TABLE of CONTENTS

BLIND CHANCE

A MATTER OF HABIT

A GARDEN OF PEARLS

BELOW ZERO

THE DAWNSTAR

PHOTO BY LESTERRE

THE LONELY FURROW

THE REAL DRAMATIC TOUCH

THE SUPERMAN

A DEAL IN DIAMONDS

BLIND CHANCE

ILLUSTRATED BY G. HENRY EVISON

Published in The Strand Magazine, September 1917

THERE was no light in the big room except the deep orange glow of the fire on the broad stone hearth, so that the rest was merged in the shadows—shadows velvety black, with suggestions of light here and there such as Rembrandt loved to paint. A fine, big room, radiating comfort and luxury, and refined silence, as if the world were very far away; which, indeed, it was, for the old house nestled on the edge of Whinborough Common, over against the golf-links, the only house within two miles of where it stood.

On either side of the fire were deep arm-chairs, merely suggested in that velvety gloom; in the big bay window a roll-top desk, which was the only modern note in the house. And round about that roll-top desk there played, presently, little violet specks of light in thin, dagger-like flashes, hardly visible in themselves, but quite sufficient for their purpose. There came, too, suddenly, a touch of the keen October air, as if a window had been suddenly opened. And after that a faint creaking sound as if, perchance, the top of the desk had been pushed back very quietly and cautiously, followed by a fat and greasy chink, as if two coins had come in contact one with the other. Then a minute disc of violet light concentrated itself upon a little heap of sovereigns and the crisp outline of a bank-note or two. All this with no more sound than a mouse would have made behind the old oak panelling there at the back of the velvet-black shadows; but it was sufficient for one man there.

He leant forward out of the depths of his big arm-chair where he had been seated, listening and sniffing up the damp pungency of the dew-drenched night, seated there as if he had been part and parcel of the shadows. There was just a tiny click, and the room was flooded with light.

"Come along," the man in the arm-chair said. "Sit there in the chair opposite me." He spoke quietly enough, in a slow, clear-cut voice that had in it a vibration of command and perhaps a certain suggestion of cruelty. The other man, standing by the desk with the electric torch in his hand, wheeled suddenly round and stood there with parted lips and terror in those watery brown eyes of his.

"Roger Broadley!" he gasped.

The words were faint enough, but they carried to the ears of the man sitting in the big arm-chair. He made no sign, the suggestion of a smile was still upon his lips, and those merciless flint-blue eyes of his were turned steadily upon the man with the torch in his hand. The smile was so fixed and the blue eyes so steadfast that the intruder was puzzled to know whether his startled expression had been heard or not. His first impulse was flight by the open window at the back of the desk, or, alternately, through the open door. But the craven fear that had paralyzed the man called Canton all his life held him now, and he cursed himself silently for his want of purpose. He was afraid to turn and fly, afraid of the bullet that might follow him, or the strong, nervous hand that might pluck him back. Very slowly and reluctantly he crossed the room and dropped unsteadily into the chair on the other side of the fireplace. He was still puzzled and dazed, and almost madly anxious to know if the other had recognized him. And there were urgent reasons why he should not be recognized

But he could see no gleam of remembrance in the concentrated lightning of those flint-blue eyes. And with that Canton began to pull himself together again. With any luck he might be able to bluff himself out of it yet.

"Fairly got me, haven't you?" he hazarded, with a certain uneasy assumption of ease. "Know me, perhaps?"

He spoke with just the suggestion of a lisp, a slight defect due toa missing front tooth. The big man in the opposite arm-chair smiled—smiled in a horribly capable, assured manner that brought the sweat out on Canton's face again. For the other man was so big and strong, so capable and certain of his ground. And those blue eyes burnt and seared like so many live wires in the heart of the craven opposite.

"We won't discuss that for the moment," Broadley said. "And we need not waste time in guessing the reason that brought you here. That torch of yours and the open desk yonder with the gold and notes lying there would be proof, I think, satisfactory to any magistrate of ordinary intelligence. Now, this is the first time I have ever had the pleasure of meeting a gentleman of your profession. Have you been brought up to it, or was it, so to speak, forced upon you?"

Canton almost smiled. Obviously this man, whom he had every cause to fear, had not recognized him. Indeed, why should he? Canton argued, for they had never met face to face, though Canton knew Broadley well enough by reputation. The mean little face, with its narrow, shifty eyes and unsteady lips, grew more resolute, and hope began to bud again.

"Well?" Broadley said. "Well? Of course, you needn't talk unless you like. I suppose you know I am alone in the house. My man is away with the car, at Oxbridge Station, waiting for a friend of mine. So, you see, we are quite alone, and merely man to man. There is nothing to detain you. You can go, if you like. Why don't you?"

Canton snarled bitterly.

"Oh, yes, I know all about that," he said. "You are a bigger man than I am, and you wouldn't talk like that if you weren't armed. Directly I turn my hack upon you, I shall get one through the shoulder. You can't fool me!"

"I am not trying," Broadley said, quietly. "I am stating a self-evident fact, if you only knew it. You have me at a great disadvantage."

Canton snarled again; he would have liked to have risen up and struck this sneering antagonist of his between those merciless blue eyes. He would have liked to disfigure that clean-shaven, humorous face, with its faint suggestion of cruelty about the corners of the lips. But he was afraid, and he cursed himself for his fear. He knew himself to be a sneak and a coward, as he had been all his life. He sat there sullenly till Broadley spoke again.

"Very well, then," the latter said. "I have given you every opportunity. I have told you you could go if you like, and that you had me at a great disadvantage. But you are the class of criminal who never knows when he hears the truth; in fact, doesn't understand when he does hear it. You think you are my prisoner. Well, we'll let it go at that. I am quite alone in the house, and feel in the mood for company. Now tell me something about your past life. From your accent, I should judge that at one time you were what is called a gentleman?"

The little spurt of hope burnt more clearly in Canton's breast. He was still in deadly fear of the man opposite, afraid of his strength and his coolness; but it might be possible that a plausible tale, well told, would pave the path to freedom. And George Canton was quite good at that sort cf thing. It was just the sneaking line of policy that his soul loved.

"You are quite right there," he said, "I was a gentleman at one time. Public school and university; though, if you don't mind, I won't say which."

"Oh, I don't mind in the least," Broadley smiled. "It would probably be a lie, in any case. Go on."

"You may not believe it," Canton said, "but I was brought up for the Church. And at one time I was honestly under the impression that I should make a success of it. But somehow it didn't seem to work, and when I found myself in London at the age of twenty-three with a fair income and quite good prospects, I drifted gradually into evil ways, until nearly everything was gone and I had lost most of my friends."

"And then you married?" Broadley suggested.

"Then—then you know?" Canton gasped.

"My good man, surely that was a reasonable guess. Men of your type always marry. For some occult reason, known only to Providence, the average waster seems always in a position to command the love and affection of some good woman. I have seen it over and over again. And she clings to him till the end, where she would tire of a man worthy of the name. Of course you married. And of course, you broke the heart of the woman who gave herself to you—though you going to deny it."

"I didn't," Canton retorted. "I tell you I made a mistake; perhaps we both did, for the matter of that. I had lost nearly all my money, as I told you, and all my friends, and I was beginning to get tired of the life I was leading. It seemed to me that if I could meet the right woman there was a chance for me yet, because I was still young and I had not done badly, at school and Cambridge. And I did meet her; at least, I thought so. To begin with, she knew a good deal about my past, and was quite prepared to overlook it. And, mind you, I had still a few hundreds left. My idea was to go into business and settle down and become a respectable member of society. And I believe I should have done so if my wife had helped me."

"And she didn't?" Broadley asked, mockingly.

"Not after the first few months," Canton went on. "Perhaps it wasn't altogether her own fault. I was too easy with her, too fond of her, and allowed her to have her own way too much. She hadn't the least notion of the value of money, and everything she wanted she just got. We were living in a flat in Bloomsbury, where my family had had a lot of property at one time, so that my credit was good, and my wife could get all she needed. It was the old story: a foolish man over head and ears in love with a silly woman, vain and frivolous, who had only one object in life, and that was to enjoy herself. You can imagine how I suffered with the little money I had going out every day and nothing coming in, because my business efforts were a failure. You see, I wasn't made for business, I wasn't trained for it; and though I tried hard enough, God knows, I lost one situation after another."

Canton paused and sighed eloquently, the my sigh of a man who has told his tale before and found it good. He reflected that perhaps he might touch the heart of the man opposite to a pitch of something more than freedom. And, above all, he had the feeling that Broadley had not recognized him.

"Go on," Broadley said. "I am always interested in the human document, especially when it has frayed edges."

"Well, the time came at last," Canton proceeded, "when things reached a crisis. I had no money left, and when my pretty doll of a wife discovered that, she threatened to leave me. Just at that time I was in the office of a big firm of jewellers. It was not that I was getting much, but my employer trusted me. More than once he had sent me to a great house in the West-end with gems to deliver on approval. That night I came home with a pearl necklace in my pocket. It should have been delivered that evening at the house of one of our great millionaires, but her ladyship was out of town, or gone to some big function, so I took the case home with me. Would to Heaven I had done nothing of the kind! Would that I had said nothing to my wife about it, for she stole that necklace when I was asleep, and tried to sell it. Of course, she was found out; of course, she was discovered and prosecuted for the theft. I was arrested too, and the people who prosecuted me tried to make out that she was a tool in the matter, and that I had merely used my wife as a shield to hide my own crime."

"And the jury believed it?" Broadley asked, dryly.

"They did, sir; they did," Canton whined.

"They said that my wife was absolutely innocent, and that when I sent her with those pearls in her pocket to sell them to a notorious receiver of stolen goods for five hundred pounds I did so because I was too much of a coward to take them myself. I remember that the judge was particularly hard on me."

"I can imagine it," Broadley smiled. "I can imagine him saying that you were a particularly poisonous type of humanity, and a scoundrel of the worst kind who never hesitates to shield himself behind an innocent and injured woman."

"But you don't believe it, sir?" Canton asked, with some anxiety. "You have heard of hard-working men who have been ruined by their wives?"

"Many a time," Broadley said. "And so, you are one of that class, are you? Evidently a sad case. But I interrupt you. What was the upshot of the tragedy?"

"I got five years," Canton said. "And they acquitted my wife, the judge saying that he was convinced that she was absolutely innocent. You see, being a pretty woman with friends, she could call all sorts of evidence in her favour, and she did. Why, when the jury acquitted her, there was actually applause in court. Not that I minded; I still loved her far too well to want to see her suffer."

Just for a moment the two steel-blue eyes turned fully on Canton's face blazed, and the strong, capable hands on the elbows of the arm—chair clenched till the knuckles stood out like ivory. Then the humorous mouth smiled again.

"Your sentiments do you credit," Broadley said. "I quite understand, the strong man suffering in silence for the sake of a shallow and frivolous woman. My good sir, the thing has been done in scores of novels and plays, and will go on appealing to the gallery as long as there is a cinema palace left. So you went to jail, and the woman escaped scot-free. And what happened afterwards ? Did you seek her out, did you find her in rags and poverty, and take her back to your broad, manly bosom and wipe her tears away?"

Canton winced, hut wisely ignored the sarcasm. He was fighting for his liberty now, and therefore declined to be ruffled hy such a little thing as that.

"I did find her, sir." he said. "And she did come back to me for a short time. But I had to leave her; I had to leave her because she was past all endurance. I gave her every penny that I had, and we parted for ever."

"I wonder," Broadley said, softly, "I wonder if, on the face of God's earth, there is a slimier seoundrel than yourself? You did nothing of the kind, Canton."

"Then—then you recognize me!" the other gasped.

"Oh, I recognized you right enough. I knew who you were directly I turned the light on and you uttered my name under your breath. We have never met face to face, but you have seen me and you knew who I was at once. If you had known that this bungalow belonged to me, I hardly think that you would be sitting here to-night. I heard you speak only once when I was in the next room to you on an occasion that you might remember, and that little lisp of yours betrayed you—and the way in which you whispered my name. And, Geroge Canton, you can take it from me that I never forget. When Nature deprives a man of one sense, she generally makes up for it by strengthening another. You rascal, how dare you lie to me!"

Canton put up hands as if to ward off a blow. He knew that all his efforts were in vain, he know that he could expect no mercy at the hands of this man. He looked around wildly for some avenue of escape, anywhere to get away from those blazing eyes and that hard face that now was as cruel as the grave. But he could see no sign of an opening anywhere.

"Now, let me tell you the story, Broadley said, coldly and incisively in words that seemed to drop like little bits of ice along Canton's spine. "Let us collaborate. You see, I am rather practised at that game. I think I can add a touch or two of realism to that glib narrative of yours."

"Just as you like, sir," Canton said fawningly.

"Then, in that case, let us begin at the beginning. It is twelve years ago—twelve years ago to-night, strangely enough—that I became engaged to be married. You know what Agnes Westley was like, so I will not waste time in painting her portrait for you. She was as good as she was beautiful, in every way a perfect woman, and she loved me. My prospects were then perfect, there was no cloud on the horizon anywhere. Really you had better go before I murder you."

Canton looked hopelessly into the heart of the fire and then round the big room, with its bookshelves and pictures and the glint of china in the cabinets, and his jaw worked convulsively. He burst out suddenly:—

"You are torturing me, you devil!" he said. "You know I cannot get away, you know I am in your power!"

"Very well, then," Broadley said, more evenly. "You have had your chance, and when you realise what you have lost and how you lost it—but never mind that. Let me go on. Where was I? Yes, I was talking of Agnes Westley. I didn't know then that she knew you. I didn't know that you were planning and contriving to come between us until it was too late and I had lost her, owing to those lies of yours and those forgeries that she believed. And for two years I did not know where she was, until wrote to me for money. She would not have done so but that you forced her, and it was only then that I learnt the story. When I called to see her in London I found her in miserable lodgings, for your money was all gone, and you were in desperate straits to find food for your wife and yourself. You were in bed at the time, you remember, and l heard you speak. I heard those rasping tones of yours with that unmistakable lisp, which I have never forgotten, and which, somehow, I knew I should hear again. And even then, low as you had fallen, and badly as you had behaved, Agnes was doing her best to he a good wife to you. I helped her, as you know, hut she would only take sufficient for her bare needs, and I left her, promising to see her again. The next day she was arrested in an attempt to get rid of those pearls which you had stolen. You told me a lie just now when you said you were a trusted servant. You stole those jewels, and, like the coward and cur that you are, you did not dare to take them to your employer who had commissioned you to steal them. You knew that the police were watching you; you deceived your wife, and she fell into the hands of the police. And your defence was that you were a poor and struggling man who had been ruined hy an extravagant wife, who took advantage of your love for her to spend all you had. You contemptible scoundrel, you vile and filthy dog! Never was there a man who had a more loyal helpmate, though she had discovered the trick you had played upon her long before. But you were not ashamed to stand up in the dock by her side and tell the judge much what you were telling me just now hefore you realized that I had recognised you, and when you were hoping to play upon my clemency. But the evidence of the police was too strong for you, and the unhappy woman who stood in the dock with you was acquitted. The police behaved very fairly so far as she was concerned, and she left the court without a stain on her character. Everybody believed that she was innocent and that she did not know what she was doing when she attempted to get rid of those pearls. And so you got your deserts, and she was free. And, knowing this, you come here to rob me and still further vilify the woman who behaved so loyally to you. In the face of all this you expect me to let you go. But not quite like that, Mr. Canton. I am working out a little revenge of my own, and when you realize how I am bringing it about, then I think I shall be satisfied. Now, have you anything more to say?"

Once more Canton looked round the room, once more he weighed up the chances of a struggle with the man who sat opposite him in the big arm-chair. But it was all useless, all so futile that he resigned himself in a sullen despair. What was the use of speaking, what was to be gained by an appeal to that grim-faced man with the merciless blue eyes who sat in the big chair opposite?

"You say nothing," Broadley went on. "And so I had better finish my story. From time to time I helped Agnes, until you were free, and then I persuaded her to accept a certain sum of money at my hands and go abroad. You came back just about that time and robbed her of every penny she had. You robbed her and left her to starve. And she would have starved but for me; though, mind you, I did not find out this till long afterwards, when she was dying of fever—dying alone and friendless in a little cottage in the country. It is nothing to you that I contracted that fever, and that, in one way, I have never been the same man since."

Canton listened miserably enough, still with a desperate hope that something might happen in his favour, until presently he could hear the sound of wheels in the distance, and a car pulled up in front of the bungalow. Then there were voices in the hall, and a moment or two later the door of the library opened and a man in the uniform of a chauffeur came in.

"Ah, here you are, Rufford," Broadley cried. "Did I hear Mr. Stern's voice?"

"Yes, sir," the man called Rufford said. "He has gone up to his bedroom to wash his hands. I told him as I was looking after you, and that supper would be ready in the dining-room directly he came down. But I beg your pardon, sir."

"Oh, don't go away," Broadley went on.

"You are not intruding, Rufford. In fact, if you are quite ready, I want you to look after this visitor of mine. He is quite an involuntary guest, a kind of Autolycus— that is, Rufford, what you call a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. In other words, a burglar, who found his way in through the window under the mistaken impression that the house was empty. We have been having quite an interesting chat, Rufford, and I find that the gentleman is an old acquaintance of mine."

"That's very clever of you, sir," Rufford said. "You have had a narrow escape, I think."

Canton listened dully. It struck him that Rufford's words concealed a certain cruel irony.

"Well, perhaps I have, Rufford," Broadley said. "But, then, appearances are deceptive, and our friend here, fortunately, does not know as much as you and I. You had better take this fellow and tie him up and lock him in the larder. I believe there are iron bars to the window. Then you can telephone for the police, and keep an eye on the fellow till they come. And if he slips through your fingers, Rufiord, I shall be exceedingly annoyed. I am not a vindictive man, as you know, but I have peculiar reasons so far as this scamp is concerned."

"I think you can rely upon me, sir," Rufford said.

"I think I can. Is that Mr. Stern calling? All right, Walter, I am coming. Go into the dining-room and wait for me, and we'll have some supper. I think that's all, Rufford."

"Very good, sir," Rufford replied.

Broadley rose quietly from his chair and crossed the room slowly and deliberately, touching the back of a chair here and there until he felt his way out into the hall. It was all done so quietly and withal so cautiously that Canton for the moment hardly understood. Then understanding came to him as he turned with a sudden savage energy to the imperturbable Rufford.

"What—what's the matter with him?" he asked.

"Didn't you know?" Rufford replied. "He has been like that ever since an attack of scarlet fever years ago. My master is stone-blind."

THE END

A MATTER OF HABIT

ILLUSTRATED BY DUDLEY TENNANT

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLVI, Aug 1917, pp 317-323

WHAT Stephen Fox particularly wanted to impress upon Geraldine Benson was the fact that, although a man knows very little about a horse, it does not necessarily follow that he is an ass. And this is a point of view that the enthusiastic admirer of the equine race finds it exceedingly difficult to understand. To the sportsman who confines himself to man's best friend there is no other point of view and no other branch of athletics—the rest are merely a waste of time. This point of view, probably, had never occurred to the somewhat spoilt and wilful beauty who presided occasionally over the destinies of her father's big ranch in Texas. That is to say, when she was not in New York, or at Orange Beach, or in Paris, she was at home generally in her riding habit, and usually astride of a horse that was worth anything up to ten thousand dollars.

Old man Benson, like most American fathers, utterly spoilt his daughter, which was quite natural, seeing that she was his only child, and old man Benson was by far the richest man in that part of the world. In the language of the boys, he was "no slouch," either as a man of business or as a man of the world. Neither was he the typical Western farmer to whom the pictures have accustomed us, for he represented the third generation, and was a very cultured gentleman indeed. All sorts of people came to the ranch from all parts of the world, and the hospitable owner of the estate was always glad to see them, especially when his daughter was at home to share the honours of the house, and this was usual in the autumn, before Geraldine proceeded to Orange Beach with the rest of the fashionable world.

And so it came about that Stephen Fox happened along in due course, and put in a whole month at the ranch. He came for two reasons—first, because he had a letter of introduction from a famous English statesman, and, secondly, because he had met Geraldine in New York, where he had made up his mind to induce her to change her name as soon as possible.

He was a young man of good family enough—a fine specimen of the English athlete, neat and trim, perfectly self-assured, and, withal, modest enough, but unfortunately he knew little of horses, and cared less. It so happened that certain family misfortunes had tied him somewhat largely to town life, until chance smiled on him, and he found himself, at twenty-five, in possession of a fine family estate. But if he knew nothing about horses, he was quite at home with every other branch of sport, and he was a magnificent shot with rifle and revolver, and there was no man whose reputation stood higher with the Alpine Club.

It was, perhaps, a mistake on the young man's part to follow that wilful young woman to her native heath. She liked him —in fact, she liked him immensely—but then he was only one of a large and enthusiastic crowd, all equally anxious to lay siege to the Benson dollars; and, whatever her faults were, Geraldine Benson was no fool. Emphatically she was not going to marry any man who was after her fortune. She knew, of course, that Fox was fairly well off—that is, comparatively speaking—which was in his favour, and when he appeared she was pleased enough to see him. She was living just then in the open air, leading a healthy, simple life in connection with a magnificent black horse that she managed to perfection, though it seemed to Fox that she was running unnecessary risks with a mount that would have been too much for many a man who had been brought up all his life in the vicinity of a stable. But Geraldine only laughed and made fun of Fox's fears. She could not induce him to mount anything more formidable than a farm filly; and when once he had made something of an exhibition of himself in connection with a splendid three-year-old, she showed her open contempt.

It seemed to her that Fox was actually afraid. She could see that he had lost something of his healthy tan, and that there was a cold perspiration on his forehead. Oh, yes, he was afraid, right enough, and Geraldine did not forget to let him see that she was aware of it. And from that moment his fortune seemed to droop. He was treated with open contempt, he was left severely alone—so severely, in fact, that Miss Benson went off to Orange Beach without the formality of saying good-bye to him.

She might have been annoyed, and she might not, and there was the problem that fairly maddened Fox. Did she regard him as a coward? he wondered. But he need not have wondered at all, because that was exactly her point of view.

As a matter of fact, she was angry and disappointed and, perhaps, more distressed than she would have liked to admit. For she had never allowed a man before to go quite so far as Fox had gone, and that proud little heart of hers was sorely wounded. She blamed herself bitterly for allowing her affections to stray in the direction of a man who frankly lacked courage. And this, in the eyes of a daughter of the West, was an unpardonable sin. She would go away down to Orange Beach and forget all about him.

