TABLE of CONTENTS

THE WITNESS

THE MASTER'S VOICE

NOT ON THE RECORDS

THE BROKEN LUTE

AN EYE FOR AN EYE

EARLY CLOSING DAY

THE MAN WHO RANG THE BELL

THE BLINDWORM

A BOOTLESS ERRAND

THE MAN WHO GOT THROUGH

THE WITNESS

ILLUSTRATED BY FRANK GILLETT

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. LI, Feb 1920, pp 233-238

MAINTREE sat on the balcony overlooking the compound, trying in vain to piece the puzzle together and evolve something logical and convincing out of the chaos. Out there in the compound the blistering sun, in a heaven of brass, shone down on the dry grass and withered vegetation, for it was the hot season of the year, and everything wilted under the merciless heat of the afternoon. There was no sign of life anywhere, except that now and again a tired sentry dragged himself across the grass and disappeared at intervals into the shadow.

For Maintree was a prisoner, detained there in that barren compound on the frontier until such time as he could be committed for trial by the Resident Magistrate and sent down country to appear before the Superior Court.

He had breakfasted more or less in solitary state, and for some hours had been sitting there, trying to see his way out of the maze of circumstantial evidence that the prosecution was weaving about his feet. And the more he thought of it, the less he liked contemplation of the future, for, indeed, everything was against him.

The mere fact that he had not killed Stooke had nothing whatever to do with it. The prosecution said he had, and, what was more to the point, they appeared to have a good deal of evidence in proof of the charge. To begin with, Maintree was known to have been on exceedingly bad terms with the tea planter; they had had at least two violent quarrels, and on one occasion, in the presence of witnesses, they had come to blows. For the purposes of the case it mattered nothing that Stooke had treated Maintree exceedingly badly. It was quite immaterial that Stooke had had a sinister reputation in the neighbourhood, and that, putting the case at its very best, he had been an exceptionally sharp man of business. In point of fact, he had done Maintree out of his garden in an almost barefaced and cynical fashion. He had taken advantage of the fact that the latter was something of a visionary and a dreamer, given over to scientific and natural pursuits, to the great detriment of his prospects. But this was in itself a proof of malice against Maintree.

He had parted with his garden under duress, and his prospects had been very bad indeed but for the fact that, just after the transaction was completed, a distant relative in England had left him a fortune. But this had come too late to prevent friction between the two men and an openly -expressed threat on Maintree's part to do Stooke a mischief if ever the opportunity should come his way.

In the course of time Maintree had turned out of his holding and had found some sort of a habitation in a more or less dilapidated bungalow on the Delhi road. And here he busied himself, pending his return to England, with his collection of moths and butterflies, which was, by common consent, the best of its kind in India. The thing might have been forgotten altogether, when it suddenly loomed large in the gossip of the district again by reason of the finding of Stooke's body lying just off the roadway, the unfortunate man having evidently been killed by a shot fired at close quarters from an ordinary sporting weapon. Stooke had evidently been killed instantly; his left side was badly torn, and the watch he was wearing penetrated by a shot or two, which had caused the little timepiece to stop at twenty-five minutes past three. This was held, very properly, to fix the time of the crime, and though Stooke had many enemies, especially amongst his employees, the district made up its mind at once that this was the work of Maintree. He had been seen in argument with the dead man not long before, his shot-gun was missing, and, when inquiries were made, Maintree professed to have lost it. Nor could he satisfactorily account for the time between the hour when he was seen talking to Stooke and the moment when he returned to his own bungalow to tea. Investigations were set on foot, with the result that Maintree had been arrested and brought before a magistrate on two occasions. On the last of these he had been remanded for a week, and to-morrow would see him before the Bench again, probably for the last time before he was committed for trial. It appeared to be a hopeless case from the first, and gradually and surely Maintree was coming to the same conclusion.

He was waiting now to see his lawyer with regard to one or two points which the latter wanted to place before the court on the morrow. Presently the gate of the compound opened and Maintree's advocate made his appearance.

"Well, have you got any further?" he asked.

Maintree shook his head thoughtfully.

"No," he said. "I am just as mystified as you are. But I never touched Stooke."

"Yes, but we have got to convince the magistrate of it. Now, let's talk this matter over as if we were detached from it altogether. Somebody killed Stooke. You have no doubt whatever about that, I suppose?"

"Go on," Maintree said; "that's admitted."

"Very well, then. Stooke was killed with a shot-gun well within an hour of being seen in conversation with you. There was bad blood between you, and you threatened him with violence on more than one occasion."

"I did, the swine!" Maintree muttered.

"Perhaps you don't see the significance of that admission. It's evidence of motive, and that counts for a good deal, let me tell you. Stooke was killed with a sporting gun using the same shot that you use yourself. You may contend that scores of men here use exactly the same shot, but that doesn't help you much. And when you are asked to produce your gun, you say you don't know where it is. That's a lot to ask a magistrate to believe."

"But it's true, all the same," Maintree said.

"Yes, but, man alive, how did you lose it? Even an absent-minded beggar like yourself can't lose a valuable sporting gun without knowing anything about it."

"Well, it was like this," Maintree said. "I had a few words with Stooke, mostly sarcastic, but we parted without any violence. He went along the main road, and I turned into the deep path between the cane brake and the water ponds, so that I was hidden from view. I was going round that way to the bungalow because I had heard a rumour from one of the natives to the effect that he had seen a laced-wing butterfly."

"Oh, go on," Denton said wearily. "Can't you forget those wretched butterflies for the moment?"

"Ah, well, perhaps it is more important than you think," Maintree said. "I didn't believe what the man said, because there hasn't been a laced-wing butterfly taken in these parts for over thirty years. I don't suppose there are half a dozen of them left in India. But you never can tell. I went that way because I knew that, if there was one of those moths to be seen, it would be somewhere near water. You may not know it, but the laced-wing is never seen except between two and four. And I found one— I found one. I dropped my gun, and I must have chased the insect for the best part of three miles before I caught him. And I can show him to you now, if you like."

