manager said. "I read all the evidence. As the case turns upon a telephone call, I was naturally interested. You'll find that they won't shake the evidence of our operator yonder."

"I shall be greatly disappointed if they do," Hames said gravely. "I know that that particular call went through. But it doesn't in the least follow that it was sent by Warner personally."

"Then who else would have sent it? The thing couldn't have been done without Warner's knowledge. He was in the house all the evening, according to his statement. It is a small house, too."

"A small house with the study within a few feet of the hall," Hames agreed. "I have a pretty sound theory of what really did happen, but I want to test it, of course. Now, the house next to Warner's is empty. Could you rig me up a temporary instrument there and connect it with Warner's house in such a way that I should get the call if anybody used Warner's telephone. Suppose he gave a call himself. I want your operator at the exchange to see that I get the message whoever it is sent to. And I want to be in a position to know if anybody uses Warner's instrument. Can you do that?"

The manager nodded thoughtfully. That would not be at all a difficult matter, he explained. If anybody in Warner's house called the exchange, the extension, to the next house would enable a listener to hear all that was going on. To switch the caller in Warner's house on to the temporary instrument next door was merely a matter of drilling the operator at the exchange. The manager promised that the business should have his immediate and careful attention. The necessary work should be done in the course of the day. It was getting dark when Hames finished some work at his office, after which he proceeded to write out a telegram as follows:—

"Pilmer, 17, Harrow-terrace. Trouble over old matter. Can't show up just yet. Matter blow over probably. Give me call telephone 1753 about 11 o'clock to-night. Same old game. House empty."

Hames consigned the message to one of his subordinates with certain definite instructions.

"Send the message off," he said. "And hang about near Harrow-terrace till the thing is delivered. As soon as that is done take two or three men down to 17, Dock Row; and arrest the man and his wife that you find there. See that this is done secretly and that nobody spots what you are doing. It is imperative that there shall be no fuss or curiosity aroused. That's about all, I think."

The telegram was despatched and delivered, and the arrests subsequently made to Hames's entire satisfaction. With a feeling in his mind that everything was going smoothly, he returned about 11 o'clock to the empty house next to the one occupied by Warner. He let himself quietly in by the door, and located the temporary instrument that had been placed there by the obliging manager of the telephone company. With the absolute assurance that he would get an important message presently, he sat down and waited. Within a few minutes after the hour the little bell rippled out.

"Your number 1753?" a husky voice asked.

"That's right. That you, Charlie? What's' up, old man? Your telegram gave me a rare fright."

"We're being watched," Hames responded in the same muffled tone. "Eh? Yes, I've got the very deuce of a cold tonight. You calling me from the old spot, I suppose? That's good! The cops have found out that the old man had a lot of brass in his desk, and it's missing. Don't you get splashing it about for a day or two. I'm lying low in Sandmouth for a little while keeping my eyes open. Can't stay any longer now, old man. Give me a call same way same time to-morrow night. So long."

At eleven o'clock the following night Hames was seated in Warner's study. The house was supposed to be empty, but as a matter of fact Warner had not left it. There were no lights anywhere. As the clock in the hall struck the hour of eleven Hames moved from the study into the hall, followed by Warner. Hames took up his place close to the telephone and waited. A few minutes later the window was opened from the outside very gently and quietly, and a hand fumbled for the bell-handle. Hames pounced upon it like lightning, and held it in a grip like a vice. A volley of curses broke out of the darkness, there was a sound as of violently scuffling feet. Lanterns flashed about outside.

"Put up the gas," Hames shouted. "The fellow is safe in the hands of my men outside. Bring him in, Parker. Ah, I think your name is Pilmer, late of Harrow-terrace. Well, my man, you are arrested on the charge of murdering Mr. Tuson and with subsequently robbing him of L143/4/9. You need not say anything unless you like, but your friend Charlie is in custody, and so is his wife. Rather foolish for poor Charlie to buy his wife a diamond ring in Langford, wasn't it?"

The discomfited ruffian cursed aloud, but Hames waved him aside. "Take him away," he said. "I'll follow presently. I want a few words with Mr. Warner first."

"How on earth did you manage it all?" Warner asked.

"Well, you see," Hames explained. "It was all that transfer of the telephone receiver from the right to the left-hand hook. The thing first struck me as untidy. I noticed it as I was prowling about your house. The telephone is so plain from the road when the gas is lit. Then it suddenly struck me that anybody could use that phone from outside by opening the old catch on the window. And anybody using it from the outside, unless they were left-handed, would have to turn the handle with the left hand, and hold the receiver with the right. As they were working the telephone from the wrong side, so to speak, there was no other way. And that's how the receiver came to be hanging on the wrong hook. Mind you, the thing is quite easily done by standing well back from the window with the flex at full stretch; in that case you would hear nothing. The penny was dropped in the slot quietly, and there you are. Those ruffians had planned what to do—they would easily know that you were at daggers drawn with Tuson, and that's why they called up on your phone imitating your voice. By that means they learnt everything they wanted to know. They killed the old man and robbed him; they found that bill of yours and left it where it would be detected and used as evidence against you. It did not take long to fix on the guilty parties, especially when I found two suspects who were spending money freely. I arrested one lot and tricked the other to come to the telephone to speak to me. He thought that he was talking to his pal, but he was merely talking to me from your house to next door, per the exchange. I got him to try on the same game to-night, so that I could catch him red-handed. He tumbled into the trap, and he has enabled me to prove my case up to the hilt. If I were you, in future I would not keep my telephone in so tempting and conspicuous a place."

Warner hung on to Hames's hand almost affectionately.

"I can't thank you," he said. "But all the same I am going to take your advice."

THE END