At the same time Fox made up his mind that he would go away, too, and forget all about her, with the inevitable result that he presented himself at Stephano's Hotel, at Orange Beach, a fortnight later, where, at dinner, on the first night of his arrival, he was coldly and unmistakably cut by his late hostess.

It was tragedy—stark tragedy—and Fox's soul was bitter within him. He knew perfectly well that he was no coward, he knew perfectly well that he was being badly treated, but for the present there was nothing to do except wait for an unkind Fate to give him a last chance. And quite unexpectedly the Fate aforesaid played straight into his hands.

Now, behind the five or six miles of smiling paradise that lie between the sea and the mountains at Orange Beach is a big swamp given over to various flowers of gorgeous beauty, an amazing collection of butterflies like so many brilliant jewels flung from the lap of Nature in her most profligate mood, and a few wild animals, such as bears and the like, which found their way occasionally from the swamps through the wide belt of trees, where honey was to be found. No man had ever dared to cross those swamps— that is, no visitor—only a shy native or two, and at the back of the swamp rose the rampart of hills, some peaks of which are above the snow-line. And in this belt lurked a few lawless individuals, cattle thieves and the like, who had been forced into hiding, where they maintained a precarious existence, and where they were hunted down from time to time, when the law-abiding inhabitants of the cattle belt summoned up energy enough to make a raid. And amongst these desperadoes were two, named respectively Pete and Silas, who occasionally looted Orange Beach when food was scarce, and who conceived the brilliant idea of kidnapping Miss Geraldine Benson and holding her up to ransom. And this they actually did one sunny afternoon, when the girl was idling her time away over a book in a secluded corner of the beach. They snatched her up and, stifling her cries with a shawl, carried her across the swamp up into the hills, and all this in the broad light of day. They and they alone of white men knew the only path across that traitorous morass—having learnt the secret from an old peon, whom they had thoughtfully disposed of—so that they were not afraid of pursuit, as, before the telegraph and telephone could get in action against them, days must of necessity elapse, and their captive's plight grow steadily worse. Their idea was simple enough. They were going to demand fifty thousand dollars as a ransom, and a free passage to—well, anywhere, as long as they could leave the South American continent behind them.

Meanwhile there was nothing to be done except notify the authorities right and left, and organise a movement against the miscreants from the mainland. This, of course, was a matter of some considerable time, and Fox fretted and fumed, writhing at his own helplessness and burning to do something for the woman who had treated him so badly, and for whom he had such tender feelings. He actually made one or two attempts to cross the swamp, escaping suffocation and a horrible death by the skin of his teeth on two separate occasions before he gave it up. He fell into the habit of passing most of his mornings on the edge of the swamp, brooding there and racking his brain for some way of crossing over to the firm, rugged ground on the far side. If he could only accomplish that, he had no fear as to the rest. It would be no great matter to track the rascals down then, for they would not be very far off, and if he could only confront them with a revolver, he was quite prepared to leave the rest to chance.

And then, on the third day, a ray of hope came his way. As he sat under the shade of the trees on the edge of the swamp, he saw a brown, woolly mass coming in his direction. It was a bear—an ordinary brown bear— which had actually crossed that treacherous, smiling greenery in search of honey. For an hour or two Fox watched keenly. He saw the bear attack a nest of wild bees and surfeit himself with the sweets inside; then he turned his snout in the direction of the morass, and seemingly plunged into the thick of it. But where a bear could go, a man could follow, so that Fox did not hesitate a moment. He tracked the bear very slowly and cautiously into the thick of that shuddering horror that smiled so fairly and yet hugged so terrible a danger to its verdant breast. Taking a letter or two from his pocket, Fox tore them up into minute fragments, dropping one or two here and there, so as to make a trail and render his return journey safe. At the end of two hours he was on the far side of the swamp, faint and weary, worn out and smothered with mud and slime from head to foot. But there was no wind to blow his tracks away, so that, with any luck, the return journey was fairly easy.

But it is one thing to go one way over virgin soil, and the other to come back in reverse conditions, so that Fox was only half-way across when the darkness fell, and he dared not go another yard. He sat himself down on a big tuft of grass and waited all through a night which seemed as long as eternity. He could hear all sorts of hair-raising sounds going on around him, the slimy, oozy crawling of snakes, and once the unmistakable cough of an alligator. He sat there reflecting bitterly as to what Geraldine might say if she could see him at that moment, and if she would be inclined to call him a coward any more. He did not underrate what he was doing, neither did he make too much of it. As a matter of fact, it was a wonderful piece of pluck and endurance in the face of unseen terrors that might have struck fear into the heart of any man.

The long night came to an end at length, the sun rose, and Fox's spirits with it. Very slowly he made his way back, tracing his course by the aid of those precious scraps of paper, and finally reached his bedroom before anyone in the hotel was about. Then he changed and bathed and had a long sleep, after which he slipped a couple of revolvers in his pocket and made his way straight down to the swamp again. And there, on the fringe of the wood, was his old friend the bear once more. And once more did Fox follow, his pockets plentifully filled with torn paper now, so that he blazed a wide white trail on both sides of the track until he reached the other side.

It was all straightforward going now, up a long rocky ravine that led him presently into a narrow gorge in the hillside, and round the mountain path cut in the side of the cliff, a path so narrow that here and there Fox's shoulder brushed the side as he went along. There were some hundred yards or more of this, with a sheer drop on the one side of at least three hundred feet. It was safe enough and easy enough for a member of the Alpine Club, but Fox was worried in his mind as to how Geraldine would negotiate it if he were fortunate enough to effect her rescue. But all that for the moment was a small issue. He pushed doggedly along until he came at length to a grassy little plateau, on the far side of which stood a dilapidated hut, which was clearly inhabited, for smoke was comings from the chimney. Then a big man, carrying a Winchester rifle in his hand, came out of the hut and strode up the valley. As he had a game-bag slung over his shoulder, and a dog trotting at his heels. Fox came to the conclusion that the big man was bent on supplying the larder. Given any luck, therefore, he would probably not be back for some hours yet.

So it was going to be one man against another. And once that one man was out of the way, then the rest would be easy. All the same, Fox crept cautiously across the open space, taking advantage of every bit of cover, until he was within a yard or two of the door of the hut. He could see that this was slightly ajar, he could see there was somebody moving about inside, carelessly and freely, as if utterly indifferent to danger. But then clearly these men were not expecting anything in the shape of a surprise. They had not anticipated the possibility of a frontal attack in any case, and an advance upon them from the rear would mean a long business. So the man inside the hut was whistling and singing to himself.

It was only for a moment, however, and then Fox moved swiftly forward and stood in the doorway. He had his revolver in his hand now, and the big, gaunt figure in the shadow of the hut was covered before the man himself realised that he was face to face with an armed and resolute stranger.

"Put up your hands," Fox said.

The man immediately dived for such cover as was afforded by a table, and from underneath this he fired at Fox twice in rapid succession. But he was too flurried and too unsteady for anything like fine work, so that both shots passed harmlessly by Fox's head. Then he in his turn pressed the trigger and shot his antagonist neatly just beneath the knee of an, exposed leg which had been incautiously left within sight.

Immediately the man dropped his left hand with a cry of rage and pain, and, heedless of further danger, rubbed the wounded spot tenderly. Then Fox, grim and determined, fired again, and shot his man through the right shoulder. The revolver dropped from his fingers, and every ounce of fight went out of him. Fox strolled coolly into the hut.

"Now, then," he said, as he picked up the fallen weapon—"now, then, listen to me. Oh, I know you are in great pain, but that is your own fault. But I know you are all alone, because I watched your friend go off with his dog and his gun. And now, please, where is the lady?"

"What lady?" the man asked truculently. His face was white and set with pain, and Fox could see that the sweat was running down it. "What lady? Say, who're you getting at? There ain't no lady here."

"Oh, yes, there is," said a cool, calm voice from somewhere in the background. "I'm here, a prisoner in the little lean-to shed at the back of the hut."

The man on the ground smiled in a bitter sort of way and made some attempt to hump his shoulders.

"All right, stranger," he said. "I don't know how you got here, unless you came in an aeroplane, but you are top dog, and I am not squealing. Take her and get back the way you came. I guess you must know a considerable deal about these here parts, for you are the only man on the coast that could find his way across them swamps. You see—"

"Oh, never mind about that," Fox said. "I am here, as you have learnt to your cost; but I've no time to argue with you, so I am just going to lock you in here and leave the key in the door, so that your friend can find you when he comes back."

With which Fox turned abruptly away and went round to the back of the hut, where, a few minutes later, he released Geraldine Benson from her prison-house. He wanted to get away now as quickly as possible, and to find himself round the bend of that dizzy cliff path before the other man returned. He might be away for hours, but, on the contrary, he might come back at any moment; and, burdened as he was with a frightened and nerve-stricken girl, it would never do to invite anything in the shape of a conflict until the danger zone was passed.

But it was no frightened, timorous young woman who emerged from that restricted hiding-place, no creature in the last stage of mental prostration. Geraldine stood before him neat and cool, and almost spotless in her linen dress, her hair as neat and tidy as if she had just come down to breakfast in the morning.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" she said.

There was nothing particularly friendly in her voice, either. She just stood there quietly, almost offensively, regarding Fox with a critical look which was a poor reward indeed for all that he had done for her.

"Apparently," he said. "Rather strange, is it not, that I, above all men in the world, should be able to do you a service? And I think that you must admit that it is a service."

"Yes, I suppose it is—indeed, I am sure of it. Still, Mr. Fox, I am greatly obliged to you. At any rate, you have relieved me from a great unpleasantness."

"What's the good of talking like the hero and heroine of a melodrama?" Fox asked impatiently. "It would be all very well on the stage, but I want you to realise that we are in great danger here. That other man might come back at any moment—he might even be watching us now."

"Yes, there's certainly something in that," the girl said. "But how did you get here?

I have been coming to Orange Beach on and off ever since I was a child, and I have always been told that those swamps were impassable, except to one or two natives, who have kept the secret for their own sakes."

"A very pardonable curiosity," Fox said, "and one that I can gratify as we go along. This way, please."

He fell in line by the girl's side, and rapidly they went down the slope and up the other side, till they came at length to what appeared to be an impasse of rocks.

"We can't go this way," Geraldine protested.

"Nevertheless, this is the way by which you came," Fox replied. "There is no other way."

"Perhaps so; I don't know. You see, I was blindfolded, and those men carried me part of the way. Oh, Mr. Fox, I couldn't do it—I couldn't indeed! I could never walk along that narrow ledge. The mere thought of a cliff always makes me faint and giddy. Call me a coward, if you like!"

It was strange to see how distressed she was, how white her beautiful face had grown, and how filled the clear grey eyes were with terror, It was a revelation in its way, and it drew Fox nearer to her than he had ever been before.

"No, I won't call you a coward," he said quietly, "though I think that once you applied that epithet to me. You see, it's largely a matter of habit. I have seen men who have displayed the highest courage in certain circumstances who have been quite helpless in others. But really this is no time to go into that sort of thing. If you value your life and safety, you will have to crawl along that narrow ledge for a hundred yards or more. After that the rest is plain sailing. Come, Miss Geraldine, you're not going to funk it now."

"I—I dare not!" the girl said almost piteously. "Oh, I am a coward—I who thought I could face anything! Isn't there any other way?"

"None," Fox said sternly. "And you've got to come, whether you like it or not. They brought you this way, but you didn't know the danger, because you were blindfolded. And now I'm going to blindfold you again, and you are going to be carried on my back like a sack. Oh, it's perfectly safe—it's only a matter of nerve. Why, out in the Alps we should think no more of that than we should of climbing up the side of a grass bank. Come, take your courage in both hands!"

All the haughtiness and aloof contempt had left the girl now. She was white and shaking from head to foot, and Fox could almost hear the beating of her heart as he bound his handkerchief about her eyes. But she was obedient enough to do exactly what he told her, as she locked her hands round his neck, after which they moved forward along the narrow ledge till the danger was passed, and Fox set her on her feet again. He tore the handkerchief from her eyes and smiled into her face.

"There!" he said encouragingly. "Nothing in it, after all!"

"Oh, please don't laugh at me!" the girl said. "Another minute, and I should have fainted—I who never did such a thing in my life! And yet, perhaps, you will believe me when I tell you that I was not really frightened when those men got hold of me, and I have managed to keep my head ever since. Of course, they told me what they were after, and they promised me I should come to no harm, but I don't mind confessing that I was rather proud of my courage. Perhaps you will say now that I haven't got any courage."

"I should say nothing of the sort," Fox replied. "No girl who lacked courage could ride the horses you are accustomed to, and no girl could go through what you have endured without showing signs of it. I knew a man who displayed the most marvellous bravery in connection with a mining accident of which he thought nothing, because, you see, he was an engineer and accustomed to dangers underground. But it so happened that that man couldn't swim, and when I took him on a river in a small boat—by way of enabling him to catch a train—he sat white and silent, and confessed to me afterwards that he had never felt more frightened in his life. And that was one of the bravest men I ever met. As I said before, it is all a matter of habit. Of course, it's fun to put a man like myself for the first time in my life on the back of an unbroken brute of a horse, but it wasn't particularly funny for me, and I don't apologise for making an exhibition of myself. I want you to understand that there are two points of view, and it's only fair that one should try and understand the other fellow's. But come on—we haven't finished yet."

It was a very quiet and subdued Geraldine whom Fox preceded across the stony ground in the direction of the swamp. She was evidently thinking matters over, and regarding the philosophy of life from a fresh angle altogether. But she began to show signs of nervous hesitation once again as Fox plunged into the swamp and bade her to tread carefully in his footsteps. There was something fearfully nerve-racking in the green silence of the place, with its tufts of rushes and oily, silent pools, and here and there the sinuous gleam of a snake.

"Are you q-quite sure?" the girl faltered.

"Absolutely," Fox said. "I came here across the swamp, of course, and I can find my way back again. If you look on both sides of you a little way ahead, you will see what looks like the trail of a paper-chase. Well, I placed those bits of paper there, so that there should be no mistake. Yes, I know it's a horrible place, and I know what a fearful death lurks on both sides of us; but we are going to win through, for all that. And you'll never guess how I found the way, so I'll tell you. I followed a brown bear that came over to the woods in search of honey. I followed in its fresh tracks and laid the trail as I went. Yes, it took some doing, and more than once I had to hold on to myself to keep from turning back. I knew that, if I once let my imagination get hold of me, I should funk it, so I kept steadily on till I got on the other side. But getting back was worse. I wanted to locate where you were, and I cut it rather fine. Do you see that flat tuft of rushes over yonder? Well, I spent the night there, when it got too dark to go any further, and I don't want to do it again. Anything more utterly lonely it is impossible to imagine. But come along—I ought not to have told you this just yet."

"And you did all this for me?" Geraldine asked.

"Well, of course," Fox said simply.

She did not speak again until they were well across the swamp and in the thick fringe of woods at the back of the hotel. There was no one in sight, for it was over-early yet, and most of the guests were still at the breakfast table. It was just before they emerged into the glorious sunshine that Geraldine paused and looked Fox in the face. He could see that she was all white and trembling, and that those usually frank and fearless eyes of hers were full of tears.

"I wonder, can you ever forgive me?" she faltered.

"There is nothing to forgive," Fox said. "We have both made a mistake, and we are both too proud to admit it. That's why I came down here to see yDu, and I suppose that is why you refused to speak to me. But I think I have proved—"

"Proved! Of course you have," Geraldine said impetuously. "And if I had cared less—"

"Oh, then, you do care?"

Geraldine said nothing, but smiled unsteadily, at which he caught her in his arms and kissed her, and together they walked quietly out into the sunshine.

THE END

A GARDEN OF PEARLS

ILLUSTRATED BY STEVEN SPURRIER

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLV, Mar 1917, pp 445-450

THE individual known from Great Barrier Reef to the New Hebrides, and from Trobiand to the Three Kings as "Buck 'o the Islands" lounged on the deck of the yacht Nevermore discoursing learnedly upon the beauty of Aristophanes, one of whose plays lay on his immaculate knee. Over against him in another deck-chair sat Hilary Drake, known through the islands as "Pintail," listening good-naturedly to what he did not understand. But then Drake always was a good-natured man, a man of qualities and quantities, especially the latter, and perhaps the best-tempered pirate in the whole of the Coral Seas. He was by way of being the right-hand man of Jim Lovelace—" Buck o' the Islands" aforesaid—Chief of Staff, High Commissioner—in fact, a sort of Pooh Bah to the expeditionary force which had its headquarters on board the Nevermore.

To put it quite frankly, from the point of view of effete Western civilisation, the owner and crew of the Nevermore were pirates, and the Nevermore had been nosing about in those golden seas for the last few weeks, seeking for adventure, and it seemed to Lovelace as if he had found it. They were really lying up now on the lee of Discovery Island, waiting for events. They had passed, late in the afternoon, between two pillars of basaltic rock into the lagoon beyond, and lay there in the sweltering heat on a sheet of water as smooth and flawless as a mirror. There was no beach there, nothing but the volcanic rampart, some sixty feet in height, sheer at the edge as if it had been cut by a knife, except for one flight of steps leading up to the island—a flight of steps that could have been defended by one man against a ship's crew, and this Lovelace did not fail to notice. Above the terrace of shining rock were the cocoanut palms, and beyond that the jewel beauties of Discovery Island, flashing and glittering like some great gem flung down there on the bosom of the South Pacific. The lagoon itself, with its trending shore, was not less than gifteen miles in diameter, and a land-locked harbour large enough to hold the fleets of the world. And it was this rampart that Lovelace and his crew were going to storm presently, if the god of battle smiled on their side.

Lovelace jerked a finger over his left shoulder towards three boats that lay in the west of the lagoon.

"There they are," he said. "The Yankee and the Spaniard and tbe Chinaman are all there, waiting for their prey. They will land at dusk. Nobody lands here in the daylight, because Hellmer only knows the way up the cliffs, and no white man has ever been along those cliffs in daylight. I wormed that out of Lin Chin. They are landed in boats after dusk, and taken up to Hellmer's bungalow, where they are filled up to the chin with 'square-face,' after which the auction begins. But no one stays the night. The business is knocked off in an hour or so, and those chaps are escorted back to their boats by a dozen or so of specially-selected Kanakas armed with Lee-Enfields. Oh, Hellmer is pretty thorough, like all the rest of his accursed race."

"What's the game?" Drake asked.

"Well, at present I haven't any plans," Lovelace confessed. "Here, take these glasses and see if you can spot any place all round the lagoon where it is possible to land."

Drake took the powerful Goetz binoculars and carefully swept the ten miles or so of sheer basalt that fringed the blue waters of the lagoon. But that keen eye of his could make out no sign of a break anywhere. So the two men sat there on deck till the darkness began to fall, and they were still debating the knotty point as the graceful lines of the yacht faded into the gloom, and night shot down upon them like a violet blanket. In the stillness they could bear the sound of oars as the boats put out from the three other craft lying there on the face of the lagoon. Precious time was passing, and as yet nothing had been done. Then Lovelace, who had ears like a hare, lifted his head suddenly and held up a warning finger.

"Do you hear anything?" he whispered. "Call for lights and keep the deck clear. Unless I am mistaken, somebody is swimming out to us from the shore."

The ship's lantern was placed on the deck by the side of the big chairs, and the two men sitting round it waited. Then in the gloom something seemed to move up the ladder, and a shadowy outline came towards the light.

As the figure emerged into the yellow circle, a quick exclamation broke from Lovelace as he rose to his feet. Accustomed as he was to quick, dramatic surprises, here was one that shook him for a moment out of his studied calm.

"Good Heavens," he exclaimed, "it's a woman—an European woman, and a beautiful one at that!"

She stood there panting for a moment in the circle of light, a slim, graceful figure, golden brown as to her limbs and black as to the hair that streamed over her shoulders. She wore a simple bathing-dress of some black material, cut low in the neck and high above the knees. She was exceedingly fair to look upon, absolutely self-possessed, with the free manner of the Southern Sea, and yet with that daintiness and charm that marks birth and refinement all the world over. She was utterly devoid of self-consciousness, too, with a suggestion of one who passes a deal of her time in the water. Indeed, she could not have swum less than six miles, and that in a sea which is not free from the wandering shark.

"I am sorry to alarm you," she said, speaking in slightly broken English with a French accent, "but I saw your boat, or I should say your yacht, and, behold, I knew you were different to the men who come here. So, when it got dark, I made up my mind to swim out and ask you to help me."

"It will be a distinct pleasure," Lovelace said. "Here, Drake, go and get a wrap from somewhere."

"I will take no harm on a hot night like this," the girl said, with a charming smile. "Half my time I live in the water. It is, alas, the only place that is left to me. But surely I am speaking to Mr. Lovelace."

"The same, at your service," the bewildered Lovelace responded. "I am desolate—I am ashamed to say that—"

"That you have forgotten me, is it not? The last time I saw you I was staying with the Treehawks. Lady Treehawk was at school with me in Paris, and before I came back here she asked me to visit her. Now do you remember?"

"Oh, it's all coming back to me now," Lovelace lied politely. "I have forgotten your name,"

A charming little smile rippled on the girl's cheek.

"Yes, I see you have," she said demurely. "I am Vivette Lesterre, the daughter of Antoine Lesterre of this island."

"Indeed!" Lovelace exclaimed. "But I thought—What about the German, Hellmer. Isn't he—"

"He was my father's overseer. Eighteen months ago he murdered my father, and I have been kept a prisoner on this island ever since. Would it fatigue you if I told you the story?"

It was all coming back to Lovelace now. He began to remember the story of the little French beauty whom he had met just before the bottom fell out of his universe, and what Lady Treehawk had told him about her. She was the daughter of a brilliant French statesman, who had in some way entangled himself in a financial scandal, and had subsequently disappeared, to be heard of fitfully from time to time as a central figure in a romantic story set in the Coral Seas. He had apparently done well there, and had subsequently sent his only daughter home to Paris to be educated. It had all been nebulous enough at the time, but it was crystal clear now, on the deck of the Nevermore, in the violet darkness under the Southern Cross. And as Lovelace listened, his face softened strangely, though his lips were grimly set and there was a fighting light in his eyes.