Denton waved the suggestion aside.

"I took my prize home, and then I went back for my gun. I couldn't find it."

"Of course you couldn't," Denton said. "Picked up by some thieving native, no doubt. Now, I believe all this, but you'll never get a magistrate to. Oh, come, Maintree, can't you see what a tight place you are in? If what you tell me can be proved by any independent witness, then we can establish the fact that you were some miles away from the scene of the crime at the moment Stooke died. We can establish that that took place about half-past three from the unshakable evidence of the damaged watch. Did you meet anybody on the way?"

"Oh, yes," Maintree said.

"Then why on earth didn't you tell me that before? Who was it you met? Some neighbour?"

"No; a man I have never seen before. He came upon me quite suddenly just after I had secured the butterfly. I was spreading the insect out and mounting it on a sheet of cork, when somebody hailed me. I was so busy with the work that I never heard the man come up. It's a very lonely bit of road, you know, and as those pools are supposed to be haunted, no native ever willingly goes that way. I was squatting on the ground, pinning out my butterfly, when the stranger in question spoke to me. I looked up and saw a man seated on the back of a flea-bitten grey pony—a little man with a keen, clean-shaven face and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. He looked like a good-humoured, amusing sort of chap who, I should say, would be very good company. He was very friendly, and quite free and easy in his manner. A man of about sixty, more or less. He asked me what I had found, and I told him. He was very interested, because he told me he was a bit of a collector or something of that sort, and he had never seen a laced-wing before. He didn't believe they any longer existed. I gathered from what he said that he was a stranger in these parts, probably on a visit to some planter; but we didn't go into that, and he volunteered no further details. He asked me a great many questions connected with butterflies, and I suppose we must have been chatting together for a quarter of an hour."

"What time would that be?" Denton asked.

"Oh, well, after three, anyhow. I knew that by the position of the sun. And these are things that I do understand."

"Then you didn't get the man's name?"

"I didn't, worse luck. But of course I should know him again—I should know that keen, thin face anywhere."

Denton paused in thought for a moment.

"This is very important," he said, "very important. If what you say is correct, and you can find that man, then you can walk out of the court-house to-morrow free. You'll have to appear before a deputy magistrate, because Shelton is laid up and has gone up to the hills for a week, and another man is coming down from headquarters to take his place. He's a fine chap. Very different to the Resident Magistrate— a real fine lawyer with a mind of his own. But never mind about that. What we have got to do now is to find this chap we speak about. I get about a good deal, but I don't know a single planter within fifty miles who has any outsider staying with him just now. It's a very slim chance, Maintree. It looks to me as if your man was passing through, and if he doesn't happen to catch sight of the account of your trial—well "

Denton shrugged his shoulders eloquently.

"The funny thing is," Maintree went on, "that I do know his name, but, for the life of me, I can't think of it. He was showing me a fly he had captured, and in taking out his pocket-book he dropped it. I picked it up, and saw the name in gold letters on the outside. It was marked J.E. something or other. A strange thing that one cannot think of a name like that, and yet I can remember the initials perfectly. It was a peculiar name, too, and one I never heard before."

Maintree rambled on in that quick, nervous fashion of his under the cold, scrutinising eye of his advocate. He knew perfectly well that Denton was listening to him with more than suspicion—in fact, though he did not say so, he was coming to the conclusion that his client was trying to deceive him. And Maintree could not feel angry about it. either. He knew that, had the positions been reversed, his point of view would have been much the same as Denton's.

"Very strange indeed," Denton said drily. "Of course the thing's impossible. But it isn't myself you have to convince, but a magistrate, who will go entirely on evidence. He won't be prejudiced either way. It may be in your favour that you are appearing before one of the best men in India; on the other hand, it may not. My dear fellow, you must see how terribly appearances are against you. I should be lacking in my duty if I didn't point this out,

I don't want to labour the point and go over the old ground again, but if we could only find that gun of yours, it would be something. However, I'll do the best I can."

With this cold comfort Denton went his way, leaving Maintree to his own gloomy thoughts. He sat there on the verandah, looking out across the dreary compound, trying once more to find some suggestion of light in the darkness. And he was none the less unhappy because he had told Denton no more than the truth. Had the whole story been a fabrication of lies, he would have been far easier in his mind. The mere fact that he was telling the truth only served to weigh the more heavily upon him.

He could see it all before him now quite plainly. He could see the sly malice in Stooke's eyes and the smile of triumph on his thin lips. He could remember every word that passed between them, and he could have written it down verbatim. He had turned his back upon the man who had robbed him, and then he had gone down the road between the brake and the chain of water-pools, boiling with rage and filled with the hatred of contempt for the man who had swindled him. He could remember that even then, distracted as he was, his thoughts had reverted to the story which the native had told him with regard to the laced-wing butterfly, and how even at that moment he had found himself wondering if he would be fortunate enough to come across one. Not that he had been in the least sanguine, because to his certain knowledge no specimen of that gorgeous purple-and-gold insect had been secured for the past thirty years. And just as he had come to this conclusion, behold, a brilliant object rose from the centre of the brake and fluttered in all its panoply of gorgeous colouring over his head.

He remembered dropping his gun and starting in instant pursuit, but for the life of him, afterwards, he could not recollect the spot at which he had abandoned his weapon. And then the chase had begun. It had been a long and weary business, one moment in the brake, and the next knee-deep in one of the pools, a hot and sweating struggle which had ended, the best part of an hour later, in the capture of the prize. And this was the fateful hour that Maintree had to prove as one in which he had not been anywhere near the neighbourhood of his enemy. He had secured the butterfly at length at a point quite three miles from where, about that moment, Stooke had been lying dead, and a witness of the fact had appeared just at the psychological moment."

Yes, it was the exact moment, as Maintree remembered now. The grey-haired, clean-shaven man in the gold-rimmed spectacles had asked him the time. He replied casually enough, without looking at his watch, that it wanted something to half-past three—a fact which seemed to surprise the stranger, who inquired how it was that Maintree was so certain. He replied that he had made a study of such things, and, indeed, this was a fact, because there was little in the way of Nature that Maintree did not understand. He had indicated the position of the sun, and the length of shadows falling from the thick brake, and apparently the stranger had been satisfied, for he smiled and casually remarked that that was one of the sort of things that everybody ought to know.

Then they had fallen to chatting generally, and the man on the grey horse had produced his pocket-book, from which he extracted an insect which was unfamiliar to him, and which he asked Maintree to name. The latter had done so without the slightest hesitation, and it was at this point that the stranger dropped his pocket-book. In picking it up and returning it Maintree had noticed the neat gold lettering on the cover of the pigskin case. The initials " J.E." stood out in his mind now in symbols of flame. He was as sure of them as he was of his own identity, and yet, for the life of him, he could not remember what the rest was. And, indeed, it was in the interest of his own life that he was sitting there, with his head in his hands, trying to sweat it out.

Now, what was that remarkable name? It was not particularly long or intricate in the way of spelling; on the contrary, it was the sort of name that tripped readily off the tongue when once the mind had grasped it— a compact, business-like sort of word, which seemed to Maintree at the time to fit the identity of the owner like a glove. And yet, though he sat there till darkness began to shut down and it was time to go back to his narrow quarters, no sign of illumination came to him.

So far as Maintree could see, there was no getting out in that direction. Unless some blind luck came his way, he was never likely to look upon the face of that amiable stranger again. No doubt he was someone passing through—a travelling inspector, perhaps, a district superintendent, or maybe somebody doing the work of somebody else.

No doubt by this time he was hundreds of miles away—perhaps in a different part of India altogether—and unless by chance he came across the account of the trial in one of the papers, he might never know that the life of a fellow-creature was in his hands. And even if he did see the report, it was long odds against his connecting it with the casual acquaintance on the roadside who had discovered a rare butterfly, unless, indeed, Denton could see his way to make the laced-wing butterfly a prominent feature of the case, on the desperate chance of the fact being brought before the eyes of the man with the gold-rimmed spectacles.

And so the hot and weary night dragged on, till morning came, and with it Denton once again.

He was no more sanguine than he had been the night before. He listened to all that Maintree had to say, and, without enthusiasm, agreed to the latter's suggestion.

"Well, it can't do any harm," he said, "and it may attract the attention of the man you speak about. But it will take time. You will probably be committed for trial this morning, and conveyed down country to a civilian gaol. The delay is all in your favour, but it's a mighty slim chance."

"I know that," Maintree said.

"Well, I'll do my best. Your case comes on at ten o'clock, and I'll be at court at that hour."

Ten o'clock came, and with it a sergeant and his file, acting as civilian police for the time being. The sergeant was well enough known to Maintree—a sporting West of England man, who had had more than one day's shooting on Maintree's property. But he was no longer the civil individual he had been, but a gaoler now, who had evidently made up his mind as to how the case was going. Quite curtly and without prefix, he ordered his prisoner to follow him. This was the first indication to Maintree of how his own little world regarded the position in which he stood. It was something in the way of a shock, but Maintree smiled steadily as he followed.

He found himself presently in a bare whitewashed room with a long ink-splashed - table, at which native and other advocates sat, and behind this a raised platform with a big chair in the centre, and over it the Royal monogram. It was a rude court of justice, after all, but it served the purpose.

With the exception of the little knot of people round the table, the court-house was empty. As yet the legal luminary who was taking the place of the Resident Magistrate had not taken his seat, and Maintree had a little time to look about him. He stood in the dock now, with the stolid sergeant by his side. He was wondering what had become of Denton. He was wondering, too, why no curious neighbour or old acquaintance had put in an appearance. No one had seemed to rally round him, and, on the contrary, no one seemed to care to listen. Perhaps they had already made up their minds as to what was. going to happen, and thought it would be more decent to stay away.

Then a little door behind the gallery opened, and a man dressed in spotless white bustled in. As he took his seat. Maintree's lower jaw dropped, and he stared at the newcomer as if he were looking at a ghost. In that instant, with something strangely familiar dancing about before his eyes, his mind, by some unconscious process, leapt with the word that had been haunting and eluding him all night.

"Look here, Braddock " he said.

He broke off abruptly, conscious of what he was saying, and perhaps conscious, too, of the incongruity of it. Who was Braddock, and why did he use that word? Just for a moment he was too confused to understand. And yet Braddock was the right word—he knew it in his bones.

"'Ere, drop that," the sergeant said. "Remember where you are!"

A jolt in Maintree's ribs brought him to himself.

"I am very sorry," he stammered. "No disrespect to the court or Mr. Braddock."

"Sir John Braddock," the sergeant said gruffly.

Something of this seemed to catch the ears of the man on the bench, for he looked keenly in the direction of the dock. Then the eyes of judge and prisoner met, and a gleam of recognition passed between them.

"Bless my soul!" said the man on the bench. "Why, it's the man who caught the butterfly!. "

Maintree gripped the rail of the dock and tried to steady himself. He had found his witness.

THE END

THE MASTER'S VOICE

Published in The Queenslander, Saturday, 5 November, 1921.

Everard Dix was exceedingly sorry, but so far as he could see there was no help for it, as he explained to his friend, Max Clayton, as they sat over a cigar in the former's comfortable flat after dinner. Max Clayton was a writer of some repute, with aspirations in the direction of the stage, and Everard Dix had promised to finance the new comedy which was destined to mark an epoch in the history of the drama. And so on.