"This must be looked to, Drake," he said. "Now, my dear young lady, I think you can trust me. I take it that you have some secret means of reaching the beach which is unknown to the genial pirate who governs Discovery Island?"

"Oh, yes," Vivette said eagerly. "There are many things that Hellmer does not know. Our bungalow he has taken for himself, and I have a tiny place some two miles away, where I am left entirely to myself, with one or two of my faithful natives. Hellmer does not trouble me. His one object is money, and when he has made enough he will probably go back to his Fatherland and leave the island to me. There is a way down to the beach from the brush at the back of my bungalow—a secret passage through the volcanic rock—that is known only to me and the Kanakas whom I can trust. And if you will follow me presently, I will show you the way, but not till I have prepared my people for your coming. Then away to the right yonder, in a line with the high peak, you will see a light. Pull for that light, and I will await you there."

With which the girl rose to her feet and strode across the deck of the Nevermore in the direction of the ladder. She laughed to scorn the idea that she would come to any harm as she let herself down the side of the yacht and dropped quietly into the smooth, warm water.

"Well," Lovelace said, "this looks like being some adventure. We are going to be the squire of dames. Now let's go below and tell the boys all about it."

It was just over an hour later that a boat put off from the Nevermore in the direction of a tiny light that gleamed from the foot of the cliff some four miles away. In the boat were Lovelace and Drake and one Captain Blossom, the latter a thick-set Englishman, with a chest like Hercules and the bull-dog strength of an international Rugger player, which, indeed, he had been in the past, though not known to his contemporaries by the name of Blossom. There were four other men in the boat, equally reckless and equally prepared to do anything in the way of a fight that came along. They pulled silently in the direction of the light, and beached their boat presently on the tiny spit of white sand where Vivette was awaiting them. In the background were one or two dusky shadows, evidently the friendly Kanakas whom the girl had mentioned. Then one by one they faded away in the darkness along a tiny cleft in the basalt rock that led upwards by rude steps to the cliffs beyond, and here Lovelace's fair guide halted.

"The hut is just over there," she explained. "I think I will wait till you return. Two of my boys shall guide you in the direction of the bungalow, and show you where Hellmer has placed his sentries."

"Oh, that's all right," said Lovelace cheerfully. "In an hour we shall be back here with your fortune. And then, perhaps, you may honour me with being my guest on the yacht, so that I can pilot you back between the New Hebrides, and in a day or two pick up the steamer which will take you to New Zealand. Am I impertinent, or would you mind telling me where you would go, once you find yourself back in England again?"

"To Lord and Lady Treehawk," the girl said. "I think I could trust him, don't you, Mr. Lovelace?"

"I should think so. If there is an honest man in the world—and in that respect I am on all fours with the late lamented Mr. Diogenes—then I should say that man is Jack Treehawk. By all means go back to him and tell him what has happened. Tell him anything so long as you keep my name out of it, and the names of my friends on the Nevermore.

They plunged on presently, with the Kanaka leading in the direction of the bungalow that they could see through the palms, one blaze of electric light. Then Lovelace, with his faithful band of followers behind him, stepped noiselessly on to the verandah and looked through the open windows into the dining-room beyond. There were only four men, all told, sitting in that luxurious apartment, with Hellmer, big and bloated and glistening in his thin vest and unstarched trousers, sprawling at the head of the long table, with Pardon, the Yankee skipper, Doggone, the Spaniard, and Lin Chin, the Chinaman, big and sturdy, yellow as a guinea, and wrinkled like the skin of a melon. On the table was a choice assortment of bottles of all sorts, and it was evident, from the noise and laughter that was going on, that the pearl dealers had been drinking heavily.

Upon this noisy, rowdy, blasphemous group Lovelace descended, bland, smiling, and immaculate, a monocle glistening in his eye, and his spotless white dandy clothes in fine contrast to the dingy garments of the rest.

"Salaam, sahibs," Lovelace said coolly. "I trust my presence is no intrusion."

Hellmer lifted his huge bulk and swore floridly,

"Buck o' the Islands!" he grunted. "Now, what in thunder are you doing here? This ain't no safe place for strangers, and so I tell you."

As the German spoke, he reached over in the direction of an electric bell on the wall. Lovelace put up his hand.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," he said quietly. "I am not armed myself, but there are others behind me in the darkness who are more fortunate. And if you want your sentries, then I tell you frankly they are otherwise engaged. Come, Herr Hellmer, there is no occasion to quarrel. I also have a fancy to do a little dabbling in pearls, and I think my financial credit is at least equal to that of the gentlemen I see around me. Won't you sit down?"

The question was almost a threat, and Hellmer, with an uneasy laugh, dropped into his chair again.

"Oh, all right," he muttered. "And if you like to bid for some of the pearls on yonder table—well, it is not for me to complain."

Lovelace's quick eye noted approvingly the mass of pearls laid out in glistening profusion on wash-leather bags lying on a little table. In any open market they would have realised at least a hundred thousand pounds, and one of them—three magnificent pearls fused together in the rough form of a cross—might easily have fetched a quarter that sum; and as Lovelace's eye fell upon it, his lips tightened and his brows gathered into an ominous frown.

"When are we going to begin?" he asked.

"Now," the German snapped. "We will take the first lot. Mr. Lin Chin, 2hat do you say?"

The Chinaman opened modestly, and by quick bids five thousand dollars was reached. Then the Spaniard bid another hundred, and Pardon, the American, capped it with fifty. But with every lot, as it came along, and with every bid, Lovelace went one better, until practically the whole of the glittering objects on the table had become his property at a price that staggered the local ring. They were not accustomed to do business with a man like this, and if looks could have killed the immaculate figure in the white ducks, he would have dropped dead at their feet. They were whispering ominously amongst themselves, and presently Lovelace noticed that a couple of revolvers lay on the table. It was the American who spoke first.

"I guess we're going to have no more of this," he said. "Say, stranger, what's the game? We haven't been running this show all these years to be bluffed by a guy like you. You are cramping the market. Clear whilst the going's healthy!"

Lovelace waved the suggestion aside pleasantly.

"I think not," he said. "Fact is, we're only just beginning. And I guess my money's as good as yours, though Mr. Hellmer will have to take my cheque."

"Nothing of the sort," the German growled. "Cheques don't go in Discovery Island. If you can't put down the dollars, then it's no deal."

"Nevertheless, you'll take my cheque," Lovelace said quietly. "Any other man in the islands would, as you know very well."

"Put up the big lot, Mr. Hellmer," the Chinaman said persuasively. "It was him what I come for. I'll offer you ten thousand dollee for um on the spot."

"I am going to have it for less than that," Lovelace said crisply—"in fact, I'm going to have it for nothing. That cluster of pearls belongs to me, and don't you forget it. Here, look at this, Mr. Hellmer. It's a photograph—a photograph of that cluster of pearls taken eighteen months ago by the late Antoine Lesterre, and shown to me by him on Loyalty Island. He'd only just found it, and because he wanted to buy a new steamer in a hurry, and hadn't the ready money on him, I advanced him ten thousand dollars on that pearl, and I've got his receipt for it in my pocket at this moment. If any of you blackguards like to see it, here it is."

The little group round the long table shuffled uneasily. They knew bluff when they saw it, but there was no bluff here, as every one of those hardened ruffians knew only too well. Hellmer boiled over, furious and foaming.

"You lie, you dog, you lie!" he hissed. "If that is so, why was the pearl not delivered to you?"

"It would have been if you hadn't murdered the owner in cold blood," Lovelace said coolly. "You came here broke and penniless, hunted from one island to another, hated and feared by every fellow-scoundrel in the Coral Seas, and Antoine Lesterre gave you a roof and work to do. And when the time came, you collected those half dozen ruffians of yours from New Caledonia, and shot your benefactor down as he sat at the table where you are sitting now. You can't deny it, and, even if you did, my proofs are beyond question. And now you know. All those pearls there belong to me—every one of them. Not that I am going to keep them—I shall merely hold them in trust for the daughter of the man whom you treated so vilely, the girl who has so long been a prisoner on this island. I am sorry to disappoint you, gentlemen, but disappointment is the common lot of all of us, and, besides, I have behind me an argument which you will appreciate, the only argument that goes in the Coral Seas—the logic of force. And now, you cold-blooded murderer, what are you going to do? What have you got to say?"

The big German was saying nothing. His great, bloated face wet and ghastly, and his huge limbs trembling with fear, he rose to his feet and backed steadily away from the table in the direction of the desk that stood in the angle of the wall. Just for a moment Lovelace could not quite comprehend what was going on, till he saw the German turn with a swiftness almost incredible for one of his bulk, and a second later the Englishman had a vision of the blue rim of a revolver in the direct line of his head. It had all happened as quickly as a flash of lightning, but out there in the velvet darkness someone, looking into the blazing room, had been quicker still. Before the German could crook his finger iu the trigger, there was a little whiplike crack and a tiny spit of flame from the gloom, and the big German collapsed like some great empty sack on the floor. He lay there quite dead, with a neat little blue mark plumb in the centre of his great beetling forehead.

The three men sitting round the table stirred uneasily, but none of them moved. It was up to them to take no hand in the game, and as the American muttered in his beard, "it was no funeral of his." The German had been fool enough to try force in the face of a superior foe, and he had paid the penalty accordmg to the unwritten law of the island. It was the inevitable end of all of them, the one sure thing they had to look forward to, and in all probability they were safe enough if they played the game according to the recognised formula. It was the American who spoke first.

"Waal, I guess he asked for that, Mr. Lovelace," he said. "It was bound to come sooner or later, and, anyways, it was a neat shot. If you'll kindly untie one of them guards, I guess I'll be getting back to my boat."

There was nothing more to be said or done, there was no further comment on what was, after all, the commonplace of the islands. Lovelace called his men in and gave them the necessary instructions. And then, as if he had been no better than a dead dog, three of the boat's crew picked up the carrion lying on the floor and took it out and buried it. Lovelace gathered up the pearls from the table and shovelled them carelessly into his pocket. Then he turned the lights out in the bungalow, and, with a friendly Kanaka to guide them, made his way back in the direction of the hut where Vivette was awaiting him.

"We have been quite successful," he explained, "and all that remains to you is now in my pocket. You will be troubled no more with Hellmer. He tried treacherously to shoot me, but one of my crew was a bit too previous for him. We buried him half an hour ago. And now, my dear young lady, if you are quite ready, we will get back to the Nevermore."

The golden days went on for a week or more, as the Nevermore swam in an azure sea through the New Hebrides in the direction of Loyalty Island. And day by day, until the mail steamer was sighted, Lovelace sat on deck talking to his fair companion, who listened as Desdemona listened to Othello, oft-times with grateful tears in her eyes. And then at length, when the steamer had been sighted, and Vivette's belongings had been put on board, she stood by the ladder with her hand in Lovelace's for the last time.

"I can never thank you," she said. "Ah, what a friend you have been to me! When I think that I am leaving the Nevermore for ever, and that I shall not see you again, I could sit down and cry my heart out!"

"Dear lady," Lovelace said, as he stood by the side with his hat in his hand, "dear lady, no woman has ever shed tears for me. And, besides, it is no very far cry to London."

"I regard that as a promise," the girl said, with shining eyes. "Not to-morrow, perhaps, but some day."

"He'll keep it," Drake chuckled. "He never broke a promise to a woman yet."

THE END

BELOW ZERO

ILLUSTRATED BY FRANK GILLETT

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLVI, Jul 1917, pp 137-142

LORD RAYBURN turned the letter over in his hand, and a smile crept into those piercing eyes of his, for the great scientist permitted himself to be pleased.

"Now, this is a remarkable thing, Hayter," he said to his chief assistant. "Here is actually a letter from my great antagonist, Miguel del Viantes. He proposes to come and see me. I take it that this is an admission that all these years he has been attacking me unjustly."

George Hayter smiled behind his hand. He was well acquainted with the jealousies and bitter bickerings of scientists the world over, and there was not anywhere a scientist who was not aware of the deadly rivalry between Lord Rayburn and the eminent Spaniard. The fact that they had never met, and that they did not even know one another by sight, made little difference. Therefore Hayter listened discreetly.

"He wants to come and see me," the great man went on. "He says he is going to South America on an experimental mission, of which, of course, he says nothing, but he hints that possibly he may not return. It is his way of holding out the olive branch, I suppose. Anyway, he wants to see me, and, unless I wire him to the contrary, he will motor down here this afternoon. As the visit is entirely private—you will understand why he doesn't want people to know he has been here—you had better arrange for him to leave his car in the lane at the end of the shrubbery, and come here across the garden, through the conservatory. As he drives his own car, this should be easily managed. Then you can bring him here, and leave us alone together. You had better take the afternoon off, and come back about five o'clock. I am relying on your discretion, Hayter."

"Of course," Hayter murmured. "Does Del Viantes say what he is coming for?"

"Well, yes. He is deeply interested in those freezing experiments of mine. I gather that he particularly wants to have a look at the diamond that we are experimenting upon. But he does not say any more than that."

Hayter gave the desired assurance and vanished, leaving the great scientist to his own not unpleasant thoughts. This business was, in a way, the crowning glory of his career. It was soothing to his vanity to know that the great rival whom he had never seen was voluntarily seeking his advice—the advice of the man whom he had been attacking in the scientific press for years. The mere fact that the Spaniard was coming down to Tulham Place secretly made little or no difference.

So the pleased smile was still on Rayburn's face as he turned his back upon the laboratory and walked into the conservatory beyond. Both these buildings jutted out from the side of the house on to a sloping bank which led to a famous rose-garden, and the foundation consisted of a series of tanks and vaults, specially constructed, and something like a huge aquarium, in which Rayburn's freezing experiments were constantly going on. For Rayburn was a rich man, the head of an old family, and, apart from the estate, which would go elsewhere when he died, had a small fortune of his own, which he spent on his research work. And this small fortune would some day pass to his confidential assistant, George Hayter.

But Rayburn was thinking nothing of that at the moment. He wandered round the conservatory amongst his magnificent collection of orchids, of which he was, perhaps, more proud than of his scientific discoveries. He had an almost passionate love for those glorious blooms, and every hour he could spare from his life's work he spent amongst them.

He was still wandering, like some gigantic bee, from flower to flower, when a couple of hours later the far door of the conservatory opened, and from the concrete roofs beyond, which were approached by a flight of steps, Hayter appeared with a tall, thin, foreign-looking man in his wake. The stranger came forward with a smile behind his gold-rimmed glasses, and held out a thin, brown hand.

"May I have the honour, my lord?" he asked.

"Oh, certainly, certainly," said the flattered Rayburn. "This is an historic meeting, Señor Viantes. I quite appreciate the broad spirit that brought you here, and I am only too delighted to ignore the past in the interests of our mistress, the Goddess of Science. Yes, I think you can go, Hayter. I don't think the señor and myself are likely to come to blows."

Hayter discreetly smiled and vanished. With his best manner Rayburn turned to his visitor. He was a very great gentleman, and, when he chose, his manner was as irreproachable as his scientific knowledge.

"I bid you welcome, señor," he said, "and I do hope you are in no great hurry."

"I sail to-morrow," Del Viantes explained.

"Oh, indeed. I trust that, at any rate, you can give me an hour or two. Now, are these flowers anything in your line? I am very proud of my orchids—in fact, I think I value them more than any possession I have. Every moment of my spare time is occupied in here. There is not a collector in the world who does not write to me when he has found anything new—at least, amongst the class of orchids in which I am interested."

"They are rarely beautiful," Viantes said, with a touch of real enthusiasm. "It is a charming hobby, and I can quite understand how it fascinates you. But, alas, I am a poor man, and have no money to spend on anything. But that plant over yonder is extraordinarily beautiful."

"Ah, you have hit upon the gem of my collection; you have a real eye for the beautiful. Now, this is an orchid of the class Gynandria Monandria. That is a marsh orchid from South Africa, and the only one of its kind yet discovered. I prefer them to the epiphytes, exquisite as they are. And "that, of course, is a cypripedium.'"

As Rayburn spoke, he laid his hand almost lovingly on a long spike of bloom that shot upwards a foot or more in height in a series of shaded mauve blossoms with centres and cups graded away to the hue of virgin gold. The exquisite mass clung to the stem and trembled like a cloud of butterflies. Over it Rayburn hung with the rapt adoration of a mother bending over the cradle of her child.

"I am glad you can understand my enthusiasm," he said. "These blooms are almost sacred to me. Ah!"

As Rayburn spoke, his foot seemed to slip on the damp tiles of the conservatory, and as he jerked forward he touched the stem of the plant, and the topmost spray of blossoms broke off as if they had been severed with a knife. He whitened, with an expression almost of pain on his face, then recovered himself and forced a smile to his lips.

"Take that little spray," he said, "and put it in your buttonhole as a memento of the occasion. But I would not willingly have done that to oblige an emperor."

Viantes slipped the spray into his buttonhole and followed his host through the laboratory.

"Pray be seated," Rayburn said. "We have an hour or two before us, and are not in the least likely to be interrupted—in fact, I have respected your wishes to the letter. As you suggested, not a soul knows you are here, except my assistant, and I have sent him off for the afternoon. Your little car is in the lane, I presume, and nobody is likely to notice it there—in fact, the lane leads to nowhere, and is hardly used once a month—and therefore this meeting is as secret as it can be. I am not likely to mention it, unless you give me permission to do so, though perhaps some day this meeting may be historic. But that is for you to say, señor."

"I am profoundly grateful," Viantes murmured. "How deeply grateful I cannot say in words, but I think my presence here is a practical expression of my confidence."

"The feeling is mutual," Rayburn smiled. "And now pray tell me what I can do for you?"

The Spaniard hesitated just for a moment. "To be quite candid, my lord," he said, "I came down here consumed with curiosity to see that diamond which I understand you are experimenting upon. It is no secret, of course, because the scientific papers have been discussing it for weeks. Am I to understand that you claim to remove a flaw in a superimposed diamond by freezing it so many degrees below zero?"

"Well, I think so," Rayburn said cautiously. "But I am not far enough in my experiments yet to speak with any confidence. Still, I have seen enough to encourage me."

"It is a very valuable stone, I presume."

"Very," Ray burn said—"a matter of twenty thousand pounds, I suppose. If I succeed, it will be worth at least three times as much, and if I fail, no harm is done."

"But," Viantes suggested, "you might damage it. It might fly into a thousand fragments if it was subjected to a very intense cold. What of that, my lord?"

"Then, in that case, I shall be the loser," Rayburn smiled. "I should have to find that sum of money, which, between ourselves, would absorb my private means, because, when I die, this place of mine and my income must go to my successor. And my assistant would be all the poorer, which would be very hard upon him, seeing that he knows of my intentions, and that he is going to be married very shortly."

As Rayburn finished, he rose to his feet and, unlocking a drawer in his writing-desk, produced a great diamond. It was a magnificent stone, and as it lay winking and sparkling on the table, Viantes' eyes narrowed behind his spectacles, and his mouth quivered like that of a cat stalking a bird.

"A wonderful gem!" he murmured.

"Yes, a royal gem. Now, it was lent to me by a firm of Court jewellers for the purpose of my experiment. You must understand that it is what is called a superimposed stone—that is, two layers placed one upon another, and joined by spirit gum or something of that kind, much as they join a series of glasses from which telescopic lenses are ground. Originally the diamond was much bigger; but it met with an accident— a fracture in the centre—so that it was necessary to split the stone in two and join it up again. Of course, this detracted from the value, but only an expert could tell and discern the tiny spot of moisture that was created in the process. Now, my idea, as you know, is literally to burn out that moisture by frost, and therefore, in one of my tanks which lie out yonder beyond the conservatory, I propose to subject the stone to a freezing process a hundred degrees below zero; and when that is done, I am sanguine that the flaw will have vanished. If you have another half-hour or so to spare—"

The sentence was never finished, for the Spaniard was on to Rayburn like a flash, as the latter bent over the table, a knife gleamed in the air, and the great man collapsed to the floor, stricken between the shoulders to the heart, and lay there dead without a single sound.

It was nearly six o'clock before Hayter, feeling a little uneasy, knocked at the laboratory door without receiving any reply. He flew round to the back of the house, with the idea of approaching the laboratory by a flight of steps leading up to the big tanks with their concrete tops. The motor-car in the lane had disappeared, and this only added to Hayter's uneasiness. It was nearly dark now, so that Hayter noticed nothing except that the lid over the manhole of one of the great freezing tanks had not been slipped back, and this he hastily readjusted.

"I suppose I am to blame for that," he murmured. "Well, it doesn't so very much matter."

Just by the conservatory door lay a spray of three or four blooms of the priceless Gynandria Monandria. Hayter stooped and mechanically placed it in his buttonhole.

"Now, how did that precious treasure get here?" he asked himself. "Lord Rayburn would as soon have cut off his own hand as given away one of those beloved children of his."

He forced the catch on the conservatory door and hastened into the laboratory. A moment later he was bending over the dead body of his chief with that calm, self-centred feeling that comes to most of us in the presence of sudden and unexpected death. There were certain things to be done, and Hayter went about them quite methodically. Then his eye caught sight of the open drawer with the key still in it, and with a strange suspicion in his mind he searched in the little cotton-wool nest for the big diamond which ought to have been there.

Five minutes later he had aroused the household and was holding Scotland Yard at the other end of the telephone, and barely half an hour afterwards he was telling his story to an inspector of police.

"Let me have that again, Mr. Hayter," Inspector Jones said. "I want to be quite clear. Señor Viantes came down here, at his own suggestion, to meet a man who has been his greatest enemy for the last twenty years."

"You have seen the letter," Hayter said curtly.

"Oh, yes. Now, what sort of a man is this Spanish scientist? As mad as most of them, I suppose?"

"Madmen don't steal historic diamonds," Hajter said. "I don't want to teach you your business, Inspector, but that man stole the diamond, and probably at the same time dropped the spray of orchid which I have in my buttonhole, and which I picked up, as I told you, outside the conservatory door when I was forcing it. To my mind, the thing is quite plain. Lord Kayburn has been murdered, and the murderer escaped in his car, which he brought down here alone for the purpose of getting away quickly. Now, it seems to me that it is up to you to go back to London and interview Señor Viantes without the slightest delay. That is my opinion."

"Perhaps you are right," the Inspector conceded. "And as you saw the Spaniard, you had better come along."

It was quite late in the evening before Hayter and Inspector Jones found themselves in Bloomsbury, face to face with the Spanish scientist in the latter's sitting-room. But directly Hayter entered the room his face fell.

"There is some mistake here, I am afraid," he murmured. "If this is Señor Viantes, then I have never seen him before. It was not he who called upon Lord Rayburn."

"That is very good of you, sir," said the slight man with the piercing grey eyes who stood confronting his intruder. "A policeman was here just now who refused to believe my identity. I am Miguel del Viantes, as I can bring a dozen people to prove, and I have been in London all day. Do you think I would stoop to go near Lord Rayburn? A clever man, no doubt, but a humbug, sir, and a good bit of a charlatan."

"I don't think we need go into that," Hayter said coolly. "And you, sir, are prejudiced, in any case. Still, Lord Rayburn has been murdered and robbed of a valuable diamond, and as you are apparently the gentleman you claim to be, we are wasting our time here. What do you say. Inspector?"

There was no more to be said, and nothing to be done but to make as graceful an exit as possible and lose no time in seeking a clue elsewhere.

But the days went on till a month had elapsed, and no trace had been found of the clever criminal who had so cunningly made use of the Spaniard to commit a successful crime and get away clearly with his prize. And it was by no means a pleasant month for Hayter, either. He was cognisant of the fact that he was being dogged and watched, and there were many signs that the police held him under suspicion.

For practically everything depended upon his uncorroborated testimony. Nobody had seen the murderer but himself, no one had ever seen the slightest trace of the car, and as to the letter which the Spaniard was supposed to have written, that might easily have been forged by anybody. And, again, the diamond had vanished. It would take all the dead man's fortune to make the loss of it good, so that all Hayter's dreams of a happy and comfortable marriage had vanished into thin air.

Still, he was allowed to go on with his research work at Tulham Place, and, indeed, he had had more than one plain hint to the effect that he had better stay there for the present. Inspector Jones had been mightily curious on the subject of what he called the clue of the broken orchid, coupled with the fact that the body of Rayburn had been found by his chief assistant, who had also discovered the fact that the diamond was missing.

And so matters drifted on till the end of November without the slightest clue to the identity of the real culprit. Who he was, and whence he came, no one knew, though Del Viantes had hinted vaguely at a foreign assistant who had been in his employ for some little time, and had been discharged for flagrant dishonesty.

It was a fine morning at the end of November when Hayter was interrupted in the laboratory by the entrance of one of his mechanics.

"Sorry to trouble you, sir," he said, "but aren't you going to open Number Three Tank to-day? It's been frozen for the last three months at two hundred below zero, and that bacteria must be ready now. Shall I get on with it, sir?"

"Perhaps you had better," Hayter said languidly. "Draw the slide back from the roof and take the iron shutters down from the front pf the tank. Let the light play on it as much as possible. I'll come along presently."

The assistant vanished only to return, a quarter of an hour later, with starting eyes and a peculiar green tinge on his cheeks that spoke of some unreasoning terror. He clutched Hayter by the shoulder.

"For Heaven's sake, come along with me, sir!" he said hoarsely. "No, sir, there's nothing wrong with the big tank, but when you see what is inside it "

The slide on the top of the tank that flanked the outer door of the conservatory and the iron shutters had been removed. Now that the light shooe through the roof, and the sunshine glittered on the specially prepared glass front, the ten-thousand-gallon tank revealed itself in the shape of a huge block of ice as clear as crystal.

But Hayter was not thinking of that—he was gazing with protruding eyes and a strange creeping of his spine at an object crystalised in the centre of the ice. It was a human form with hands upraised and grey face congealed into an expression of terror that seemed alive and appealing mutely for assistance. Every limb and feature was as clear as it had been months ago, when the sham Del Viantes, hastening away from Tulham Place, had stepped in the gloom over the open trap-door that Hayter had left, and had thus gone unconsciously to his doom. The weight of his body, no doubt, had carried him through the upper crust of the ice in an early stage of its formation, and his feet had evidently stuck in the foot or so of gelatine at the bottom of the tank.

The man had been dead all these months, without the shadow of a doubt. He looked hideously and repulsively alive as he stood there, like a chrysalis in the centre of a transparent cocoon. Even a spray of orchids in his buttonhole retained their freshness and the delicate shades of mauve and gold.

"Well, I have had some curious experiences in my time," Inspector Jones said, an hour or two later, in somewhat shaky tones, as he stood before the unshuttered tank. "And, anyhow, it's all pretty plain now. Very likely his lordship gave a spray of his orchids to the man who murdered him, and the fellow, in his haste to get away, blundered into the tank. I shall be greatly surprised if we don't put our hands on the diamond, too, before we are through with this business."

It was nearly twelve o'clock the following day before the conditions were favourable for the removal of the unknown murderer from the tank, after which the body was laid on the table in the laboratory. It was Inspector Jones's unpleasant task to go over it in search of the missing treasure, the finding of which would establish Hayter's innocence beyond all doubt. But for a long time there was no sign of the stone, till the Inspector removed the spray of orchids from the dead man's buttonhole.

"Wonderful how they keep their freshness, isn't it?" he asked. "Some time ago I saw a bouquet of flowers that had come all the way from Australia frozen in a block of ice, and they might have been picked the day before. Hullo, here we are!"

As he spoke, the Inspector turned over the spray in his hand, and with a grunt of satisfaction plunged his little finger into the centre of one of the deep cups, and displayed a small round object carefully wrapped in cotton-wool.

"The missing stone," he exclaimed, "beyond the shadow of a doubt. I am glad to have my hands on this, Mr. Hayter, for your sake, because, you see—"

"Yes, I know," Hayter said grimly. "You needn't say any more about that. The man lying there, whoever he is, came down in a little two-seater car. He came alone, because I met him in the lane. What became of the car?"

"Well, that puzzled me, too," Jones admitted. "But, of course, the fellow had a confederate. That sort of robbery was too big a thing for one man. Probably the confederate loitered about till he got alarmed, and went off to save his own skin, as such men always do. But really it doesn't matter. To prove the identity of this criminal will be another question altogether. Personally, I don't believe it ever will be proved."

And, as usual, Inspector Jones was right.

THE END

THE DAWNSTAR

ILLUSTRATED BY STEVEN SPURRIER

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLV, Apr 1917, pp 653-658

THE island of Bavia lay fused like some rare pearl in the heart of the golden Java Sea, that stretched away to the trembling horizon, with Ketapang looming out of it like a broken harp. Sea and sky blended together in a golden mist that lay light as thistledown upon an ocean of pathless blue, and everywhere was a suggestion of that golden land where it is always afternoon. And, looking down upon it from the back of the sloping beach, where the great tree-ferns trembled overhead, a man and a woman sat, as they had been sitting the last hour or more. He was young and lean and brown, with the sanguine eyes of youth that is ever seeking something, and not discouraged because so far he has not found it. And the girl by his side was small and dark and exquisitely made, a sort of Spanish Venus, in fact, with the dreamy sleepiness in her eyes that she inherited, perhaps, from some Velasquez ancestress. She was plainly dressed enough, in a linen skirt and jacket, and her luxuriant mass of dusky hair was innocent of any covering; her feet were bare, too, and the skirt of her dress came only a little below her knees, for she and her companion had been paddling in the lagoon at their feet in search of rare anemones, and, anyhow, it was Inez Barrington's mood never to wear shoes if it could possibly be avoided. She was at heart a creature of the fields and the woods, but there was breeding and pride of race in every line of her. She could speak freely enough, if she liked, of those Spanish ancestors of hers, and time had been when she had known the restrictions of school life in San Francisco; but that was before she had come out there to look after her father's house and keep that dreamy widower under some sort of affectionate subjection.

All that had happened five years ago, and in that time she had seen John Barrington's more or less prosperous tobacco plantation drifting into decay, and the army of workers driven away, one by one, till not more than half a dozen of them remained. She had been long enough there to see the hacienda become little better than a creeper-clad ruin, picturesque enough, no doubt, behind its luxurious blaze of blossoms, and still comfortable in a Bohemian sort of way. For, sooth to say, John Barrington was a dreamer and a visionary, and ever a seeker after the will-o'-the-wisp.

The two sitting there, looking out over the lagoon, had been discussing the shiftless Barrington, and, incidentally, the girl's future. There was just a tiny cloud now in those glorious dark eyes of hers, and a droop of the proud scarlet lips.

"Oh, this is a paradise, all right," Frank Preston said—"a paradise where I should be quite prepared to linger on, but for thought of the future. You know, we are all alike, Miss Barrington—all of us ever grasping for the phantom fortune and ignoring the chances that lie at our feet. I am the last man in the world to reproach your father."

The girl laughed gently and turned those velvety eyes upon Preston's face for a moment. There was something in that glance that stirred his heart just a little.

"I know," she said simply, "and sometimes I have meant to speak to you about it. Do you know, I never quite understood why you came here at all, and, for some reason, I have always regarded you as a man of independent fortune."

"Haven't a cent," Preston said lazily. "I am a sort of object-lesson, a kind of idle apprentice. For ten years I have been floating about the world, seeking my fortune, but not very strenuously, I must own. I drifted here through Burma and Siam, looking for the Dawnstar."

"So I have heard you say before," Inez smiled. "Mr. Preston, what precisely is the Dawnstar?"

"I am not altogether sure that such a thing exists," Preston explained. "It's a sort of religion, I believe, like the famous gold mines in the Yukon, or the fabulous diamond that someone is always going to find in South Africa. They talked of it in Siam, under a different name, and they whisper of it in Borneo. It's like those pearls your father is always talking about—the pearls that he firmly believes lie at the bottom of the lagoon at our feet."

"But his late partner found them," Inez said.

"Blind luck," Preston replied—"absolutely blind luck. There! Now listen to me. What right have I to blame your father because he has wasted his life trying to find pearls that don't exist, when I am doing exactly the same thing with regard to the Dawnstar? In our heart of hearts, neither of us believes that there are either pearls or Dawnstars."

"And yet my father's late partner found the pearls here," Inez said. "Not that I believe there are any left. But tell me— what is the Dawnstar?"

"Well, it's a fabulous orchid. Wherever I go in this archipelago, I can always find some superstitious native who has heard of it, or who has heard of somebody who has seen it. No doubt there is some basis to the legend, and I have been fool enough to spend the best part of a year in these parts trying to verify it."

There was a good deal of truth in what Preston said, but it was not the whole truth. He would never have stayed there so long, with the wanderer's virus in his veins, had it not been that he had given his heart to Inez Barrington, and that he was lingering there awaiting events. He perfectly understood how near the dreamy Englishman was to the verge of ruin, and how near he stood on the edge of the grave, and what would become of Inez afterwards was a problem that troubled Preston a great deal more than his search after the elusive Dawnstar. He had come there to investigate the legend, but it seemed to him that he had found something much more precious instead. And gradually his whole mind had become absorbed in Inez's future. He had been there for months, staying in the ruined old hacienda, seeing Inez day by day, studying all the beauties of that open mind of hers, and vainly regretting all his lost opportunities. There were the nights, of course, when he went out looking for the visionary Dawnstar, that was supposed to bloom only in the early hours between dusk and dawn; but so far he had not found it.

He smiled with an air of superior wisdom when he saw Barrington wasting his time and neglecting his property over the brooding hours he spent on the lagoon in search of those mystic pearls, and occasionally he was conscious of a certain contempt for his own weakness. And day by day he could see that the dread consumption that was sapping Barrington's life was advancing nearer and nearer, and the problem of Inez's future troubled him more and more.

"Let us be practical for once," Inez said. "What real good would the Dawnstar do for you if you found it?"

"Well, it would make my fortune, for one thing," Preston said. "It might be worth anything up to a hundred thousand pounds. There are men in England who tbink nothing of paying twenty thousand pounds for a new orchid. If I could get a few Dawnstars and distribute them judiciously, I should be a rich man. And, mind you, the thing actually does exist, because an Indian raja had one. It was destroyed by fire, but the thing undoubtedly was there, because a German collector I once met actually saw it. A lovely thing, Inez. Picture to yourself a plant that blooms in the early dawn or by artificial light, a plant that grows on slender threads no thicker than a cobweb, but strong enough to carry a cloud of blooms that resemble a collection of tropical butterflies. Twenty different blends of gorgeous colouring on one plant, and every separate bloom distinct. It rises in the primrose dusk from a handful of flat leaves, much as the Rose of Sharon blooms before it drops back into nothingness and leaves behind it what appear to be a few dusty, dead leaves. I believe it is an epiphyte—that is, a tree parasite—in other words, it clings to a dead stump. Or possibly it is a tuber. But I don't know. I am only telling you what I have been told. We might even be sitting on it at the present moment. You may laugh at me, if you like, but I believe it is here somewhere, and, if it is, I am going to find it. I wonder if your father has heard of the thing?"

"I think it is exceedingly probable," Inez smiled. "He has never mentioned it, but then he knows I have not much sympathy with those dreams of his. He is full of all sorts of stories of that kind—pearls in the lagoon, buried treasure, and all that sort of thing. I am perfectly convinced that, if my father had lived in the time of Jason, he would have volunteered to go off in search of the Golden Fleece. We will ask him, if you like. I am sure he will be enthusiastic."

They turned their backs on the golden sea presently, and wandered through the tree-ferns to the verandah of the house, where, amongst the bowery blooms that hung like dazzling jewels, they found Barrington, with his coffee and cigarettes, awaiting them. He was a small, slender man, with an eye of a dreamer and the peculiar waxen complexion of one who is far gone in consumption. With his scientific knowledge, it was patent enough to Preston that the end was not far off. For a little time they sat there talking, before Inez introduced the subject of the Dawnstar. Barrington's eyes lighted eagerly as he listened. At the same time his smile was one of toleration for the weakness of another.

"I have heard something about it," he said. "Indeed, I am not so sure I haven't seen the thing. When I go down to the lagoon in the early morning, dredging for those big oysters, I seem to notice certain flowers that are not familiar to me; and, when I come back, they are no longer there. But it is only in one place—as you go down ^ the path by the spring where Inez grows some of those rare ferns she is so fond of. There used to be some trees at the back of the spring, and I believe that the stumps of them are there still. But it's no use asking me. You are only wasting your time, Preston. Now, if you will come with me some night down to the lagoon—"

The dreamer was mounted on his hobby now, and for some time he babbled more or less incoherently of the treasures that lay in the depths of the lagoon, if only it was possible to find them. He told his audience for the fiftieth time how his partner had accidentally come upon a strata of pearl-bearing oysters in the lagoon, where it had been possible to dredge them up, and how that aforesaid partner had returned to England with a fortune in his pocket. But he did not know, or he forgot to say, that for a year or two afterwards every idle native who could command a canoe and a dredge had raked the floor of the lagoon until there was not a single bivalve left. It was all very pathetic and a little ridiculous, but Preston, looking across at that beautiful face opposite him, could see nothing but the tragic side of the situation.

And it did not seem ridiculous to him, as he lay awake that night; to think that Barrington's story had been the means of stirring his own latent hopes. Surely the Dawnstar was there somewhere, if he could only find it. And, if he could, then his problem and the problem of Inez's future would be solved. If he could once come upon the track of the Dawnstar, he would be able to speak the words which had been trembling on his lips for months, and put his fortune to the test. Not that he was afraid of what the answer would be, for Inez's nature was too frank and free to leave him with any illusions on that score. But come what may, and poor as he was, he was not going to turn his back upon the island of Bavia until he knew what was going to happen with regard to the woman whom he loved.

As he lay on his bed, waiting for the dawn, his mind was troubled with many things. He had not been quite candid with Inez when he had spoken to her in that detached way about the Dawnstar. He had not told her, for instance, that the search for that elusive flower was almost as great an obsession with him as the treasures of the lagoon were with John Barrington. He had not told her that he had been following up a legend for years. He had tracked it in various ways and in various languages half through Asia and, by way of Siam, to the island of Borneo. He believed in its existence thoroughly, though he would have been ashamed to admit it. Indeed, a certain deceased German collector had actually seen it.

Therefore, in all the months that Preston had been on Bavia, he had been looking for the Dawnstar night after night. Ever since the first day that he had entered the hacienda and had become a member of that somewhat Bohemian household, he had been out before dawn in the swamps and round the lagoon, always looking for the Dawnstar. And yet he was deeply sorry for Barrington, whom he could not but regard as a fool and a visionary. He was the only man about the place who knew that Barrington spent half his nights in secret visits to the lagoon, where he was wearing out the little strength that remained to him in dredging up oyster shells, and, apparently, never tired of his pursuit. If Barrington had devoted a tithe of his time to his estate, he might by this time be a prosperous man. But the pathetic part of the tragedy lay in the fact that Barrington had no illusions on the matter of his health, and that he was doing all this in the forlorn hope of being able to leave a competence to his only child.

And this was going on night after night; it went on still for weeks after the day when Preston had told Inez the history of the Dawnstar. It went on till one early dawn when Preston was out on his eternal search, and hanging more or less disconsolately around the spring, at the back of the lagoon, from whence the house derived its water supply. It was still dark, with the first suggestion of pallid rose in a morning sky, as Preston wandered down towards the lagoon in the aimless fashion that had become habitual to him—the aimless fashion of a man who begins to despair of his object. As he sat there, with a half-made cigarette between his fingers, Barrington passed him so closely that he could actually have touched him. The elder man was carrying some appliance on his back, and then, as Preston looked at him, he saw that the other was walking in his sleep.

So it had come to that, Preston thought. Barrington was obviously worn out; his face was pale and drawn, and ever and again a hollow cough broke from him. It was bad for him to be out there in the dews of the early morning—fatally bad, no doubt—but he crept along down to his boat like a man in the last stages of exhaustion, a man whose will was evidently stronger than his body. He made his way slowly and laboriously into the middle of the lagoon, and from the bank Preston watched him for some time until suddenly he saw the dark figure collapse and crumble as if it had been an empty sack, and then there followed the sound of a faint splash.

Preston was on his feet in a moment. He plunged headlong into the lagoon and swam out to the floating figure. It was a strenuous fight, but he had Barrington on the sand at length, still breathing, so he gathered the shrunken figure in his arms and carried him towards the house like a child.

His mind was set now only on getting Barrington into bed, so that any thought of the Dawnstar was very far away just then. But as he was passing along the little hollow amongst the tree-ferns at the back of the spring, a solitary flower, all gold and azure, that seemed to be floating invisibly in the air, a foot or two from the ground, caught his attention and held him there for a moment absolutely motionless. Then he turned his face resolutely away and plodded on doggedly in the direction of the hacienda.

He would not think of it. He would not believe anything till he had the burden in his arms safe between a pair of blankets. It must have been some figment of imagination, some phantasm born of the early dawn.

So presently he laid Barrington on his bed and warmed him, and forced brandy between his lips until the sick man opened his eyes and feebly asked what had happened. Preston made him comprehend presently— indeed, told Barrington how he had been watched night by night, whilst the latter listened and nodded before he sat up and grasped Preston by the hand.

"Not a word of this to Inez," he whispered. "I am a fool, perhaps, but then I have always been a fool—ever grasping for the shadow and neglecting the substance. Did you ever know an Irishman who did anything else? But I shall find it—I shall find it before I have done—yes, long before you find that Dawnstar that you were telling me about the other night."

Preston smiled almost bitterly. He knew that hopeful outlook only too well. He crept away presently to his own room, and slept far into the morning. For the rest of the day he seemed rather to avoid Inez. He sat on the verandah in the evening, listening whilst she sang to him, and retired early to bed, but not to sleep. He tossed about from side to side till it seemed to him that the window frame in his bedroom began to stand out sharply against the darkness, and he arose and crept from the house like a thief, and made his way down to the spring. For a long time he sat there watching, as far as possible, the dusky area where he had seen that spirit blossom the night before. He watched until the ebony dusk turned to violet, and the tree-ferns behind him looked like gigantic feathers grotesquely painted on the sombre sky. He watched until his eyes began to ache and water stood in them. Then very slowly and gradually, like an amazing conjuring trick that he had witnessed in some Eastern bazaar, a faint intangible something—a collection of intangible somethings—began to materialise slowly and mysteriously against an opaque purple background.

They came one by one, darting here and there like spirits, intangible, floating in nebulous space, and yet arranged in a sort of symmetrical order, one above the other, like so many painted blooms indented by an unseen hand in a great vase. They were detached, and at the same time formed, part of some harmonious whole, as if a painter had placed them there without supports. And, as Preston watched, he stiffened with an excitement that seemed to paralyse his very breathing.

He could see the colours of the blooms by now—azure, purple, violet, pink, all the hues of the rainbow with their various blends and shades. There must have been five-and-twenty blooms at least, magnificent, glowing, full of life and beauty, and yet apparently living alone in the air. There must be a support somewhere, as Preston knew, but the stems were so fine and slender as to be absolutely invisible. They were flowers of Paradise, nothing less, a gleam of beauty and colouring surpassing naturalist's dreams.

Preston dragged himself to his feet and took from his pocket a tiny glow-lamp to which a small dry battery was attached. Still trembling from head to foot in his excitement and admiration, he examined his treasure carefully and with the critical eye of the expert. He could see now, by the aid of the lamp, that those black filaments binding the glorious bouquet together were as fine and yet as strong as the metal filaments in an electric lamp. And then, as the dawn suddenly broke like a violet bombshell from behind the morning mists over the lagoon, those amazing blooms collapsed like a soap bubble, and nothing was left but a handful of tight green leaves clinging to a log of wood about the size of a man's thigh. Preston knelt almost reverently and raised the rotting log in his arms. A few minutes later it was hidden away in a dark corner of his bedroom and covered with a damp cloth.

He had found it now, the search of years was finished, and the future lay plainly before him. Being a naturalist, he had seen quite enough to know that the plant he had secured was a large one, and that, in the hands of any wise horticulturist, the thing was capable of subdivision. It meant that, once he was safely home again, a fortune awaited him. And yet, even in that moment, he was conscious of the fact that he probably owed his amazing luck entirely to the other man, whose failure had brought about his own splendid chance.

He said nothing about his find for the moment, and all the more so because Barrington was still confined to his bed, and likely to remain there for a day or two. But when dinner was over, and night had fallen at length, Preston expressed a desire to have his coffee on the verandah, and there, in the dusk, with Inez by his side, told her what he had seen the night before.

"You quite understand what I mean," he said. "We must get your father away from here. If he doesn't go, he will die. He must go back to England; he must have a winter in Switzerland. If we could get him back to some bracing climate, he might live for years. As it is--"

"Oh, I know, I know!" Inez sighed. "But what can we do?"