"It's a blow," Clayton murmured. "It's a blow, and there's no getting over it. But I know you too well to think that you would let me down without some very good reason."

"Oh, there's reason enough, all right," Dix groaned. "And I owe you an explanation. Now, you know what my business is, don't you?"

"Oh, something to do with paper, I believe," Clayton said vaguely. "Something in the City."

"Yes, we make paper, but only of a peculiar kind. It's the sort of stuff that bank notes and exchequer bonds and all those kind of things are printed on. With the possible exception of the Bank of England note paper, there is nothing like it, and we have always boasted that it cannot be forged. And that, my dear chap, is where we made a mistake, and that, indirectly, is why I can't let you have the money."

"That is interesting. Go on."

"Recently we lost one or two big contracts in America because a clever gang there have been extensively forging gold dollar bonds on a splendid imitation of our paper. Most of our paper has been supplied to a firm called Goldsack, in Liverpool, who are probably the biggest printers of Government and bank securities in the world. Amongst their secrets is a marvellous ink, the ingredients of which are only known to the heads of the firm themselves, and with that ink, plus our paper, we were able to laugh at forgers. But not now. My idea was to get a new paper that would only take the Goldsack ink, and that if the printing was tampered with the forgery would be detected at a glance. And I managed it."

"Then what have you got to worry about?" Clayton asked.

"Well, my idea was to get a paper that would show forgery by heat or damping, so that they would change colour. In other words, supposing you warmed one of those securities, or wetted it with a moistened finger, the ink would change colour, that is on a genuine bill. If the thing was a forgery then there would be no change. And I did it."

"Well," Clayton said. "If you've done that you ought to be a jolly sight better off than ever."

"I did it, and sent on a specimen of the work to Goldsack's in Liverpool. But it never got there. Three specimens went through the post, and none of them were delivered. Then we tried registering. The postman who delivered the registered letters was waylaid in a business lane in Liverpool, and robbed of his bag. That had been fairly early in the morning, before people were about, and not so difficult as it sounds. I telephoned Goldsacks, but I'm not quite sure they believe my story. Our paper is perfect, and I can do all we claim in connection with Goldsack ink. But I can't get the specimen up to Liverpool. I don't want to go myself, because those chaps will be watching me, and I don't feel inclined to trust anybody else. Now, can't you think of some scheme to get to Goldsack's without incurring the suspicions of those rascals? I don't want them to know anything about it. I want to make them feel that we have dropped the whole business, as it is too dangerous to go on with. You are an ingenious-minded chap, who has written a good many clever stories—can't you show me a way? It's worth thinking about, even if only for your own sake."

Clayton helped himself to a fresh cigar, and smoked thoughtfully.

"Did you ever read a story of Poe's called 'The Purloined Letter'?" he asked.

"I can't cay I have," Dix said languidly.

"Ah, well, that's a pity. It's all about a clever political Johnny who stole a compromising letter which he had to use daily, and which he hid from the police, who were searching for it day and night. They couldn't find it, because he had put it in a place where everybody could see it. It doesn't sound very much told in bald words, but it is one of the most convincing stories, in the English language."

"I begin to see your drift," Dix said more enthusiastically.

"Here, let me have a chance. And if you'll give me a dummy parcel, a kind of forgery of what I have to deliver, put up in a separate envelope with your seal on it, then I think I can properly fool those chaps. It's just as well, perhaps, in that envelope, to write a few lines to the effect that you have done the best you could, but that you regret to say that so far your efforts have not been crowned with success, and that in the meantime you are sorry that pressure of other business—well, you know what I mean. Give me that, and the real thing in another sealed envelope, and if I fail, well, I do."

Dix smiled behind his cigar.

"Oh, my dear chap, don't be absurd," he said. "You must come to grief. Why, you couldn't keep it secret for five minutes. Everybody would know what you are going to do, and you will be robbed of that paper long before you get to Liverpool. Besides, you have been in and out of my office every day for the last fortnight, and if there is treachery, as I suspect, then the foe will be certain to have a tip, and keep their eye on you if it gets known that you are even contemplating going to Liverpool. Oh, it's impossible."

"Look here," Clayton said eagerly. "I can only fail, like the rest of them. I want to walk into your office in my own inconsequent way, and ask you before your staff if you've got the stuff ready for me, as I propose to go to Liverpool, say, the day after to-morrow. You can frown and look annoyed, and take me into your private room, and there hand over to me the real thing. But the skeleton envelope must reach me without any one being any the wiser. I wonder if you'll give it to me to-night?"

"Oh, I can, of course."

"Then let me have it, and I will go to Liverpool by the night mail the day after to-morrow, having first come round to your office openly as arranged. Then, on the following evening, you dine with me at the Cafe Royal, and see me into a taxi on the way to Euston. Before I go, I shall openly ask the waiter to give me one of those glass flagons of special whisky they keep, and you will see me throw it into the bag by my side. Then all you've got to do is to go quietly to bed, and I'll come round within a week and collect that thousand pounds as per contract. Oh, you needn't worry, I'm not going to fail."

"Oh, very well," Dix said finally. "I'll make up a parcel now for you to take away, and the next scene of the comedy had better take place in my outer office after lunch on Thursday afternoon, which I think is the day you propose to go to Liverpool."

There were a score or more of clerks in the outer office as Clayton entered, on the following Thursday, including Dix himself, who had apparently just come back from lunch. Clayton hailed him in his usual free and easy style in a voice that could be heard all over the office.

"Well, here I am," he cried. "And I haven't much time to lose. I might, with any luck, be able to meet you this evening at the Cafe Royal for a mouthful of dinner before I catch the Liverpool express, but it is only a sporting chance, and if I am not there by 8 o'clock don't you wait. You had better give me those papers now——"

Dix frowned, and appeared to bite his lip. He glanced somewhat uneasily round the crowded office, and signified to Clayton to follow him into his private room.

"I suppose you know what you are doing," he said, dubiously. "I have put myself into your hands, as I said I would, but it looks to me as if you were simply asking for trouble. Didn't I tell you I suspected treachery in the office?"

"It's all a part of the programme," Clayton explained. "And all a part of the scheme I hinted at the other night. The master's voice, and all the rest of it. Now, give me that other parcel. I suppose it's all right. I guess you have got the genuine article this time?"

"Sure thing!" Dix responded. "And if you are successful you get the cheque, and I make—well, goodness knows how much. But tell me——"

"Not a single word, my boy. Now, you turn up at 8 o'clock, and don't worry yourself any more about it until you see me in London again."

It was a little after 8 that Clayton bustled into the Cafe Royal, and took a seat at a table where Dix was already waiting him. He was, apparently, in the highest spirits, he spoke freely in that somewhat strident voice of his, he did ample justice to a good dinner, and subsequently turned to the waiter with an order for one of those special flagons of whisky for which the house is famous. It came presently in the form of a little round flat bottle, the sort of thing that used to be called a pocket pistol, and this Clayton dropped carelessly into the kitbag that stood by the side of his chair. Half an hour later he got into a taxi, and made his way to Euston station. There he entered the express train, and placed this bag in a corner seat inside a first class corridor carriage. Then, as there was plenty of time to spare, he walked off down the long platform, apparently in search of papers. The guard's whistle had already gone when he boarded the train again and took his seat in the carriage.

The compartment was no longer empty. On one side of him was a well-dressed woman, more or less elaborately clad in furs, and on the opposite side a youngish man, well turned out and aristocratic-looking, who carried about him a subtle suggestion of the army. Just as the train was about to move out of the station the inspector came to examine the tickets, and the man on the opposite seat suggested that the inspector would be the richer by half a crown if he placed a reserved label on the carriage window next to the corridor.

"I hope you don't mind, sir," he said, as he turned smilingly to Clayton. "You see, we shan't be in Liverpool till 4 o'clock in the morning, and my wife and I hope to get a little sleep. People are fond of wandering about in these corridor trains from one compartment to another——"

"Oh, certainly," Clayton said. "That's rather a good idea of yours. I never thought of that. But, then, you see, I am not much of a traveller."

There was a certain amount of fitful conversation afterwards between the three occupants of the carriage, then gradually it ceased, and Clayton's companions appeared to slumber. It was nearly 12 o'clock before the dramatist reached his bag down from the rack, and proceeded to take a liberal portion of the special whisky from his flask, which he diluted in a travelling cup with a small quantity of soda. Then he finished his cigar, made himself as comfortable as possible, and in turn closed his eyes.

When he came to himself again the train had come to a standstill, apparently in some terminus, and Clayton came out of a confused dream to find that a porter was standing over him. Then, in a dazed kind of way, he heard the man's voice.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said. "But this train 'as been in for quite ten minutes. I shouldn't 'ave known you'd been 'ere at all, sir, only I 'appened to look into the carriage to see if there was any stray newspapers lying about. You must 'ave been very sound asleep."

"I suppose I was," Clayton admitted. "You don't mean to say that it is past 4 o'clock?"

"Ten minutes past, sir. But aren't you well?"

"I do feel most uncommonly stupid," Clayton said. "Here, take my bag and put it on a taxi."

Clayton stumbled out of the carriage in a dazed sort of way, and lurched along the deserted platform very much like a man who is getting over a fit of intoxication. His head was aching, and there was a nasty taste in his mouth. But this was not troubling him much, nor the fact discovered later on that the sealed packet which he had carried in the breast-pocket of his overcoat was missing. Apparently his travelling companions had vanished some time before, without making any attempt to wake him, and Clayton's thoughts were just a little confused as he drove along through the streets in the direction of the Adelphi Hotel. There he registered and went straight to bed, where he remained till well into the afternoon, by which time he was practically himself again. He partook of a hearty lunch, and then called for the local directory. He was busy for most of the afternoon and the best part of the evening, but apparently so pleased was he with the result of his labours that it was early in the following week that he made his way back to London again. During that time he made no attempt whatever to communicate with Dix, and it was Wednesday afternoon before the found himself free to call up Dix on the telephone, making an appointment to meet his friend at the latter's flat at 7 o'clock in the evening.

"Are you quite alone there?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," Dix said. "I am using the private 'phone of my own office. Yes, I'll see you at 7 o'clock; in fact, you'd better come round to dinner."

"That's all right," Clayton said. "And you mind it's a jolly good dinner, too, because I've earned it."

"Oh, you have, have you?" Dix asked. "Why on earth didn't you send me a wire, or call me up on the telephone. I've been worried to death about you."

"Not good enough," Clayton explained. "You might have been out, and possibly the very man in your employ whom you suspect might have answered the telephone. But I'll tell you all about it when we meet this evening. Ring off."

Dix did so reluctantly. He was waiting in his flat impatiently enough for Clayton to put in an appearance, which the latter did all in good time, though he refused to say a single word till he had done ample justice to a good dinner, and was lying back in his chair with a choice cigar between his lips.

"Now then, out with it," Dix said. "Or I shall do you a violence. Did you manage it?"