"You must let me do it for you," Preston said. "You really must. Did it never occur to you how kind you have been to me? I have been here for a year. I came as a total stranger, and you took me at my own valuation. I shall never forget it, Inez. And I believe I can help you."

"You have found the Dawnstar?" Inez asked demurely.

By way of reply, Preston rose and, going to his room, returned presently with the log, which he laid carefully down on the verandah. Then he turned upon it the light of the glow-lamp, which gleamed in the darkness through a violet shade exactly like the rays of the early dawn.

"Watch!" he whispered. "Watch!"

Very gradually the mass of dusty leaves on the log began to expand until they turned over and showed their glossy undersides uppermost. Then a bloom appeared, followed by another and another a little higher up, until the whole glorious thing leaped into life, a creation of such beauty and tenderness and exquisite colouring that Inez cried aloud.

"It is wonderful," she said. "There was never anything like it since the beginning of the world. Tell me all about it, Frank. How did you find it, and where? I wonder if I might touch it, or would it fade away like a dream?"

Preston snapped off the light, and in a few moments the dusty leaves lay at his feet again. He carried the log into his room, and returned presently to the lighted dining-room, where Inez eagerly awaited him.

"You have seen it now, and must believe,"' he said. "Inez, you have seen our fortune and our happiness."

As he spoke he looked into the girl's shining eyes, and she came forward and threw an arm around his neck.

"You mean that, Frank?" she whispered. "And you know—oh, yes, I have been waiting to hear you say that for a long time. And you know it, too."

Preston drew her close and kissed her. "Yes," he said simply, "I did. But can't you see that I could not speak before? I had no right to speak. But now it is all different. Now I have found something that is infinitely more precious to me than all the Dawnstars that ever bloomed. Not that I am indifferent to it, either, because it means happiness and fortune to us, and, I hope, many years of life yet for your father, because he is going to share it, because without him there would never have been you, and without him there never would have been a Dawnstar to light us on our way."

THE END

PHOTO BY LESTERRE

ILLUSTRATED BY STEVEN SPURRIER

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLV, Dec 1916-May 1917, pp 393-398

HEATHER took the drifting spray that sifted over the table like a cloud of mauve butterflies and crushed it ruthlessly in his hand. Later on he would realise that those delicate blooms represented a guinea's worth of orchids, and that they would certainly figure in his bill, for he had ordered a special dinner for two there at "The Majestic," and it was no fault of the management that Sir Thomas Salter, the great engineering magnate, had failed to keep his appointment. As a matter of fact, he had put Heather off at the very last moment by means of a telephone message to the hotel.

There was no help for it—Heather would have to sit down alone to an elaborate menu and the trilogy of extravagant wines, which even now were in the wine cooler by his side. Neither did it matter much that George Heather had practically his last ten pound note in his pocket. It had been an audacious thing on his part to ask the great man to dine with him at all; but then Heather was an engineer, and audacity builds many bridges. He had hoped to get a snug appointment from the great man, but now it looked as if he would have to go back to the Gold Coast and sweat out another five precious years of his life amidst the scum of humanity in a reeking atmosphere of filth and fever and all the soul-destroying degradation of that forbidding climate.

Well, it didn't matter much—nothing seemed to matter at that particular moment. It was more hard on Kitty than on anybody else—dear little Kit, with whom he had discussed the future so buoyantly in Kensington Gardens only an hour or two before. Well, that dream was ended—for the present, at any rate. He would go back to the Gold Coast next week, and— Well, in the meantime he might just as well eat the extravagant dinner that he had ordered, and make the best of what the Fates had in store for him. Now that the worst was past, he ate his way calmly through the elaborate menu until he reached the coffee and the 1820 brandy, and there began to steal over him the benign feeling of satisfaction that only a good dinner can give.

He lay back in his chair presently, watching his neighbours with a certain hard and cynical amusement. And then presently it seemed to him that a man seated by himself a little distance off was regarding him with a close attention that was almost flattering.

The individual in question was beautifully turned out, and had about him that faint, indescribable air of prosperity that is implied more than spoken. He was a young man—no older than Heather himself—though his hair was thinning at the top, and there were certain lines about the corner of his mouth and round those unsteady eyes of his that told their own tale. A moment later the stranger rose from his seat and came in the direction of Heather's table. A fine moisture was standing out on his forehead in beads, and the hand that held his cigarette was shaking strangely.

"May I speak to you?" he asked. "Thanks. Waiter, bring me a liqueur brandy. Well, I see that you recognise me. You do, don't you?"

"You are quite sure of that?" Heather asked.

"Wonderful how small a place the world is," the stranger went on. "Queer how often you meet the very last person you expect to see."

"It is very awkward at times," Heather said.

"Yes, isn't it? Especially when you were quite sure that the other chap had been dead and buried for the last two or three months."

"Oh, you thought I was dead, did you?"

"My dear chap, I was absolutely sure of it. When I got down to the camp, after Brass and Crossley had been done in, I found nothing but the remains of your hut, all burnt to a cinder, and your guns all broken and useless. Most of your papers were charred beyond recognition, and, besides, that native boy of yours told me that the hut had been attacked by the niggers, and that you had been shot and thrown into the flames. If it hadn't been for the photograph of you and the girl, I might have had my doubts, because, you see, I never happen to have met you face to face. But there was that photograph in a leather case, and, of course, I had a description of you. You know who I am, don't you—Wilberforce?"

Heather hesitated just for a moment. He hadn't the remotest notion who this man was, but the story had a familiar ring about it. It was a common type of story along that awful coast, which Heather knew almost as well as he knew Piccadilly. And there was something more behind it—of that he felt certain. Moreover, he had done a certain amount of magazine work himself, and here he appeared to have stumbled over the edge of a romance which might be well worth the telling. And undoubtedly this man with the shifty eyes and moist, clammy skin was telling no more than half the truth. He had the air of one who was trying to justify himself in the face of a serious accusation. And he, somehow or other, had come into possession of one of those photographs of Heather and Kitty which had been taken three years ago by Lesterre. Obviously the thing was worth going into.

"Oh, so you are Wilberforce?" he asked. "Really? And you picked up my photograph when you got down to the hut that evening?"

"I did," the other man said. "Directly I got it in my hand I said to myself, 'It's Chambers—Chambers and his girl, beyond the shadow of a doubt.' So I put it in my pocket, thinking that perhaps it would be useful later on. Of course, I was absolutely certain that you had perished with all the rest of them when those traders turned the natives against us and tried to rob us of the ivory. Now, how on earth did you manage to get away, Chambers?"

Heather hesitated just for a moment. That there was something sinister about this, and that there was more to come, he had not the shadow of a doubt. He could see that in the shifty eye and the sinister smile on the other man's face. "We will come to that presently," he said. "Meanwhile, it doesn't follow that the name you know a man under in Africa is the same under which he passes in London. So perhaps you had better address me as Heather."

"I am Wilberforce still, at any rate," the other man said.

"I congratulate you," Heather said dryly, "And what really became of our friends Brass and Crossley after I was done with? You are not going to tell me that you did not get the ivory through all right?"

The man called Wilberforce seemed to be swallowing something at the back of his throat. His shifty eyes dropped again, and once more that peculiar ingratiating and sinister smile creased the corners of his lips.

"If anyone tells you that I played the dirty on the other chaps, it's a lie. I did nothing of the sort. I am not exactly a plaster saint, but— Well, those chaps are dead and gone now, and I can give you no more than my bare word. And I don't know that their names really were Brass and Crossley. They only knew me as Wilberforce because I said that was my name. As a matter of fact, it is; but out yonder, as you know, we are not particular about that sort of thing."

Heather did know it, and smiled accordingly. Whoever this man was, and however credible his tale might be, he was listening to a man who was familiar with every inch of the ground they were talking about.

"But the other fellows had good friends amongst the natives, I suppose?" he asked. "For instance—"

"Ah, you are going to speak of Mombassa. I had forgotten Mombassa for the moment. I suppose it was that faithful nigger who helped you to get away?"

"Shall I tell you what he told me?" Heather asked. Who Mombassa was, he had not the least idea, but he was in the mood to get to the bottom of this thing now. "Or perhaps you are not curious to hear?"

A queer green tinge spread over the other man's face. Then the rusty spur of a bankrupt self-respect pricked him, and he spurted into a little spate of anger like damp gunpowder fizzling on a hot plate.

"Oh, well," he said, "if you prefer to take the word of a nigger to mine, of course— Don't be annoyed, old chap. My nerves are not what they were, and I am doing far too much of that sort of thing."

He flicked a shaky forefinger in the direction of his liqueur glass, which the waiter had already refilled more than once, and the uneasy, self-conscions grin was on his face again. He did not, perhaps, know that Heather was reading him like an open book, and that he stood before the other perfectly self-confessed as a scoundrel who had betrayed his three colleagues into the hands of the natives, sent them to their death so that he could get off with the spoil And that he had done so was evident by the fact that he was dining here, dressed in purple and fine linen, evidently a welcome and honoured guest, and obviously a man of means. He was telling Heather plainly enough that he had deliberately planned the murder of his comrades, or, at the very best, he had stood coldly on one side, and had got away with the spoil whilst the other men were fighting for their lives. And there was another thing. Who was the man called Chambers, and how on earth had that photograph of Kitty and himself found its way into that solitary hut previous to the tragedy? Heather had been proud of the photograph at the time, and had given a dozen or more to his friends, scattered all over the world, but, so far as he could remember, not one of those photographs had found its way to the Dark Continent.

"What can a chap do when he's all alone in the world?" Wilberforce went on. "I admit I've been a bit of a rotter. I was one at Harrow, and they fired me there. And they fired me out of the Army, too, and so I gradually got down to this. I suppose I ought to be happy enough. When I got back from Africa with all that stuff and sold it, I was worth nearly a hundred thousand pounds. But my mind's going, my boy. The doctor told me that, if I didn't leave the brandy alone, I should die of softening of the brain. But I can't, old chap, I can't! I'm a lonely man, and I sit at home and dream. And when I dream, I must drink. I can't go back to my own people. They are rich and respectable, and only yesterday my own sister cut me in the street. They would be glad to know that I was dead, and they'll have their wish before long, And, you know, though it gave me a fearful turn when I saw you to-night, sitting at this table like a man come back from the dead, I was glad to have a chance to talk to you. And I don't care much what Mombassa told you—I don't care much about anything. But this is something like the truth. We got wind of what those niggers were after, we knew they were going to attack us that night, and we knew that the Arabs had bribed our boys and armed them against us. So they sent me up from the camp to the place on the river where the ivory and the rest of the stuff was waiting in the canoes, and I was to bring the lot down to the camp. As a matter of fact, most of the valuables had been stored on the raft, which we were going to float down the river to the fort. You remember the spot? There's a fork in the stream just above Comba, and here the river divides, and joins again about a mile lower down. There isn't a faster-running drop of water in Africa. You know it?"

Heather nodded. He knew that atmosphere well; he could feel the pressure of it on his shoulders like a thick grey blanket, stifling his breath and taking all the elasticity out of his limbs.

"Of course I know it," he said. "I can smell the odour of those infernal crushed marigolds even now. But go on."

"I emptied the canoe off the raft and shoved it down into the stream. And then, somehow, in the darkness and the confusion—put it down to my own state of funk, if you like—I took the wrong bend in the stream where it forked, and when I got opposite the camp, on a little island, instead of being close to my pals, as I had expected, and where they would have had a chance to join me, I found myself on the other side of the eyot, quite four hundred yards away from the others, and I give you my word of honour that I never realised what had happened till I discovered my mistake. But I couldn't have gone back if I would. No man born of woman could have hauled the raft back up against the stream."

Heather nodded, and the other man went on.

"Of course, I had to go forward. I managed to stay the course of the raft for a minute or two, and look through the bushes towards the camp. Then a fire blazed out from somewhere, and everything became as light as day. I saw the camp rushed by our boys and some of the Arabs. I saw Brass shot through the heart, and Crossley cut to pieces. And I don't hold myself guilty in the least. Not that it much matters now, anyway. When I got down to your little dug-out, I found nothing but what I told you, and after that I set off down stream, and reached the fort about daylight. And—and that's all. What do you think of it?"

"A, very plausible story," Heather said coldly. "The phrase is not original; it is occasionally used by a judge after he has listened to a prisoner giving evidence on his owm behalf. I repeat, a very plausible story."

"You don't believe a word of it?" Wilberforce asked.

"Only a few details. No doubt you meant well enough at first, but you don't ask me to believe that a man who knew every inch of the ground as well as you did took the wrong fork in the river? You didn't. You got away with the spoil, and your pals lost their lives. No, it doesn't matter in the least how the man you call Chambers got away. It's not a pleasant story, Mr. Wilberforce, and it isn't a pleasant object who is telling it, as you would admit if you could see yourself in the looking-glass. Still, it isn't for me to judge you. Now, have you done anything to make amends? I suppose you knew something about your friends?"

"About as much, as I wanted to know"—Wilberforce laughed harshly—"and they knew much the same about me. I knew they had both been in trouble in this country, and that Brass and Crossley were assumed names. They were under the impression that mine was, too, and we let it go at that. Curiosity out yonder is not the sort of weakness people are given to. So there was nothing for it but to come back home and settle down to a life of pleasure. Pleasure! Good Heavens! And all I can do is that." He touched his liqueur glass again and smiled bitterly. "I come here every night and dine in solitary state, and afterwards I go to bed and sleep as best I can. And some night I shall die in my sleep, so the doctor tells me. I ought not to touch a drop of alcohol—it's fair poison to me. But I can't let it alone. And until I met you to-night I have never had a chance. Of course, you are entitled to half that money, and you can have it to-morrow with pleasure. Would you like to come round to my rooms now and talk it over? What do you say?"

"I'll have a look at that photograph, at any rate," Heather said. "And as to the rest, I have got a little confession to make to you."

Wilberforce rose with a sigh of relief.

"Not now," he said. "Not here. Waiter, order me a taxi at once. Come along. Chambers, or Heatger, as you like to call yourself. It's all the same to me."

Ten minutes later Heather was seated in a luxuriously appointed dining-room in Carlisle Mansions, with the photo by Lesterre in his hand. Beyond doubt it was the same that he and Kitty had had taken before he had gone out on that last job to West Africa three years ago. He waved Wilberforce's cigarettes and whisky and soda on one side.

"Presently," he said. "Now, listen to me, Mr. Wilberforce. That is my photograph all right, and also that of the lady whom I am engaged to. It was taken by Lesterre when we were first engaged, on the eve of my departure for Africa. There were about two dozen done altogether, and I suppose I must have given away quite half of them to various friends. And I have friends in my line all over the world. But how that photograph found its way into the hut you speak of, I have not the remotest idea. It is one of the things that no one can understand. Not that it matters."

"You left it in the hut yourself, of course. Could any explanation possibly be easier?"

"I didn't, because I was never there. I told you my name was Heather, and it always has been. I am not Chambers—I don't know anything about him. When you met me to-night, you jumped to the conclusion that I was Chambers because you recognised me from the photograph. Well, I'm not. I know the locality you speak of, because business has taken me there—a vile hole I was only too glad to get out of—but I assure you that we have never met before to-night, I am not the man you take me for, and your confession has been merely wasted. No, stop a minute. I need not say that I shall respect your secret. I'll go away presently, and there's no reason why we should ever meet again."

"Don't say that," Wilberforce almost pleaded, "and don't despise me more than you can help. Heavens, if you only knew what a relief it has been to me to get that confession off my soul! Try and realise how lonely I am, and there is no place in the world where you can be so lonely as in London. And I swear to you. Heather, that you are wrong. I didn't deliberately betray those chaps. I had drunk my nerves into fiddlestrings, and, when the pinch came, I was no better than a white-livered coward, and that is why I more or less left the others to their fate. And they weren't worth saving, either. They were no better than myself. And you won't leave me? Look here, I gather you are up against it, I gather that you are going out to that infernal place again because you are in need of a job. Well, don't go. Stay here with me, and I will make it worth your while. As things go, I am a rich man, but I would sacrifice cheerfully every penny I have for a real friend. I'll lend you the money, if you like, or I'll give it to you, and you can purchase yourself a sound partnership at some engineering firm here at home. It won't be for long, because I am done for. A few weeks at the outside, and my troubles will be all ended. I have disregarded what the doctor told me; I drink and drink, and my heart is hopelessly gone. One of these nights I shall go to bed, and when they come to call me in the morning—"

Wilberforce waved his hand comprehensively. Beyond doubt he was an object of pity, a thing to be sorry for, despite all his enviable surroundings, and Heather found himself more moved towards him than he cared to confess.

"Ah, well," Wilberforce went on, "I won't press you any further. But if you could come and see me now and then, I should be more than grateful. And I must do something with that money. I want someone to have it who will make better use of it than I have done. Do you know what I was going to do—what I had done, practically? I was going to leave everything to the girl in that photograph. For a year that photograph has been on my desk, and gradually I have fallen in love with the girl in it. You have no idea what a companion she has been to me. Of course, you will say I am talking hysterical nonsense, but this is the first time in two years that I have confided in a soul. Now, I am a dying man. I am going to the sea to-morrow, to stay a spell in a home. I know perfectly well that I shall never come back. It's too late, my boy. If I had met a man like you a year ago, perhaps But why go on? Will you do me a little favour? Will you tell that young lady my story, and bring her round here to see me when I come back, if ever I do come back? She won't want any persuading. A girl with a face like hers would never hesitate to give a kind word or a helping hand even to the most degraded wretch who ever found himself in the gutter. Now, will you do this for me?"

"I will," Heather said impulsively. "I have heard some strange stories in my time, and I have mixed with some strange people, but I have never had so remarkable an experience as this, and, though it may not sound common-sense, I believe what you say. I believe you are telling me the truth. I believe this all the more because I know what that awful climate and what the stuff men drink out there can bring the best of chaps to in time. I am not going to preach, Wilberforce. And—well, you go off to the seaside, as you have arranged, and in a week or so I'll come down and see you. And I promise you that I'll bring Miss Vaughan along; I know she'll be interested in your story. And it may not be too late yet if you will only try and hold yourself in hand. You are a rich man, and, from what I gather, it is not impossible for you to discover anyone who is entitled to a share of that money. Don't be down-hearted. With any luck, there should be many years of usefulness before you yet. Now, give me the address where you are going to, and leave the rest to me."

"You are a good fellow, Heather," Wilberforce said unsteadily. "Now, if you will, in return, give me Miss Vaughan's address, I won't bother you any more to-night."

For some time after Heather had gone Wilberforce sat down to his desk and was busy writing. Then he rose with a sigh of weariness and satisfaction, and glanced hesitatingly in the direction of the spirit stand. It was only for a moment that he hesitated, then he poured himself out half a tumbler of neat spirit and drank it greedily.

"Why not?" he muttered. "It can make no difference now—nothing can make any difference now—and perhaps—nay, certain— it is all for the best."

Heather and his companion alighted at Southbourne, and made their way through the broad, leafy streets in the direction of Cliff House. There was a sparkle of expectation in Kitty Vaughan's blue eyes and a tender smile upon those sensitive lips of hers, for she and Heather had been discussing Wilberforce on the way down, and Kitty's heart was full to overflowing with the pity she was feeling for the lonely man who was so eagerly awaiting their arrival. She was not thinking of herself or Heather just then, she had forgotten that before long George would be on his way to West Africa again, and that the waiting years lay before her once more. That was not Kitty's way when others were in trouble.

A neat servant-man threw open the door of the pleasant house standing in the gardens back from the cliff, and his face was solemn as he read the card that Heather handed to him.

"Doctor Westcott will be very pleased to see you, sir," he said. "I believe he was going to write to you. Mr. Wilberforce? I am very sorry to tell you, sir, that Mr. Wilberforce is dead. He died in his sleep last night. We found some papers by the side of his bed which were addressed to you. I think one of them was the gentleman's will, which the doctor and myself witnessed a day or two ago. But perhaps you and the lady had better come inside, sir. Yes, it was quite a peaceful death."

THE END

THE LONELY FURROW

ILLUSTRATED BY A. GILBERT

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLVI, Nov 1917, pp 595-599

A DISTINGUISHED novelist, who would rather make an epigram than a friend, always declared that Mrs. Harcourt's flat in Lowndes Gardens reminded him of one of the brilliant stage settings usually associated with a St. James's production, which description had just enough truth in it to carry a sting in its tail. And, indeed, perhaps there was just a suggestion of that glittering artificiality surrounding the home life of the famous actress in question, just a little bit too much gold and colouring; but the young man standing there, with his back to the flower-filled fireplace, noticed nothing of it.

He was not in a condition just then to notice anything but the glamour of the moment, for was he not taking Cecil Marne out to dinner, and convoying her subsequently to the first night of a new play at the Comus? He was good enough to look on, was this young man, with his clean-shaven, handsome face, lighted with a pair of clear, brown eyes, fearless and resolute, a young man with all the world before him and everything in his favour. He was beautifully groomed, of course, immaculate and speckless, the finished product of Eton and Oxford, just a fine specimen of a typical young Englishman, a little tanned and brown—an athlete, in fact, and potentially a leader of men.

He stood there, glancing carelessly about him, a little impatient and a little eager, and, perhaps, just a shade disappointed to find that Cecil was not already awaiting him. She came in presently, a dazzling vision of loveliness and beauty, clad in some pink diaphanous confection that mere man would have found it impossible to describe, but which seemed to be part of herself, as a woman's dress ought to be when she knows how to wear it. And it was not any particular classicality of outline or amazing regularity of feature to which Cecil owed her chief charm; still, it was a beautiful face, soulful and intellectual, and flushed with happiness and pleasure just now.

"I hope I haven't kept you waiting," she said, "but Mrs. Harcourt detained me. She has just gone."

"Oh, down to the theatre, I suppose," Alan Chamberlayne said. "Is she very nervous?"

"Well, not just at the last. I would give anything to have a position like that."

"You would like to go on the stage, Cecil?"

"Of course I should—it must be glorious. And I believe I could do it, Alan. Mrs. Harcourt says so. And, perhaps, some day—"

"I wish you wouldn't talk like that," Alan said. "I think you know—you must know by this time—why I come here so often, Cecil. You must know we are something more than friends. Now, don't you?"

The girl flushed slightly and turned her glowing face away from his. She was still at the parting of the ways, still hesitating with the seed of the dandelion in her hand, saying to herself: "I love him, I love him not."