"In one word, I did," Clayton replied. "I handed over that skeleton security to old Goldsack himself, and gave him a pretty general idea of what was going on. When the old chap properly realised what a desperate gang we had been up against he was properly impressed. Of course, he treated me as your confidential agent, and I was permitted to see all the tests that your work was put to. No, you needn't ask any questions, they were all absolutely successful, and Goldsack told me that in future they would have no hesitation in using your new paper for all their best impressions. So you see I did get the thing through, as I said I should, and, what's more, those enemies of yours have gone off under the impression that all your efforts have been failures, and that they can return to the States under the happy delusion that they can continue their forgeries with impunity. Well, if the American police do their duty, the whole of the gang will be laid by the heels before many months are up. The best thing you can do is to sack the people you suspect, because you are likely to have some pretty fat orders from old Goldsack at an early date."

Dix drew a long breath of relief.

"Well, that's all right," he said. "My dear fellow, you have put me under an obligation that I can never repay. Of course, you shall have the money for your comedy, and more if necessary, and even then I shall be in your debt. But I don't quite understand how you worked it, all the same."

"Well, I came here to tell you," Clayton said. "And it's very simple, after all. Now, I knew perfectly well, from what you told me, that I should be followed to Liverpool. One of your clerks gave the game away after I was in your office last week, and we were shadowed to the Cafe Royal. In my overcoat pocket I had the dummy parcel, and in the lining of my kit bag was the real thing. When we were at the Cafe Royal I spotted the people who were after us. They were seated at the next table, and heard every word we said. They saw me take that parcel out of my overcoat pocket and put it back again. And, of course, they heard me order that whisky. When I got to Euston station I posted the genuine papers to myself, after taking them out of my kit bag and re-addressing them to the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, to make sure. When I returned to my carriage, there, sure enough, were the two people, a man and a woman, who had been dining at the Cafe Royal. Of course, they'd seen me put my kit bag in the corner of the carriage, but they didn't mind that. And I didn't mind the man tipping the guard to put a reserved notice on the carriage, because he said he and his wife wanted to sleep. Directly after we got to the Cafe Royal they also ordered a flagon of whisky, which, no doubt, they doctored on the way to Euston with the dope they had prepared for me, and when my back was turned, and my kit hag proving to be unlocked, the flagons were changed. You see, that prevented any violence, which people of that sort always avoid if they can. So, apparently, I walked into their trap with my eyes open, and when I was under the influence of the drug they took the bogus envelope out of my overcoat pocket, and, of course, from their point of view, all was lovely in the garden."

'"That stuff might have killed you," Dix exclaimed.

"Oh, no, those kind of people don't go in for drama like that. I guessed I was going to be drugged, and took the stuff because I wanted these people to know that I was insensible when they robbed me, and not shamming. And, besides, it was experience. I know now what it feels like to be drugged, and therefore, if ever I write about it, I shall do so at first hand. So you see, like a conjurer, I forced my card on those people, and they took it quite innocently. So there you are, that's the whole story. Anybody could have done it."

"Could they, indeed!" Dix murmured admiringly. "Well, I beg to differ. But, at any rate, you have earned your money, and I shall be only too pleased to pay it to you."

THE END

NOT ON THE RECORDS

ILLUSTRATED BY DUDLEY TENNANT

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. LIII, Feb 1921, pp 296-302

SERGEANT DONALD MACNAUGHT, B Section, Frontier Police, came out of the Superintendent's office with his head in the air and the assurance that the commission provisionally promised him was as good as in his pocket. True, he was a stranger in the Harris Fork district, having been moved there quite recently for a specific purpose, and this was undeniably a drawback out there in the wild, where local knowledge is a big asset in the tracking down of criminals. But then Macnaught had a proper conceit of himself, which usually goes with a Scotchman who happens to be born in Belfast. And, moreover, Superintendent Donovan had given him a free hand, so it was up to him to justify himself and, in the course of time, emerge triumphantly in the silver stripes that marked the higher rank.

And, so far as the ambitious Sergeant could see, the matter was pretty plain sailing. He had laid his plans before the Superintendent, after a careful study of the map, and the great man had been pleased to nod his approval. Beyond question, the quarry, in the shape of that reckless desperado Jimmy Hayes, had been marked down only the day before in the settlement on the far side of the foothills which were known as Eagle Ridge. Hayes had come there in one of his meteoric flights, ostensibly to bury his wife, but really to display himself in his most heroic light to an admiring community which, be it whispered, tendered to the desperado its entire sympathy. They were a wild, rather lawless lot out there, and brute force was a ritual. Besides, Jimmy Hayes was a man of undeniable courage and resource, a sort of Western Robin Hood, with a dash of Claude Duval, and in his more conventional days had been exceedingly popular. Then the wild blood in him had broken out, away down west at Dingo City, where he had found himself involved with a set of gamblers who had the temerity to try and rob him under the guise of a friendly game of poker. There had been trouble over that, and Hayes had got away, leaving one man for dead. That was merely an incident. He lay low till that was forgotten, then returned to Harris Fork, where he was in partnership with a sort of hybrid Jew called Marks—a partnership which for a time was exceedingly successful. This was owing almost entirely to Hayes's courage and resource, and it might have ended in fortune on both sides but for the fact that Hayes had journeyed once more to Dingo City, where there had been more trouble with his old antagonists, and where another of them had bitten the dust. There was a hue and cry after this, so that for many months it was impossible for Hayes to show himself at Harris Fork, and after a time rumour had it that he was dead.

At any rate, Harris Fork saw him no more for the best part of a year, during which his wife did not hear from him, though she always declared that he would come back one of these days.

She was a little, fragile flower of a woman, totally unfitted for those high, cold altitudes, with their terrible winter of snow and frost, but there was no denying her courage and her hopefulness that some day, when the partnership would be dissolved, she and Hayes could go down South. The partnership was dissolved, after Hayes's disappearance, by Marks, who cut it abruptly short with the statement that he had lost money over it, and that, so far as he was concerned, Mrs. Hayes could shift for herself. In other words, he robbed her in the most cold-blooded fashion, so that she had to go out into the settlement and get her own living. And this she did until the hard work became too much for her, and just as winter was setting in, she died—murdered, the women said, to put money in the pockets of a scoundrel.