"Oh, well," she said a little petulantly, "aren't you just a little bit old-fashioned, Alan?"

"I don't know—perhaps I am," Chamberlayne admitted. "Perhaps, if my mother had lived, it might have been different. I suppose I have an altogether too exalted idea of womankind. I don't understand them."

"Does any man?" Cecil laughed. "Do we understand ourselves? And yet you are just like all the rest of your sex. You seem to think that a woman's mission in life is to marry and settle down."

"Well, isn't it?" Alan asked.

"Oh, come along!" Cecil said impatiently. "If we are going to dine at the Ritz first, the sooner we're off, the better."

The big car was waiting at the door, and together they drove along the streets, in the dusk of the falling September night, in the direction of the hotel where they were to dine. They were going on afterwards to the Comus Theatre, to see the first performance of the new comedy in which Mrs. Harcourt expected to achieve one pf her greatest triumphs. A great night, a night to be remembered, and one destined, though Cecil did not know it yet, to mark an important turning point in her life.

And meanwhile here they were at their destination, seated at a little table set out for two, with shaded lights and mauve orchids in reckless profusion. The place was full of diners, the whole of the big room was crowded with youth and beauty, an attractive scene that filled Cecil with pleasure, and brought a look of tenderness into those dusky eyes of hers.

"Do you know," Alan said presently, "that so far you have not met my father?"

"Would he be interested in me?" Cecil smiled.

"What a question! Of course he would. He knows all about you, and he is very anxious to see you. Won't you come down and stay a week-end at our place? It's the most delightful old place in the world, and I think my father and I value it all the more because we so nearly lost it."

"I have heard something of it," Cecil said. "Wasn't your father rather poor in those early days?"

"Terribly poor," Chamberlayne said. "He and my mother lived in lodgings in an obscure seaside town, trying to save enough money to pay the interest on the family mortgages. You see, my father met my mother in Australia, where she was on the stage, and married her. Oh, no, she was no great actress, but a young girl struggling for a living—anything rather than stay in a home that was cursed by drink and poverty. I don't remember her, of course. She died when I was quite a child, and then it occurred to my father to take up his profession. Fortunately, at an early age he had been called to the Bar, and from the first he was a great success. You know what he is to-day. I know you'd love him—everybody does."

"So—so you've told your father all about me?"

"Of course I have. I told him about you long ago."

Cecil made no reply for a moment. She had taken one of the orchid blossoms from the table and was aimlessly pulling it to pieces.

"Aren't you taking a good deal for granted?" she challenged.

"Well, perhaps, Cecil; but haven't I had reason to take things for granted? Haven't we been together practically every day since June, and haven't our friends recognised— Well, you know what I mean."

"Oh, it's impossible," Cecil said. "I mean—well, I mean that I'm a bit frightened. Oh, I am to blame, if you like. I have encouraged you, I have been fickle and shallow, incapable of understanding my own mind. If you like to ask me under these conditions—"

Chamberlayne rose slowly from the table. There was a certain grimness about his mouth and a little hardness in his eyes that set Cecil fluttering.

"Perhaps we had better be moving," he said curtly. "And thanks for the confession. We'll forget all about it now, but I will come and see you in the morning."

"Is that a threat?" Cecil laughed.

"No, it isn't—it's a promise."

The frown had gone from his face, and as they drove along in the taxi he might have been no more than the average polished Society young man doing his best to be agreeable to a pretty and fascinating girl. And, strange to say, it was this very change— the change that Cecil had hoped for—that filled her with all sorts of vague alarms. For Cecil knew her world, and Chamberlayne was not the first man who had made love to her. She had come, like so many brilliant and attractive girls, to regard homage from the opposite sex as her prescriptive right. and the sensation that she was merely a mouse, within reach of the claws of the cat, frightened whilst at the same time it strangely attracted her.

She was glad enough to find herself in the theatre, waiting for the curtain to go up. She glanced round the stalls and returned the nods and smiles of her many acquaintances. It was a full house, as she had expected, crammed from floor to ceiling, and everybody was there that was worth counting at all.

And then for the next hour or two Cecil forgot all about her anxieties and worries in the contemplation of the stage and the triumph of Helen Harcourt in one of the finest interpretations that she had ever given in her long and distinguished career. It was not that the play was anything amazing in itself—in fact, it was rather commonplace—but the soul of the artiste dominated it all, and the curtain fell finally on a veritable triumph.

Cecil drew a long breath of sheer delight. She had almost forgotten by this time that Chamberlayne was seated by her side. She turned to him presently with glowing eyes.

"Wasn't it marvellous?" she said.

"I suppose so," said Alan. "I am horribly out of date, but this sort of thing doesn't appeal to me much. I never can quite understand why people make so much fuss of actors and actresses. After all, they are only children of larger growth playing at make-believe, and they don't create the character. The author of the play does that."

Cecil rose impatiently and made her way in silence into the vestibule. She hardly spoke as the taxi purred its way along the streets in the direction of Lowndes Gardens. It was much the same when the flat was reached, and even Chamberlayne gave a sigh of relief when his hostess arrived and supper was announced.

Helen Harcourt came in a beautiful costume in which she had appeared during the last act, tall and graceful, and full of those magnetic qualities which made her what she was. She was radiant enough, gracious and friendly as usual, but never, in Chamberlayne's eyes, had she appeared more remote and aloof than she did at that moment. She was brilliantly witty, as usual, hard as a diamond and as dazzling, but this only deepened the impression in Chamberlayne's mind.

And so the meal went on to the conclusion. One o'clock struck somewhere, and at length Chamberlayne rose to go. He barely touched Cecil's fingers as he said "Good night" to her, and muttered something to the effect that he had work to do, and that he hoped to call on her in the morning. The last words were so cold that Helen Harcourt elevated her eyebrows.

"Good night, Alan," she said, with one of those rare smiles of hers that she always kept for him. "Good night, my dear boy. One moment—your tie is a little on one side. Let me put it straight for you. There!"

She rested her hands on his shoulders just for a moment, then, when she had finished her work, allowed her fingers to stray on his sleek hair and dropped a careless kiss upon his forehead. It was characteristic of a woman of her temperament, a woman who cares nothing for convention, but there was just a touch of intimacy in the action that roused some vague symptom of jealousy in Cecil's breast. Then Helen Harcourt flung herself back in a chair and lighted a cigarette.

"This has been a great night for you," Cecil said—"I should say the greatest in your career. I believe, if I were you, I should die happy."

"Would you?" Mrs. Harcourt sighed. "Ah, I am not at all happy this evening; on the contrary, I never felt more miserable."

"But why?" Cecil cried.

"Do you know what I mean? No, I am afraid you don't, Cecil. So we had better go back to first causes. Why have you quarrelled with Alan?"

The girl fairly staggered back before the directness of the attack. She had no time to fence or dodge, no time to summon up those little, lethal sophistries by which women deceive one another. The blood mounted to her cheeks, and her eyes grew dim. Then she was herself again.

"I don't quite understand what you mean," she said coldly. "I have not quarrelled with Alan."

"No? But you are keeping something from me now. You know what my ambition has been for you—you know that I wanted to see you happily married to the finest man I know. And now something has come between you. Won't you tell me what it is?"

"You are imagining these things," Cecil said. "I like Alan Chamberlayne immensely. I am sure that he is all you say he is, and more. But I don't want to marry him, dearest, and, above all, I want to go on the stage."'

Mrs. Harcourt sighed gently.

"I was afraid of that," she said. "My dear girl, I have had scores of young women to stay with me from time to time, and, after they have once seen me play, every one of them has wanted to go on the stage. Do you know what I earned for the first three years of my career?"

"What does that matter?" Cecil said petulantly.

"My dear, it matters a great deal. If fame and fortune are to do you, any good, they must come in the early thirties—after that it's too late. Ah, I know, and that is why I am so bitterly disappointed to think that you should have turned your back on your own happiness so deliberately as you have done. Fate gave me the same chance, and I also turned my back upon it. Shall I tell you the story?"

Cecil nodded. She was strangely moved by the torrent of bitter words that had fallen from her companion's lips, words that seemed to have a new shape and meaning, declaimed as they were by one who knew the utmost value of every syllable. And the great actress was playing now with a force and intensify that she probably had never displayed before, for she was playing, not to an audience, but to the soul of one girl, playing for the stake of human happiness.

"Very well," she said. "I'll tell you. But first give me another cigarette. I suppose it is the proper thing for the adventurous heroine to tell her story with a cigarette between her lips. At least, that is what the public expect, and you are my public for the moment, Cecil. I married a good man, who took me from a sordid home, and I, like the fool that I was, thought I was conferring a favour upon him. From the very first he spoilt me. Everything I wanted in reason I could have, though I knew he was saving all his income for a specific purpose, and when occasionally he remonstrated with me on my extravagance, I only grew angry and accused him of being mean. Mean! Good Heavens! Now I know he was one of the most generous men on this earth. And so it went on for two years— two long, dragging years—during which my husband grew poorer and more anxious, and then I left him."

"You mean you quarrelled?" Cecil asked.

"Oh, no, there was no quarrel. I have not even that excuse. I had made up my mind that he was a poor creature, absolutely unworthy of being the soul-mate of so brilliant a personage as myself, and so I left him.

"I must have cut him to the heart. can see his face now as I told him everything. It was to be an absolute parting. It was understood that we were never to meet again, and we never have. But I know where my husband is, and what he is doing, and I know now what has ever been a bitter humiliation to me. I know it was I who kept him down, who spent his money, and crippled him in a thousand ways. For the man I regarded as a poor, spiritless creature is to-day one of the most successful men in England. Directly he was free from me and the weight that I hung about his neck, he began to rise, and he has never looked back since. I am not going to try and coerce you—I won't attempt to influence you further. I merely wish to point out what a lonely, unsatisfactory life my own selfishness has built up for me; I want to save you from the same melancholy fate, if possible. With my eyes wide open I made the same mistake as you are going to make. With my eyes wide open I turned my back upon my husband and my child—"

"A child!" Cecil gasped. "How could you?"

"Ah, how could I? My dear, I have asked myself that same question many times. And I am glad to hear you speak like that, because it has proved to me that my story has not fallen on barren soil. Yes, it was part of the price I had to pay. It was my own suggestion. And now, when the shadows are beginning to deepen, and my hair is getting grey, I am alone in the world!"

"But you might go back," Cecil whispered.

"I shall never do that," Mrs. Harcourt said sadly. "It would not be fair to either of them; I doubt if it would be even fair to me. Why should I obtrude upon their lives after all these years? They are well and happy, they are devoted to one another, and there was no shadow on my husband's face when I saw him last, like there used to be in the old days, when I was dragging him down. No, he and the boy—"

"Your son!" Cecil exclaimed. "How strange it seems!"

"My son—yes. And, mind, this is a secret between us, which you are to keep till I give you leave to speak. And do you know why I tell you this? Because you love Alan Chamberlayne, you admire his many fine qualities, and you are afraid he may dominate you if you marry him. Of course he will; no husband is worth his salt who doesn't. And now I have finished. Do you want me to tell you any more? Do you want me to tell you why I like Alan so well?"

A great light suddenly leapt into Cecil's eyes, the lines about her lips trembled and wavered. Then, with a smile, she got up and reached for the telephone on the table. As she called the number of Chamberlayne's flat clearly and firmly, Helen Harcourt smiled, too, and there were tears standing in her eyes.

"Complete surrender?" she whispered.

"Absolutely!" Cecil laughed unsteadily. "Absolutely! Listen..."

THE END

THE REAL DRAMATIC TOUCH

ILLUSTRATED BY FRANK GILLETT

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLVI, Sep 1917, pp 386-392

IT was a great nuisance, of course, especially for a young man in the first flush of a glorious manhood, properly gilt with a fine overlay of necessary dollars, but there was no help for it. It did not necessarily follow that Perry Brogden was any the less of a business man because his life was entirely devoted to pleasure and the seductive joys of New York. Because he came from a race of business men—the instinct was in his blood—and, rich as he was, he did not view with equanimity the idea of sacrificing a million or two simply because he was too lazy to stretch out his hand and get it. Still, it was the season in New York, the hospitalities of Fifth Avenue were in full blast, and the theatres were more than usually alluring. All this naturally appealed to the fine, athletic young man, who was wont to come up smiling at breakfast-time on the morning after the night before, and declare with perfect truth that he had never felt more fit in his life. Moreover, he belonged to all the exclusive clubs, and there wasn't a single dowager in Fifth Avenue who would not have been delighted to call Perry Brogden her son-in-law.

And now he had come into still more money, left him by a typical backwoods uncle, the genuine "hayseed" who had made his money somewhere north of Patagonia, where he had died after forty years in a wilderness without one solitary glance of Western civilisation. This uncle had been the owner of the Island of—well, let us call it Terra Incognita, a long slice of country, picturesque and romantic, between Brazil and Patagonia, where he had devoted his energies to something like a million head of stock. As a matter of fact, Brogden had never seen him; but this neat little accumulation of dollars had come his way now, and it was up to him to look after it. His idea was to get out to Terra Incognita with a view to making an inventory of things there, and sell the property as quickly as possible to the best advantage. He knew something about ranches, for he had once spent the best part of a year in the role of an amateur cowboy on the plains of Texas, before his father had died and the lure of New York had proved too strong for him.

He didn't in the least want to go—he had no desire to turn his back upon the theatres, where he was favourably known, and where a score or more of actresses called him by his Christian name—but he was wise enough to see the necessity of grace before meat, so to speak, so he hired himself a steam yacht and set off for the long journey beyond the reach of civilisation, taking with him one Larry Hack, a genuine Texas cowboy whom he had made friends with, and who would not only be a friend and companion, but a sound judge of the fat beeves and wool-bearing sheep that formed the population of Terra Incognita. There was an old overseer there, it was true—a dour, sour Scotsman with a taste for solitude—a handful of peons, and certain natives who did much as they liked on the island, so long as they did not interfere with the course of business.

The yacht came, in the course of time, to the little natural harbour, and the overseer was looked up by Perry Brogden and his fidus Achates in a dilapidated old hacienda where Havelock lived and divided his time impartially between his work, his whisky, and certain theological books of the school made popular by Ernest Renan and his satellites. He was a crabbed man, hard as nails, exceedingly bad-tempered, but, withal, industrious and honest, as your Scotsman is the world over.

"You'll no stay here long, I'm thinking, Mr. Perry," he said, as they smoked a pipe together. "It's a mighty fine climate the noo, and a bonny picture, but it's dull—aye, it's dull—and if you could stand it—"

It certainly was a beautiful picture, with those great frowning cliffs on the verge of the sea, and the deep fertile valleys fringed with forest trees behind, a marvellous natural picture and a perfect setting for any romance that might happen along, and Brogden was greatly impressed by it.

"It's grand," he said—"grand! Absolutely made for adventures. Do you ever have any, Mr. Havelock?"

"Never one in forty years," Havelock said. "Hoots, mon, there's nothing here to stir the sluggish blood. We used to have wee bit trouble with the natives, who are part Patagonian Indians, ye ken; but we let 'em alone, and they let us alone. And if we miss a beast or a sheep sometimes—why, it doesn't much matter, and no questions are asked. But maybe it is not your intention to stay here."

"Certainly not," Brogden said emphatically. "I'll just remain long enough to make an inventory, with a view to selling the whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel. How long do you think that'll take me, Havelock?"

"Ah, well," Havelock said guardedly, "perhaps a week, perhaps a month. But we'd better say a month. Because, ye ken, the spirit moves me sometimes, an' it takes a week of whisky to lay it again. Forby, I may keep sober for a fortnight, and then ye'll be all right."

"Oh, take your time," Brogden said. "Meanwhile Larry Hack and myself will do a bit of prospecting. You've got some nice-looking horses here, I see. Just pack us enough grub and blankets to keep us going for three or four days, and we'll have a run round the island. I don't want to interfere with your work, and you needn't hurry over it, either."

For the next few days Brogden and his companion ranged far and near over the glorious country, at one time down in the well-watered valleys, where the grass was nearly knee-deep, and the contented herds were fattening, at another killing game in the forest that fringed the slopes, and anon along the higher ranges, that were capped with snow. It was a glorious life in one of the most glorious climates in the world, and the air, fine as champagne, sang in the veins of the adventurers.

"Aye, it's real grand, this," Larry Hack said. "Knocks spots off Texas. All we want now is a convenient bar and an occasional mix-up, just to make things happy and comfortable. The better I feel, the more I spoil for a fight. Not that we're likely to get it here, anyhow."

"I'm afraid not, Larry," Brogden said regretfully. "The few Indian chaps we've met are picturesque-looking enough, and the right type, according to the pictures, but they are most disgustingly peaceful."

"Well, I guess we've got to make the best of it," Hack said. "Anyway, it's good to be out in the open air again, with a fine horse between one's knees, and, perhaps, with the blessing of Providence, we shall hit something up yet."

A day or two drifted by, until at length they emerged out of the valley past a wide, sweeping plain along the edge of the cliffs, which were broken here and there by sudden declivities and rocky ramparts that fringed the shore. A mile or so ahead, on a bold promontory, stood an old farmhouse, or hacienda, which appeared to be deserted and more or less falling into decay, a house built there, no doubt, in the old days by some sanguine settler, before the advent of old man Brogden, with his new methods and keen business habits. The two men lay there on the grass, smoking their pipes after a hearty tea in the early afternoon, and idly debated as to whether it would be better to push on and make the picturesque ruins their headquarters for the night, or stay and camp where they were. They were still talking it over idly, when Brogden sat up suddenly.

"Here, what's going on over there?" he asked. "I can see figures moving about like bees outside a hive, and—well, if that place isn't on fire, I'm much mistaken."

Surely enough a thin wisp of smoke rose from the hacienda and drifted idly on the amber air. It increased in volume presently, until a dense black pall hung overhead, and yellow tongues of flame lifted themselves above the broken timbers of the house. Round about the blaze a score or more of figures danced excitedly, buzzing around like wasps that had been smoked out of their nest. Brogden grabbed eagerly for his glasses.

"They're Indians," he said, after a long inspection. "Here, Larry, look for yourself. They're Indians on the war-path, and they've set the place on fire. Here is your adventure, my boy—something wrong over there."

"Yes, they're Dagoes, right enough," Hack drawled, "And, by all that's holy, they've got guns, too! There's something going on inside that old building that's got their dander up considerable. Now, shall we cut in and take a hand, or shall we just sit quietly here and see how the land lies? It would be a thousand pities to miss the fun."

By way of reply, Brogden snatched the glasses from his friend's hand and glued them to his eyes.

"It's no ordinary scrap," he said. "There's something going on here that I don't like the look of at all. Look, there are women there! White women, too! American girls dressed in white, and ladies, I should say!"

Amazing as it seemed, it was even as Brogden said. With the aid of the powerful glasses he could see everything that was going on. He saw the natives rushing the building they had set on fire, he saw one of the shuttered windows open, and two girls standing on the verandah, clinging to one another and evidently terrified to the verge of distraction. Then he saw half a dozen men rush frantically towards the blazing mass and snatch up the girls in their arms.

A moment or two later a man appeared, a man dressed as a tourist, in a neat grey flannel suit, a man who had a cigarette in his mouth and in either hand a revolver, which he emptied indiscriminately into the crowd opposite. In Larry's language, he was no slouch of a shot, for half a dozen of the foe suddenly collapsed and lay there on the grass, taking no further interest in the proceedings. Almost immediately there was another rush, and the man in the grey suit was overpowered in his turn and rendered harmless. Then the whole party slowly began to move towards the cliffs where the rocks shelved down to the shore.

"Well, that chap ain't no slouch as a revolver shot," Larry said, speaking in the tones of an expert. "But say, boss, are we goin' to stop frozen here, or are we goin' to hustle round and strike a blow for civilisation?"

"Of course," Brogden said, "it's no use butting headlong into a fray like this. There are only two of us, and we are none too well off for ammunition. If we do anything rash, we shall share the same fate as the rest. No, we must stalk them, and try to take them unawares."

The horses were picketed in a little grove, the provisions hidden, and then, very slowly and cautiously, Brogden and his companion crept through the long grass in the direction of the spot where the Indians had gathered together in a circle, in the centre of which were their captives, bound and helpless. The whole thing was amazing—a sort of spectacular dream, and the last thing in the world to be expected in that peaceful spot.

"Seems almost like a nightmare," Brogden murmured. "Now, who, in the name of Mike, can those people be, and what are they doing here? The man in the grey suit might have just stepped out of his club, and those two women are most beautifully turned out—white muslin dresses, suggestive of Paris, and all the rest of it. I have never seen anything like it outside the theatre before."

"Well, we'll soon know," Larry said cheerfully. "Wbat we've got to do is to get as close as we can and lie low till it gets dark. I don't suppose they'll trouble to post any sentries. Guess they look upon themselves as absolutely safe, which is where we come in later on, when they lie down with clear consciences for a good night's rest. And we, with a couple of revolvers apiece, ought to be able to round up the bag and balance the accounts of those chaps nicely."

"Yes, that's a very good programme," Brogden said impatiently, "especially if they play the game according to the rules. What are they up to now?"

As he spoke, one of the girls in white was jerked to her feet and led away, shrinking and protesting, in the direction of the low cliffs, which hung sheer for twenty feet or so over the edge of the sea. Through the glasses it was plain to see the fear on her face and the look of dumb anguish in her eyes. But her struggles and protestations were— apparently all in vain, for she was urged on, not without violence, towards the edge of the sloping cliff where it came within some twenty feet or so of the sea beneath. And all this was being watched with the keenest interest by the two men, anxious and willing enough to take a hand, but quite conscious of the fact that any interference on their part might lead to unpleasant consequences to themselves without benefiting the hapless victim in the least. They could only sit there and sweat, and swear, and grind their teeth, hoping against hope that something might happen to give them a real chance.

And then gradually they began to understand what was the real intention of those dancing, yelling fiends on the edge of the cliff. They could see that the leader of them—a big man who appeared to belong to another nationality altogether—had passed a rope or a lariat under the woman's arms, and that she was being lowered over the edge of the cliff until she was suspended six or seven feet above the sea. Then the end of the rope was made fast on the top of the cliff, and the woman, helpless and impotent, was left to her fate.

Hack drew a long, deep breath.

"Do you begin to spot what the game is, boss?" he whispered. "Those devils are going to leave that woman there to drown. As the tide rises, so will her fate be sealed. And all we can do is to sit here looking on like a pair of dudes in the stalls of a New York theatre! I have seen some pretty cold-blooded things in my time, but never a stunt like this. Guess that woman's got some secret they want her to tell, and they'll leave her there to drown or call out before it is too late. Here, say, I can't stand this!"

"What are you going to do?" Brogden asked.

"Well, I guess I'm going to crawl back as far as the camp and get hold of a Winchester. You just freeze yourself here till I come back. I ain't no slouch as a shot, as you know, and from here I calculate I can lob a bullet into that big bully in the sombrero, and fix a receipt stamp to his little account. And there ain't no hurry, either. It brings the blood into your face, but I calculate that poor girl's got to wait a spell. And maybe we can save her yet."

Larry Hack was back in a few moments with a rifle in his hand. He gazed long and earnestly in the direction of the speck of white suspended there between heaven and earth over the side of the cliff. Then his lips began to twitch and his eyes to sparkle.

"Say, boss," he said, "you ain't no slouch as a swimmer."

Brogden admitted the compliment, which in his case was no compliment at all, because he really was an expert in the water.

"Yes, that's all right," he said, "but I don't quite see how it helps matters."

"Well, it's like this, general," Hack went on. "You drop into the water and swim out as far as the girl. You can't reach her from the sea, I know, but that's where I come in. Now, from where those chaps are they can't see what's going on, and, as far as I can guess, they seem to be getting pretty busy with the Bourbon. And they won't move till the girl cries out, which I don't suppose'll be till the water reaches her knees, anyhow. Long before that time you ought to be right handy there on the spot, and when the persecuted heroine drops into your arms, you can swim with her round the point. There's a bit of a sandy beach on the far side which you can just see, and you can land her there. You can do that, can't you?"

"Well, that ought to be easy enough," Brogden said. "I can get her ashore without a doubt. But how am I going to lay hands on her?"

"I'll tell you all that," Hack said. "I can creep within a couple of hundred yards or so along yonder ledge of rocks, and I'm going to shoot her free."

"Shoot her free?"

"Guess that's the programme, commander. I can hit that rope at two hundred yard? and cut it in a couple of shots, or I've forgotten how to shoot. Why, I've split a willow wand at three hundred yards before now, and won money over it. Oh, that's all right. Then you get along with the booty, and I'll skirt the camp and join you on the other side with the Winchester and our revolvers. We'll put up some sort of a fight, and maybe, with any luck, get away safely."

It was a desperate chance, but then the situation was desperate, and Brogden was not disposed to hesitate. He had no doubts whatever about his prowess as a swimmer, and he felt convinced that, if Larry's aim was sure, he conld manage to convey the unfortunate girl to safety without very much trouble. If she had ordinary pluck, she might listen to what he had to say, when he got near enough to her to explain, and once he had her safely in his arms he did not doubt the issue. Moreover, from where they were seated, the Indians could not see what was going on, and, so long as they remained where they were, the plan might go forward without hindrance. And once the girl was landed on the beach, and Hack joined his companion, they might have a real fair chance of getting away altogether.

The moment of danger would come, of course, directly Hack fired his first shot. That would certainly alarm the ruffians and bring them to their feet at once. But then, if Hack were cautious, he would be able to hide himself, and the search for him might, in fortunate circumstances, give Brogden the precious moments that he required.

All this having been settled, Brogden divested himself of most of his clothing and plunged boldly into the sea. A quarter of an hour's steady swimming brought him to the point of the cliffs over which the fair victim in white was suspended. He could see that her hands and feet were bound, and that she was supported by leather thongs under her arms. Apparently her captors were not entirely devoid of human feeling, for Brogden could see that the rope was padded. He could also see that the girl was exceedingly fair to look at, with regular features, which features, however, to his surprise, bore the evident marks of paint and powder. Evidently a heroine, no doubt, who was not familiar with the rough life of the South Pacific, and probably, with her unfortunate sister and the man in the flannel suit, had landed on that lone coast from some ship or yacht, which in all probability was not far off.

Those bonds were all in Brogden's favour. They would prevent the helpless heroine from dragging on him, so that, when the time came, she would be compelled to do exactly as he told her. He trod water easily and began to speak.

Hardly were the first words out of his mouth before there came the sound of a shot, followed by a second one, and then, as if by a conjuring trick, the rope broke, and the girl in white fell almost into Brogden's arms. He heard the wild scream that came from her lips as she disappeared under the surface, then, as she came up again, he caught her by the shoulders and turned her gently on her side.

"Don't be frightened," he said. "You are perfectly safe. You can manage to get the tips of your fingers on my shoulders, can't you? But, whatever you do, keep your nerve, and I'll have you out before you know what's happening."

"Is that so?" the girl said, and in a voice so astonishingly cool that Brogden was fairly startled for a moment. "I haven't the remotest idea who you are, but you are rather a comfort. Oh, I'm not going to lose my nerve. This sort of adventure is quite in my line."

Brogden went on marvelling, but said nothing. He wanted all his breath now, despite the fact that his task was an easy one, and that the girl was doing everything he could desire. He swam on steadily round the point, and was drawing into shallow water, when he heard a shout from the cliff, and, looking up, saw Hack gesticulating wildly there, utterly indifferent, apparently, to the fact that he was in full view of the foe.

"Get back, you fool!" Brogden panted.

"Too late," Hack said—"they've spotted me. They spotted me some time ago. And they've got a Maxim gun yonder! Heaven knows where they got it from, but it's there!"

Surely enough, what might have been a Maxim gun was trailing over the edge of the cliff, and what appeared to be another one suddenly showed its nose on the headland behind the gesticulating figure on the cliff. Already on the shelving bit of beach where Brogden intended to land was a band of Indians eagerly awaiting his coming.

They lifted him out of the water and, without further ceremony, rendered him helpless with ropes and rawhides. Then a moment or two later Hack, downcast and disconsolate, and much in the same sorry case, joined his commander.

They were dragged away up the cliffs to the impromptu camp, where the desperadoes were apparently doing themselves remarkably well out of a number of picnic baskets flanked by a small regiment of tempting-looking bottles, over which the big man in the sombrero effectively presided. He was apparently the leader of the gang—no doubt one of those South Sea desperadoes of European origin made familiar to civilisation through the medium of Louis Becke and other picturesque writers who have chosen the Pacific Ocean for the scenes of their stories.

For the moment, at any rate, the persecuted heroine had vanished, so had the other girl, and the man in the flannel suit was not to be seen.

"I think that'll about do," the man in the sombrero said, and immediately the two Maxim guns on either side of the camp vanished. "I think that'll do. Here, Joe, cut away those bonds and offer these gentlemen the hospitality of the circus."

"You want us to drink with you?" Brogden said. "Do you mean to say that you have the infernal cheek—"

"Oh, cut it out!" the chief pirate said genially. "You don't understand, of course. One of our chaps spotted you some time ago, but I didn't come round and exchange cards because, you see, we were busy. And when I saw what you were up to, then I let you go on, because it seemed to me that you'd embroidered some on our original scenario, and I guess we're always open to hints from intelligent strangers. Say, young man, you're a bit of a dandy with a gun, aren't you? When we saw what you were going to do, I didn't interfere, because I'm some of a sportsman myself, and I was ready to bet long odds you couldn't cut that rope at two hundred yards with rifle bullet. Well, yoa did, and I've got a record of it on the film— the thing that you took to be a Maxim gun. Guess you mistook a cinematograph apparatus for a weapon, eh? Well, it was a dandy shot, and it's going to improve our film some. You can see what our game was, but yours was a darned sight better, and if the Broad Highway Film Company have got any sense of gratitude—why, I guess they'll call you part-author of this big new film of ours, and see that you get a handsome royalty."

Brogden sat there with a cold, white light steadily filtering its way to the back of his intelligence.

"So that's the game, is it?" he asked. "Well, you fairly put it over my friend, Mr. Larry Hack, and myself. Yes, I see it's quite all right—I see, on closer acquaintance, that your wild Indians are all duds. But what on earth are you doing here? Why did you come all this way?"

"Local colour, my dear sir, local colour," the big man said. "The finest and most realistic firm in the world is the Broad Highway Film Company. And we're working on a big drama now that's going to make little old New York sit up and take nourishment. There's ten million dollars behind our firm, and the universe has got to know it. And round yonder point is a regular cinematograph ship that's taken us half round the world. I guess it'll be the finest panoramic effect ever seen on the screen, and it'll take two years to complete. Now, say, mister, did you ever hear of an actress called Crystal Rays, and another called Maizie Corn? Well, the first-named star is the lady you pulled out of the water, and the other one you haven't seen yet, and the dude in the flannel suit is our leading man. Some cast, eh?"

"You're right there," Brogden laughed, "I'm from New York, and I know. You might introduce me."

"Certainly, with pleasure, and the artist with the Winchester, the genius who's given us a new sensation in the shape of a thrilling picture. Look here, my champion shot, if you want an engagement at five hundred dollars a week with the Broad Highway Company—why, it's yours!"

THE END

THE SUPERMAN

ILLUSTRATED BY STEVEN SPURRIER

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. XLVI, Jun 1917, pp 65-70

NOW, given a palm-fringed beach in the brilliant sunshine, or in the soft light of the moon, for that matter, with Nature in her most melting and expansive mood in the background, one of three things might conceivably happen. It might be that here the poet had come with the intention of writing another "Lalla Rookh," or maybe a master of colour might have come there with the idea of painting a great picture; and, on the other hand, the whole thing might be regarded as the background for an unusually attractive scene in musical comedy. It all depends upon the point of view and the mood that you happen to be in. And certainly the palm-fringed beach on the island of Granta, in the Coral Seas, might easily have been adapted for any of these purposes, as it lay there that placid night, with the full moon shining as per contract from a glorious tropical night, powdered with stars and scented with subtle fragrance. It lay there, with the creamy sea fringing the long stretch of dazzling sand, with the palm forest stretching inland, and the deep green hills in the background, a vision of perfect poetry and a glancing loveliness, far enough removed apparently from human strife, a glorious jewel dropped into the heart of a sapphire sea, and glowing softly and tenderly in the mellow amber light.

So far there was no sign of the painter or the poet, and apparently the musical comedy suggestion was too remote to come within the range of practical politics. And yet presently, up the beach from the, lagoon on the left, there appeared a strange medley of human beings, as fantastic in that lonely spot as the figment of some amazing dream.

They came in single file across the sands, about a dozen of them altogether, led by a little man in evening-dress and a typical British sailor in white ducks and a yachting cap. The little man was small and slender, pale of face and fair of hair, parted mathematically in the middle, a little man, who surveyed the amazing picture before him through an eyeglass, which only seemed to accentuate the innocent bewilderment of his features.

The men in question were followed by a string of women, every one of them in evening-dress of the daintiest kind, Paris and Bond Street confections beyond the shadow of a doubt, lacy, diaphanous robes, that showed off gleaming arms and beautiful white necks to perfection, to say nothing of the perfect coruscations of jewels that shimmered alluringly in the moonlight. And here, therefore, was musical comedy in excelsis.

But these were no stage beauties gathered together to dazzle the eyes of the stalls and appeal irresistibly to gilded youth lolling on cotton velvet. Neither were they such things as dreams are made of, but palpitating beautiful flesh-and-blood Englishwomen, that represented collectively some of the very best blood in the kingdom. There they were, dazzling and shimmering and, sad to say, clucking like so many startled hens. And in the language of George III., when meditating over the apple in the dumpling, the wonder was how the deuce they got there. What were they doing in their full war-paint at that time of night on what might or might not have been a desert island in the ruby heart of the Coral Seas?

But everything is capable of an explanation—even musical comedy—and, as everybody knows, accidents will happen even in the best-regulated families. To go back a little while—a few months, as a matter of fact—the Duke of Grantham, that well-known sportsman, had married the only daughter of an American multi-millionaire, and on the strength of it had purchased the steam yacht Bendemeer, the very last word in luxurious ocean travel, and, at the end of his wife's first successful season in London, had set out on a voyage round the world, together with some of the choicest flowers culled from the garden of the British aristocracy. And in the course of time the Bendemeer had fetched up amongst a group of islands in the Coral Seas.

And there, on the night when this veracious story opens, every man of the party, with one exception, had left the yacht with the idea of hunting jaguars on the nearest island in the moonlight. It had been a happy inspiration on the part of some reckless sportsman, and had been taken up with enthusiasm.

"We shan't be more than an hour or two," the Duke had told the Duchess. "You can play bridge, or something of that kind, and we will leave Leckie to look after you. I don't suppose he feels like jaguars." The little pallid man in the eyeglass meekly responded that he didn't. He was no sportsman, or said he wasn't, and averred that the mere sight of a gun made him feel faint. He blinked at the Duke, and in his stammering way offered to take care of the ladies in the absence of the other men of the party. Whereat the women smiled audibly; for the idea of Bobby Leckie taking care of anything more festive than a rabbit struck them as being decidedly humorous. But Bobby Leckie took it all in good part and with a smiling good nature that rendered him a universal favourite even amongst sportsmen.

He sat on the moon-washed deck presently, basking in the smile of beauty and dazzled by jewels, until a sudden idea occurred to him. He propounded it eagerly.

"Tell you what," he said. "It's too fine to sit down there in the cabin playing bridge. Let's get out the steam pinnace and have a cruise round the islands. The moon will be up for hours yet, and the sea is like a sheet of glass. What do you people say?"

The suggestion was acclaimed with enthusiasm, and under the guidance of a reliable pilot, who rejoiced in the name of Bill Bradley, the expedition set forth. It really was a glorious night, and the steam pinnace, which really was a big petrol launch, scattered the knots under her forefoot until the yacht was lost to sight, and the boat was careering her way through uncharted seas in the hands of the blissful Bill Bradley, who was absolutely unconscious of the danger that he was running. They came under the lee of the island of Granta presently, within a mile or so of the beach, when, without warning, the boat bumped heavily on a hidden reef and slipped clumsily off again.

But the mischief was done, and it was only the speed of the motor boat that drove her up to the edge of the creaming sands before she began to fill, and the galaxy of beauty were safely landed. They were at least ten miles from the yacht on an unknown island, which might or might not have been inhabited, and they were naturally alarmed. Then, when the first feeling of fear had died away, they turned with one accord upon the unfortunate Leckie and tore him in pieces, figuratively.

He took it placidly enough, with that imperturbable good temper of his, but nothing could disturb him.

"Why blame me, dear girls?" he said. "I only made the suggestion. I didn't pile the boat up on a rock."

"But what are we to do?" the Duchess screamed.

"Oh, don't ask me," Leckie said. "We shall have to make the best of it till the men get back to the yacht and come out in search of us, which they are bound to do."

"They'll never find us," a fair-haired beauty in mauve and emeralds sobbed. "There are about a thousand of these islands here, and it would probably take the whole British Navy the best part of a year to rescue us. And, besides, what can we do in these clothes?"

"It's a warm night," Leckie stammered.

"Of course it is, idiot, or we shouldn't be here," the Marchioness of Somerfield said sarcastically. "Now, Bobby, here's a chance to show what sort of a man you are. Do you think you could play the hero, like the man in Barrie's delightful comedy? Do you think you could make fire by rubbing two sticks together, or cook turtle's eggs in hot ashes, or find water by twiddling a stick between your fingers? Could you build us huts made of grass? Because, if you can't, you are worse than useless. Still, we rely upon you."

"Dear lady, I c-couldn't," Leckie stammered forlornly. "If you gave me a t-turtle's egg, I shouldn't know what to do with the bally thing."

He sat down forlornly on the sand and looked about him so helplessly that the rest of the party forgot their misery for the moment and beamed on him almost affectionately.

"This reminds me of a toy theatre one of my brothers used to have," a girl in the party giggled. "He used to work it with pasteboard figures, and had a play, I think, called 'Alone in the Pirate's Lair.* Bobby, what on earth are we to do if the pirate suddenly appears from his lair?"

Leckie shook his head helplessiy. The heroic was not his line, and he frankly said so. There were those amongst the party who had not forgotten the fact that Leckie had gone to America at the outbreak of the Boer War and had stayed there for the best part of ten years, and there were those of his candid friends who averred that he might have been doing better work in South Africa. But, on the other hand, there were certain comrades who declared that Bobby had been sent out to Colorado by a London physician, either to die there of acute lung trouble or, at any rate, prolong a monotonous existence. But on this head Bobby had always been dumb—no gibe or sneer had ever drawn an explanation from him. It was as if he wanted the incident to be forgotten, a chapter in his life that he was ashamed of. Perhaps he was feeling his helplessness now, for he sat there on the sands playing irresolutely with a cigarette case. The sprightly girl in pink returned to the charge.

"Bobby, you haven't answered my question," she said. "What would you do for us if the pirate king appeared?"

"You had b-better ask him yourself," Bobby said, "because, if I am not mistaken, here the bounder is!"

There loomed across the sands in the moonlight a picturesque figure of a man in soiled white trousers and silk shirt, with a scarlet cummerbund round his waist, from which dangled a couple of holsters that palpably contained revolvers. He was a medium-sized man, with a black moustache and beard, and, indeed, he looked the musical comedy pirate to the life. He came forward and politely removed his cabbage hat.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," he said in fairly good English. "What can I have the pleasure of doing for you? I am Don Jamie Rodgers, at your service."

Something like a groan seemed to escape from Leckie's lips, and certainly his cheeks grew paler. For the name of Rodgers was well known to him as a desperado of the Coral Seas who had a score or more of black records to his name. He was a pirate, a pearl stealer, a smuggler of opium, and worse. And out there in those waters, where supervision was practically unknown, and the British Navy had no jurisdiction, certain scum of the earth did much as they liked, and amongst that scum there was none whose name carried more terror than that of Rodgers.

Even as he stood there, leering with his mclassant eyes on the huddled flower of the British aristocracy gathered together like so many frightened birds, he was appraising the jewels that they wore in that evil mind of his. Then Leckie rose to his feet and approached the rascal timidly.

"Am I mistaken, sir," he asked, "or is that the mast of a wireless station I can see yonder?"

"Something of the sort," Rodgers grinned. "A little installation of my own, but not a powerful one."

"Then perhaps you'll l-let me have the l-loan of it?" Leckie asked. "I—I want to c-communicate with our friends over at Granta Bar. Our yacht is there. And if you'll h-help us to g-get in touch with them, I am sure that the Duke will make it worth your while. What d-d'you say?"

Don Jamie beamed on the assembled company much as a giant might have beamed on a healthy gathering of young children destined to make him a hearty midday meal.

"Well," he said, "so far as that goes, it seems to me that I shan't want to trouble the Duke. You see, it's like this, mister—I have got all I want hanging round the necks of those young women yonder. D'you savvy, old boss?"

The old boss aforesaid savvied right enough—in fact, that is what he had been afraid of all along.

"Y-you mean r-r-robbery?" he protested.

"Well, that's as good a word as any other," the picturesque ruffian said cheerfully. "You see, when I tumbled just now to the fact that the stalls of the Garden Theatre in New York on an opera night had slopped itself all over this beach, it seemed to me as if it would have been flying in the face of Providence not to take the opportunity. And I don't mind telling you, pard, as me and my mates in the launch yonder have been having a pretty slim time lately, and when one of those American gunboats comes nosing around here, we've got to lie considerable close. And that's why I am going to borrow the few odds and ends belonging to them tony lady friends of yours."

As the cheery ruffian spoke, three other men appeared on the scene from the direction of a launch lying a little way off the beach. They were not quite, perhaps, so picturesque as their leader, but they were by no means the class of individual that the cautious man cares to meet in a lonely lane on a dark night, and from the grin on their faces it was evident that they had taken in the situation at a glance. It was in vain that Bobby Leckie stammered and protested, in vain that he threatened subsequent violence, for presently the whole party were hustled along the sands without ceremony to a half-dismantled hut on the beach, above which stood the rugged mast to which the primitive wireless installation was attached.

"Here, I say," Leckie said, " those l-louts of yours are frightening the ladies. They are afraid of those revolvers of yours. You might p-put them out of the way, because I and the other man are q-quite at your mercy."

"Call yourself a man?" the pirate said. "That other chap's hefty enough, but you —gee whiz! Here, Joe, this chap calls himself a man!"

The individual addressed as Joe grinned as he swept a bold, bleary eye over Leckie's slender proportions. He seemed to regard the joke as an excellent one. And so they went on in silence till they came to the hut, where the womenkind were swept without ceremony into a sort of stable in the basement, and Don Jamie, followed by his satellites, strode into the building where the wireless installation was situated. Evidently they seemed to have nothing to fear, for Leckie and the unhappy Bill Bradley brought up the rear, treading close on the heels of the man who had been addressed as Joe.

"I wish I had a revolver," Bradley whispered.

"S-so you will in a minute," Leckie replied. "K-keep close to me, Bill."

A moment later and Leckie trod, either by accident or by design, on the heels of the big ruffian in front of him. The pirate turned with an oath and the upraising of a fist as big as a shoulder of miitton. The little man with the eyeglass appeared to step back, then suddenly impelled himself forward like a shot from a catapult, and his fist crashed with a jolt. full on the point of his Antagonist's jaw. It was just as if a small and delicate piece of machinery, with all the weight of a big horse-power engine behind it, had been set in motion, for the big man went down on his back without a sound. A second later his revolvers were in Leckie's hand, and one of them was promptly shoved into Bradley's ready fist.

"Hands up, right away!" Leckie cried.

He spoke in a clear voice, with a ring of command in it and without the slightest suggestion of a stammer. His glass was still in his eye, but those pale features of his were set as grim as death, and the finger that he laid on the trigger of the revolver was steady as a rock. He seemed to have expanded as he stood there, quiet and immaculate, in his evening-dress, with the moonlight gleaming on the pearl studs in his shirt-front. Don Jamie turned and surveyed the scene with astonishment and a certain amused contempt.

"Here, drop that!" he cried. "Think yourself a hero in some stage play, perhaps. Oh, well, if you will have it, you little fool— why, you must!"

He whipped his hand behind him, and at the same moment Leckie pressed the trigger of his revolver. There was a little crack like a whiplash, a tiny spurt of flame, and the big man's right arm dangled helplessly at his side, for Leckie had shot him neatly and scientifically through the elbow joint.

"The next man who moves will get it through the brain," he said, in the same calm, even voice. "Now, I don't want to cause any more trouble than is possible, and I don't like murder, even when it comes to swine like you. Don Jamie, or whatever you call yourself, kindly step this way."