And then, on the day of her funeral, Hayes put in a dramatic appearance. Where he came from and how he knew what had happened, nobody could tell. He just appeared out of nowhere by the side of the grave, and when the ceremony was over he set out, with a cold grey eye and a grim line between his brows, to look for Marks. But Marks had somehow got to know what had happened, and he was nowhere to be found. He was found at last, and what Hayes regarded as an ill-directed shot smashed his shoulder-blade. Hayes probably left him for dead, and promptly disappeared. He would have stayed, in the ordinary course of events, and faced the music, but as there was a warrant out against him on two other charges, he probably realised the slenderness of his chances and vanished.

Within an hour the Superintendent at Harris Fork was in full possession of the facts. He may have had his own ideas on the subject, but his duty was plain. He had to arrest Hayes, and, as he himself was wanted elsewhere, he had placed the matter in Macnaught's hands. The Sergeant worked it all out. He himself would ride over in the direction of Harris Fork, and two sections were telegraphed to meet him from the frontier on the far side of Eagle Ridge. They would thus take the criminal between them, and the rest would be easy.

So Macnaught mounted his horse and started out to cross fifteen miles of broken mountain country between the station and Eagle Ridge. He had his map in his hand, and a photograph of the criminal, together with his description. He glanced at it again as he jogged along. Hayes, according to the printed matter, was a big, well-knit man, apparently about forty, with a clean-shaven broad face. The characteristics were not particularly marked, but it was good enough for Sergeant Macnaught, and he was feeling on good terms with himself as he made his way between the rocky passes to the high ground, with its fringes of pine, and visions of promotion lay before him. He was a kindly man, was Macnaught, despite the grim current of blood in his veins, because, you see, his mother had been Irish, and there were times when the sentimental mood dominated him.

He was not thinking of that now—he was thinking what the Superintendent had said, and he was just a little uncertain in his mind as to the weather. For the first big snows of the year were due, there had been a hard frost last night, and the weather has a great deal to say to the puny schemes of men in that wild North-West Territory. In the ordinary way the ride to Eagle Ridge was in the nature of a picnic, but if the snow came, then it might end in a race for life.

And over the high ground beyond, at the back of the nodding pines which looked down on Eagle Ridge, there were broken ragged splashes of cloud that gradually marshalled themselves together till the blackness of the pines was no blacker than the sky beyond. And then, when Macnaught was about half-way, the snow came down in earnest.

It began with fine particles like spray; then, as the wind increased, it howled and swirled round Macnaught's head till his eyes were blind and he could see but a few feet in front of him. It was as if the whole world had been blotted out in a deluge of white—a howling, roaring world with a wind thrumming in the pines like harp-strings. It went on until the horse pul]ed up and, trembling in every muscle, refused to go any further. Macnaught dropped out of the saddle and sheltered himself as best he could behind his faithful beast. He stood there for an hour, until he was frozen to the very marrow, until every object in the dreary landscape was wiped out, and until he had not the remotest notion where he was. The white spindrift was knee-deep, and still creeping upwards like a tide, and then for the first time Macnaught recognised his peril. He turned his back to the wind and looked in the direction whence he had come—that was, as far as he could look any way. So far as he was concerned, he might have been inside the Arctic Circle. He dared not go back; to go forward was equal madness. But ever and again a torn wrack in the cloud showed the crest of pines on the distant hill, and he knew, at any rate, that Eagle Ridge lay over there. So he struggled on, walking his horse with increasing difficulty at every step, until he could move no further, then he fell helplessly to his knees, and the horse rolled over by his side.

How long this had been going on he did not know. He could only guess, by the fading light, that it was late in the afternoon, and that, unless a miracle happened, he would never see Harris Fork again. A certain dumb apathy filled him, a certain carelessness as to the future. Well, he had done his best, and there was an end of it. He would not be the first Mounted Policeman who had perished by the wayside in the execution of his duty.

It seemed to him that he slept a little, and that presently he woke with something calling him. The wreaths of snow were still volleying round his head, the white battalions of the gale were still screaming in his ears, and he was frozen to the very soul. But surely someone was calling to him, some voice in his ear beckoning him on? Then he recognised the sound as that of the bark of a dog.

A dog meant human companionship, a sledge, perhaps, and the thought of it galvanised Macnaught into life He struggled to his feet and yelled at the top of his voice. Then the dog barked again, and something that sounded like a faint "Hello!" was borne on the breast of the gale. Again Macnaught shouted, and this time a man unmistakably replied.

"Here we are," the voice said. "I'll find you."

It seemed an unconscionably long time— indeed, it was upwards of an hour—before two hands were placed under Macnaught's arms and he was dragged to his feet. As if conscious that help was at hand, the horse rose, too. And then followed a breathless struggle for life, which ended in another hour in front of a black cavity in the hillside —in other words, a cave with its back to the wind, into which Macnaught was dragged, together with his weary charger. Something trickled down his throat, he was conscious of warmth and the cuddling caress of furs, and then he realised that he was in a bit of a cave in which a fire was burning, and that a big man, with a careworn face and a brown beard streaked with grey, was looking at him in a kindly fashion.

"That was a close call," the stranger said.

"Aye, it was that," Macnaught replied. "But for you, I was down and out all right, and I'm not going to thank you. You must have had a bit of a struggle getting me here."

"Well, you are here," the stranger said. "And now let me give you something to eat. You snuggle up in those furs whilst I fry a rasher of bacon. This isn't going to last long; we'll have the frost back before daylight."