There was no help for it, there was nothing else to be done. The scoundrels were caught neatly enough in the little trap that Leckie had laid for them, and they were looking now quite uneasily into the rim of a pair of revolvers. With a scowl on his face and a muttered curse between his lips, the leader of the gang did as he was told.

"Now, then," Leckie said, "listen to me, if you please. You are not going to frighten those ladies any more, and you are not going to benefit by what a distinguished English statesman once called unearned increment. You will be good enough to send out a message for me to the Bendemeer, which you probably know is lying not very far off, and tell them on the yacht that we are safe. You will also tell them that you have been kind enough to place your launch at our disposal, of which offer we shall avail ourselves presently, and I have no doubt you will know how to get it back again. But that, my dear sir, will be your business. Have I made myself plain?"

Don Jamie nodded sulkily. Then a queer gleam flickered in his eye for a moment or two.

"Ah, I have thought of that!" Leckie said. "I see what is passing through your mind. But my friend, Mr. Bill Bradley here, will see to it that you send the correct message. He happens to be the handy-man of the yacht and, incidentally, the understudy of our wireless operator. He is also a man of exceedingly short temper, as humorists often are, and, if you try to fool him, you will probably be exceedingly sorry for it. Bill, you kindly escort this gentleman into the operating-room, and do the needful, keeping a careful eye on him at the same time. As he still has the use of his left hand, I should leave him to send the message. Now, you go on, and I will remain here and collect the rest of the weapons."

Bill Bradley grinned whole-heartedly, as a man does who is convinced that he has the best end of the joke, and, driving Don Jamie before him at the point of his revolver, disappeared into the hut. Leckie turned to the other men.

"Now, then," he said, "turn your backs on me and throw your guns in my direction over your shoulders. Thanks so much. So sorry to put you to the inconvenience. And now, having placed temptation beyond your reach, I am going to turn the key of this door on you, and sit here, enjoying a cigarette and contemplating the beauties of Nature, and if either of you try any little game on me, I fear that you will find the consequences exceedingly unpleasant."

Leckie sat there, in the tranquil enjoyment of his cigarette, and, perhaps, pleasantly conscious that the ladies, who were not far away, could see and hear all that had taken place. And this knowledge was not displeasing to him, especially when the fair-haired girl in mauve crept up to him presently and turned a pair of dazzling and admiring eyes upon him.

"Bobby," she whispered, "you are splendid! I really had no idea—I really hadn't. And I hope you will forgive me for laughing at you. Really, Bobby, if you look at me like that again, I shall have to k-kiss you!"

"I am quite defenceless," Bobby said blissfully. "R-rather bo kissed by you than anybody in the world."

It was fortunate, perhaps, at this moment that Mr. Bradley emerged from the hut with an intimation that the message had been sent and a reply received. Then, under the leadership of Leckie, the party went slowly in the direction of the beach, headed by the smiling boatswain and Don Jamie, who was thoughtfully prodded from time to time in the region of the liver by the point of the commandeered revolver. One by one the ladies were conveyed to the launch, and presently Leckie stood alone on the fringe of sand with the pirate chief, who regarded him with a mixture of concentrated rage and bewildered admiration.

"Well, you're a fair knock-out, you are," he said. "And me thinking all the time that you were no better than a scared jack-rabbit! Well, you can go back to your friends and boast that you are the first man who ever got the better of Jamie Rodgers. And that's a fact—yes, sir."

"Really?" Lepkie drawled. "Is that so? But I'm not worrying about it. Do you know, Mr. Rodgers, I hate getting my feet wet. And yet I don't see how I am going to get into that launch without ruining a pair of Court shoes and some silk socks that cost me a guinea in Bond Street. That's what's troubling me at the present moment. I give you my word of honour that I am not thinking about you at all."

In spite of his abject humiliation and the excruciating pain in his arm, Rodgers burst into a laugh.

"Well, I guess you're some boy," he said. "And I don't bear no malice. You've fairly held me up, and if I'd known—but, you see, I didn't. Say, stranger, ten or twelve years ago, before I started this game, I was up on the Yukon, gold prospecting with the very toughest crowd on the American Continent. There wasn't a crime in the, calendar that those boys weren't up to. But there was one chap, an Englishman, come up there, who was a fair terror to the whole bunch. I never saw him myself, but I heard of him often enough. From all accounts he was a little chap, about your size, an English swell, the boys said, as nobody could down. He wasn't a tough; he had an idea that he had come there to straighten matters out and turn the Yukon into a civilised community. It was some proposition, but he did his best to put the programme through—him without an ounce of strength, and weighing about a hundred and fifty pounds! They used to say he had come to America to die of some chest trouble, but decided to live and reform the States instead. Why, he'd go into the saloon amongst the toughs, with his glass in his eye and a revolver in his hand, and clear out the whole caboodle within five minutes."

"What was his name?" Leckie drawled. "Well, I don't rightly know, but I think the boys called him 'Little Billee with the Glass Eye.' Say, mister, I guess you must have been that man."

"i guess i was," leckie said sweetly.

THE END

A DEAL IN DIAMONDS

Published in
Wodonga & Towong Sentinel, Victoria, Australia, 19 & 26 May 1916
and
The Western Champion and General Advertiser for the Central
Western Districts, Barcaldine, Queensland, Australia, 26 May 1917

A PAIR of exquisite blue eyes, tearfully despairing, looked into Gertrude Stanmore's scornful brown ones.

"Oh, so that it what that Ponting woman was hinting at last night?" she asked. "Gladys, do you mean to say?—oh, I am almost ashamed to ask you the question. Am I to understand that you deliberately stole a diamond bangle belonging to Lady Oxted and handed it over to that Ponting creature as security for a bridge debt of fifty pounds? Now, don't prevaricate; tell me the truth. Mrs. Jim Ponting didn't say so in as many words, but she inferred it. Oh, you must have been mad, mad."

Well, Gladys always had been a little fool, Gertrude told herself bitterly, but that had not prevented her spoiling her younger sister ever since Colonel Stanmore's death, and the day when they had been turned out of a comfortable home to fight the world together. But it had been Gertrude who had done all the fighting. It was she who had laid out their little income to the best advantage, and had made a place for herself in the field of journalism. It had been hard and trying work, and there were times when she grew tired and weary and dreamt of the day—well, the kind of dream that all women have who are face to face with the battle of life, and the deadly fear of defeat.

And nobody knew better than Gertrude what it meant. And now the man had come, two of them in fact. There was Lord Falmer to begin with. That somewhat serious-minded young man had fallen head over ears in love with Gladys' exquisite colouring and dainty porcelain beauty, and was ready to give up a promising political career for her sake. And Gladys herself was ready to go down on her knees and ask Heaven what she had done to deserve all this happiness. And on the top of this the other man had come along, and made the world into a bower of roses for Gertrude.

And now it looked as if Gladys had wrecked it all by one stupendous folly. Far better if Gladys had confessed her fault, and admitted that she had been foolish enough to play Royal Auction for a pound a hundred under Mrs. Remington's roof. That the good lady in question knew nothing of these midnight gambles made no difference. And because Gladys had nothing to gamble with the inevitable had happened.

"Mrs. Ponting is such a horrible creature," she said tearfully.

"Of course she is," Gertrude cried. "She is absolutely out of place in a house like this. But Mrs. Remington is a kind-hearted creature, and Jim Ponting has always been a second son to her. But what is the use of discussing that point? You lost money you cannot pay to Mrs. Ponting, and you stole a diamond bangle from Lady Oxted's dressing-room, and offered it as a security. And Lady Oxted will be back here to-morrow, and, of course, she will miss it. What are you going to do then? Oh, it's no use looking at me in that pathetic way; I can't help you. I suppose you don't know what's in the back of that woman's mind. I suppose you don't realise that it is her intention to levy blackmail on you. Mrs. Jim Ponting is no fool. She is to have the entree of your country house, to come and go when she likes, and speak of you as her dear little pal, Gladdie Falmer. Far, far better go to Falmer and tell him the truth."

"I couldn't do it," Gladys whispered. "I really couldn't."

"Well, I will do what I can," Gertrude said wearily. "You had better go downstairs to the others, or they will wonder if there is anything wrong. I told Mrs. Remington I had letters to write after dinner, so she won't expect to see me again to-night. I asked Mrs. Ponting to come and see me about eleven o'clock, so she may be here any moment now. I will do what I can for you, but it looks absolutely hopeless."

Gladys faded out of the room, glad to get away so easily. For a long time Gertrude sat before the fire thinking wearily. From time to time she caught the sound of mirth and laughter downstairs. She could hear a ripple of voices in the corridor outside as the women of the house party came to bed. It was getting late now, and it looked as if Ida Ponting had forgotten her promise. Then there came a tap upon the door and the woman entered.

At first glance there was nothing very wrong about her except a slight suggestion of exaggeration in the brightness of her hair and the pronounced pink and white of her complexion. There was, too, a little too much decolletage, an accentuation of ornaments, an exaggeration of ease and assumption of one born to this sort of thing. The brown eyes were bright and bold, the red lips a trifle too thin and greedy. Yet the average animal man would have called Ida Ponting a pretty woman, and he would have been justified in doing so. At any rate simple-hearted Jim Ponting was her absolute slave, and regarded himself as the most fortunate of men. But Gertrude drew back as if she had been some loathsome reptile, and cold contempt stood confessed in her eyes.

"You had better sit down," she suggested. "And I think it would be just as well if we understood one another. I have been talking over matters with my sister, and she has told me everything. Of course, you see that you cannot keep Lady's Oxted's bangle."

"Why not?" the other asked. "Don't mind if I smoke, do you? Thanks. But why make a fuss about it? I don't want to keep the thing. And I am quite prepared to play the game if you will do the same. Now, look here, I am not on the make. When your sister lost that money I shouldn't have pressed her for it, only I happened to be a bit short myself. Of course, I didn't mind taking the security, though I was a bit staggered when I recognised the bangle. But you can have it back if you like, and nobody will be the wiser."

"Do you mean unconditionally?" Gertrude asked.

"Oh, well, that's what it comes to. Your sister is a dear little thing, and I have taken a fancy to her. My Jim and Lord Falmer were at school together, and they've always been pals. Mind you, I owe Falmer one for trying to come between Jim and myself. It isn't due to him that I'm Mrs. Jim to-day. He's a bit of a prig, but all the same I ain't blind to the advantage of writing my letters from Falmer Castle occasionally, and that's just what I'm after. It isn't much to ask after all. I may have started life in the Gaiety chorus, but I'm no thief, Gertrude Stanmore, and don't you forget it."

"So that is your price?" Gertrude asked coldly. "Lord Falmer will not tolerate it for a moment. He would forbid anything like intimacy, and there the matter would end."

"Oh, I don't think so," Mrs. Ponting said. "Falmer is ridiculously in love with your sister, and he would do anything she asked. The question is, are you going to try?"

Mrs. Ponting put the question plainly; no longer was there a smile upon her lips, no suggestion of amiability in the harsh tone of her voice. She seemed suddenly to have lost something, to have taken one step back towards the primitive.

"I tell you it is impossible," Gertrude said. "You must do your worst. The truth must come out to-morrow, in a day or two everybody will be discussing this scandal, and you won't come out of it altogether as easily as you imagine. You will be asked many awkward questions. Oh, you may smile and think how easy it will be to answer them. But there is more than one kind of blackmail, Mrs. Ponting, and your type is not the least objectionable. They will discuss you in drawing-rooms, they will hold post-mortems in clubs. And everybody whose opinions you value to-day will smile contemptuously at the woman who thought that she could get into the best houses by blackmailing a silly little donkey like Gladys Stanmore. I can hear them saying it, I can see them smiling over it at this present moment. And your social pretensions will be done for. You smile to hear me say that. But you see I have mixed with these people all my life, despite the fact that I am only a working journalist, and you are a comparatively newcomer. We have our traditions and our customs, and we hang together as the wild animals do; indeed, we are all animals after all. And you will find that, like the stray dogs in the streets of Constantinople, we keep to our own quarters, and fiercely resent an intrusion from the alien next door."

"I don't know what you are talking about," Mrs. Ponting said sullenly. "It's all Greek to me."

"Very probably. But if you persist you will find out what I am talking about, and you will understand through a mist of humiliation and tears. If you are wise you will return——"

"Never," the other woman cried back. "Never, unless you drag it out of me. And I believe you are capable of that."

"I am," Gertrude said. "Yes, I would go as far as that. You are not playing the game fairly, and I hold that I should be justified in any step to save my sister's happiness—and my own. And then I would defy you, Mrs. Ponting. I would stigmatise your story as an impudent lie; I would show my friends what you are aiming at. And if you think that your word would be taken against mine you will find yourself bitterly mistaken. But it is useless to discuss the matter further; go to bed and sleep on it, and think of what I have said. You may take a different view to-morrow. Lady Oxted will not be back till the afternoon, and if you wish to discuss the matter further, I will meet you here after luncheon. And now allow me to wish you good-night."

Mrs. Ponting rose sullenly from her chair.

She was smiling confidently enough, but there was about her none of the easy self-assurance with which she had come into the room. With a toss of her head she closed the door noisily behind her.

She came out of her hideous waking dream presently to the knowledge of a world in which things were moving. It was as if a door had been opened somewhere, and the wheels of life were closed. Someone was screaming loudly, at the far end of the corridor; there was a tinkling crash of glass, and the thud of footsteps outside. As Gertrude started to her feet the door of her room burst open and a man entered.

As she focussed her eyes upon him she saw a slim, athletic figure, a thin, sensitive face with a mouth drawn hard and combative, like the lips of a cat when she turns upon a dog in a tight corner. In the ordinary way the intruder would have been harmless enough, the typical worker one meets in a tram or train, but Gertrude's journalistic training showed her more than this. She could see humour in the blue eyes, and something more—humour turned to the courage of despair by the proximity of danger.

The easy smile faded from Gertrude's lips, her face took a tinge of grey. At that moment she looked curiously old and worn, as if the weight of the world were on her shoulders, and she found the burden too much for her.

"Ever seen this before, lady?" he whispered hoarsely. "Now, steady, miss, steady, play the game by me and——"

The speaker paused significantly.

Gertrude stood there, her eyes fixed with flickering fascination upon the flashing trinket that her visitor held in his hand. She knew it well enough, she did not want to be told what it was. Beyond the shadow of a doubt those winking, tantalising stones formed Lady Oxted's bangle, the same ornament which had caused all the trouble. How it had fallen into the hands of this audacious thief mattered nothing. It was enough to know that it was no longer in Mrs. Ponting's custody, and that this man was here prepared to bargain over it. Slowly and surely the situation was unfolding itself to Gertrude. This man was a burglar, he had been caught practically red-handed, and had bolted headlong like a rabbit, looking for some avenue of escape, and by the merest luck he had found his way here.

But how could he possibly know that Gertrude would be interested in that particular trinket? Evidently he did know, for there was a grin on his face and the light of humour was dawning in his cunning blue eyes. He advanced a step or two tentatively.

"You tumble?" he whispered. "You're fly, miss. And if so be as you like to make a bit of a bargain wiv me——"

He broke off short, his eyes dilating and his nostrils flicked like those of a dog scenting danger. A murmur of voices came from the corridor outside, there were impatient knockings on the door, and the tones of a man calling on Gertrude by name. As the man's voice fell upon her ears, she stiffened. The knocking grew louder and more insistent, someone was suggesting that the lock should be forced. Gertrude stood there swayed this way and that by the violence of her emotions. In a dim way she began to see the path of safety, but she would have to act quickly, for there was not a moment to be lost. The burglar clutched her arm.

"See this," he whispered. "Don't you want it? Wouldn't you give one of your eyes for it? And it's yours if you'll only play the game right. Now come!"

It was exactly what Gertrude would have suggested herself. The dim and narrow track of safety had now resolved itself into a broad and luminous path.

"I think I understand," said Gertrude. "I think I know what you want me to do. And I shall know how to deal with you if you play me false. Go into my dressing-room. Close the door behind you, and leave the rest to me."

The burglar vanished without another word. Hardly had the dressing-room door closed behind him before the other door burst open, and half a dozen men in evening dress entered. There was one man in front of them, evidently a late comer, for he was still in travelling kit, and his brown, clean-shaven face was quivering with anxiety. At sight of him Gertrude uttered a little cry.

"Jack," she said. "When did you arrive? I had not the slightest idea that you were coming this week-end."

"Half a minute, if you don't mind," another of the intruders exclaimed.

"We are most awfully sorry to behave like this, don't you know, but there's a burglar in the house. He was disturbed by one of the maids in Mrs. Jim Ponting's dressing-room, and she swears that he came in here."

"Really, Captain Clinton," Gertrude protested. "Oh, this is too ridiculous. I was sitting over my fire half asleep, and if anybody had come in I must—oh, it's too laughable. I hope the thief gained nothing in the way of plunder."

"Took the lot, I understand," Clinton said. "But of course if he hasn't been there, we are jolly well wasting our time, you chaps. Miss Stanmore, I cannot make sufficient apologies."

"There is no occasion for apologies at all," Gertrude said sweetly. "Of course you are acting for the best. And now——"

There was no more to be said or done, nothing but to withdraw with a sort of shamed confusion, and leave Gertrude to the privacy of her room. She stood there a moment holding herself in with an effort. She had seen her way a moment of two before, but Jack Seymour's unexpected appearance had been something in the nature of a shock. In the ordinary course of things she would have been glad enough to see the man that she was going to marry, but not just now. She wondered half-guiltily how much he had guessed of the truth, for there had been no smile on his lips, and no love in his eyes as they met hers. Well, it was no time to discuss that point. What she had to do now was to complete her shameful bargain with the burglar and see that he made his escape good. She opened the door of the dressing-room, and bade the thief come forth.

"That was very smart of you, miss," he said. "And here is your bracelet. It's worth a goodish bit, and I don't grudge it you; and now I daresay you would like to know all about it."

"I should indeed," Gertrude said coldly.

"Well, it's like this, miss. My name is John Heggs—leastways for the present. I ain't always been on this lay. I was a gentleman's servant once, and so you see I know a good deal about country houses. Matter of fact I've been layin' about for Mrs. Ponting's jewels for the best part of the week. You would 'ardly believe it, but I 'ave been sleeping in the 'ouse for these three nights. And I was actually 'idin' on the balcony outside yonder window when you was 'avin' that bit of an argument along o' Mrs. Jim, as they calls 'er. And a nice lot she is. Lor, I remember 'er when she was getting a quid a week in a little hall down 'Oxton way. Now, look 'ere, miss, it ain't for me to preach, but there are some things that I can't stand, and that little game wat Mrs. Ponting put up on your sister is one of 'em. And, mind you, there was a time once when your father was very good to me. And so I says to myself, 'John, my boy, when you gets off with that stuff you're just going ter send that there bracelet anonymously to Miss Stanmore, and leave her to do the rest.' An' that's way I puts it separately in my pocket when I pulls off the little deal to-night. And when that maid comes in an' interrupts me, I makes a bolt of it, and 'ere I am. It was just blind luck as brought me in 'ere. An' now I 'ope as you're satisfied."

With something quite graceful in the way of a bow, Heggs tendered the precious bracelet to Gertrude, who dropped it in the pocket of her wrap. She was seeing her way clearly now.

"They say that some women are never satisfied, Mr. Heggs," she said. "And I am afraid you will find that I am one of them. Please turn out your pockets. I have no great affection for Mrs. Ponting, but all the same I cannot stand by and permit your old acquaintance to be robbed. Am I quite clear?"

"You don't mean that, miss?" Heggs said forlornly.

"I do, indeed, Heggs. I daresay it seems a pity, but don't forget that you owe your liberty to me. I've no doubt you value that more highly than all the diamonds in the world. Yes, that's right. Are you quite sure? But I'll take your word for it. Now if you open the dressing-room window quietly you will be able to drop on the flower-bed below, and the rest I can leave to your discretion."

Without protest Heggs turned out his pockets. A heartfelt sigh broke from his lips as he let himself gently down from the window and struck out vigorously across the lawn. He knew his ground to well to fear anything in the way of an ambush, and his sigh of regret was echoed by one of relief from Gertrude, as she closed the window behind him and switched on the light.

"I suppose I ought to be satisfied," she told herself dubiously. But sleep was not for her that night. She was glad when the morning came, if only to walk about the gardens, and gather a handful of late flowers. And there amongst the lingering roses she came face to face with the man whom she was anxious to see, and whom she dreaded to meet at the same time.

"You are early, Jack," she said with a faint smile.

"Like you, I couldn't sleep," Seymour replied.

"Oh, and how do you know that I could not sleep?"

"Have you looked at yourself in the glass this morning?" Seymour asked. "Haven't you got something to tell me, Gertrude? Of course, I have no right to pry into your secrets, but it seemed to me last night there were several blind fools about——"

"Enough," Gertrude cried. "I saw you were not satisfied. And I am bound to tell you everything. At first I did not mean to. But I see now that your happiness and mine are at stake. I see that going out of my way to shield another——"

"By which you mean your sister, of course? My dear girl, are you going to live entirely for that selfish little fool? Don't you know that the way in which you have given up everything for her sake was one of your attractions in my eyes? Look here, Gertrude; you and I will be poor enough by comparison with Gladys and Falmer, and that is why we have need to be more jealous of our good name. And now I want you to tell me why you were hiding that thief in your room last night. Mind you, I am not insisting upon it, and, if you refuse I shall never mention the subject again. And I shall never treat you with less respect or admiration."

"You are making it very easy for me, Jack," Gertrude said with tears in her eyes. "Half an hour ago I did not believe that I should ever be happy again. Let us sit down here on this old seat, and I will tell you everything."

She told the story from end to end without one word in the way of extenuation. And as she proceeded she found her hands in those of Seymour, then his arm went about her waist as he bent down ad pressed his lips warmly on hers.

"And that is all," he said. "What a story! What a comedy! And what a pity we have got to keep it all to ourselves. Anything that Gladys has to say to Falmer is no business of ours. Of course, she won't tell him. And I think you can leave Mrs. Jim Ponting to me. She will me glad enough to get her jewels back, and she will probably realise that there is no chance of dating her letters from Falmer Castle. In her own vernacular, there's nothing doing! And now do you feel easy in your mind?"

"Oh, yes, yes," Gertrude whispered. "I believe that this is the happiest moment of my life."

THE END