Macnaught ate presently and got his pipe going. Then he and his rescuer began to talk. The other man had been caught on his way through a pine path whence he was going down to the plain and the milder climate on the other side of the divide. He had been trading up at Eagle Ridge, and had, perhaps, been a little too anxious to get through the pass before the first snows fell. Luckily for him, he had his provisions and his dogs, and he had hit the cave in the hillside just at the psychological moment. His name, it appeared, was Prosser, and he was principally concerned in the fur trade. Then, under his eyes, he glanced casually at Macnaught's uniform.

"Policeman, ain't you?" he asked.

"That's so," Macnaught admitted. "I was on my way to Eagle Ridge on business."

The other man appeared to be interested.

"I think I can guess," he said. "After Jim Hayes, ain't you?"

There was no occasion to deny the fact, so Macnaught admitted it. He wanted to know if the other knew anything about the criminal.

"I have met him," Prosser said. "Fact is, Jim and I were quite good friends at one time. He's not a bad sort, but has a devil of a temper, and is quite reckless of consequences when he is roused. I was down at Dingo City, and saw both those troubles he was in there. And you can take it from me, stranger, that it wasn't his fault either time. And as to that poisonous scoundrel Marks, I ain't blamin' Jim in the least. When you know how he suffered at that man's hands, and how his wife's death was entirely due to that villain, you would have been sorry for Jim, policeman though you are."

"I am sorry for him now," Macnaught said. "But then my private opinion has got nothing to do with it. If half I hear is true, Marks asked for all he got."

"Aye, he did that," Prosser said. "I knew Mrs. Hayes well, and a dearer little woman But I'm not going into that. So you expect to get hold of Jim, eh?"

"Sure to," Macnaught said laconically. "He must have been mad to have come back like that."

"Well, I don't know," the other man drawled, as he sucked thoughtfully at his pipe. "Jim was sure fond of that pretty little wife of his. And I think, Sergeant, if you had ever seen her—"

Prosser broke off and stared intently into the stove as if he could see visions. He stroked his beard with the streaks of grey in it, and his eyes had a far-away look in them.

"I knew Jim Hayes pretty well," he went on, "and I knew what he had to put up with. A plucky little woman, she was, and never said a word when Jim made up his mind to come up here prospecting in the mines. Not as he ever meant to stay. His idea was to make a fortune and get South, and he was in a hurry, too, because he could see what the winters hereabouts were doing for his missus. And then he struck it, him and Marks together, and he did all the work and took all the risk—he had plenty of that, let me tell you—until he won through and made Marks's fortune. Then there was that trouble down in Dingo City. He ought never to have got into that by rights, but, as I am telling you, he was always a headlong, impulsive sort of fool, and he wasn't quite as good at poker as he thought he was. But he wasn't going to be robbed, all the same, and that was the cause of the trouble. Then he must needs go back there again, right amongst 'em, and that time he had to fight for his life, whatever folks may say. And if the Sheriff hadn't been in it, and hadn't been half afraid of the gang, no more would have been heard of it; but they made it out wilful murder, and Jim, he had to fly. Couldn't come back any more, couldn't see his wife, though he wrote to her—wrote her a letter that she never got, because Marks saw to that. And when he heard the truth, it was too late. He came back to attend his wife's funeral and kill Marks, and, if I know anything of Jim, he's plum sorry he didn't succeed. I am telling you all this, Sergeant, because I know you are after Jim—I knew it as soon as I saw your uniform. You were going to catch him between two fires the other side of Eagle Ridge, and, but for this storm, you probably would have done so. Now, isn't that right?"

"Perfectly right," Macnaught agreed. "But I doubt if we shall do it now. He's probably perished in this storm, and, after what you have told me, I am not sorry, though, mind you, there was promotion waiting for me."

"If you succeeded, eh? Well, perhaps you will yet."

"Oh, well, it's no pleasant job, mine," Macnaught said in half extenuation.

"I see—you have got to do as you are told?"

"That's right," Macnaught agreed. "But never mind about Hayes. You saved my life. It was a million to one against my getting through, and almost that against us finding our way here. And you must have known that, though you didn't mind taking your life in your hands with about as much chance of finding me as if I had been no more than a flake of snow. But you did it, and I don't know how to thank you."

"Oh, that's all right," Prosser said casually. "It's more thanks to the dog than to me."

He indicated the well-fed dog and the horse standing patiently in the corner, and refused to hear any more. So they sat there in the warmth, half buried in their furs, listening to the dying storm outside, and conscious presently of the increasing cold. Then Prosser rose and looked outside into a still white world where the wind had died to nothing, and overhead the stars, like spilt sheaves of golden grain, burned against a sky of granite.

"It will be fine going in the morning," Prosser said. "Hard as iron in an hour or two, by which time, with any luck, I'll be through the pass down on to the plains. But it will come back again. It will come again before noon."

With that he turned in, and the two men slept. It was broad daylight and well into the marrow of the morning before Macnaught crept out of his furs, only to find that Prosser and his team had gone. They must have been gone for some time, for the stove had burnt low, and the bacon which Prosser had cooked for his guest's breakfast lay tepid in its pan. Macnaught wondered at this sudden flight, until he recollected his host's prophecy that the storm would break again before long. Outside, the snow was frozen so hard that the tracks of the sledge were none too well marked. Over behind Eagle Ridge there was a violet haze, and near at hand a faint murmur within the pines that warned Macnaught of what was coming in the near future. So he hurried through his breakfast and slung himself on the back of his horse presently, and crossed the frozen plain in the direction of the settlement. He hurled along almost recklessly, for long before he reached Eagle Ridge the white cohorts were dancing about his head, so that he made the town and the big general store there with some difficulty. No sooner was he inside, seated in front of the stove, before the storm came down again in earnest. He sat there, turning over the events of the past few hours in his mind, and hoping that Prosser was through the pass before the demons of the air broke out again.

There were half a dozen men seated round the stove, members of the settlement, hard, lean settlers, miners and others, discussing the weather in their slow and deliberate way, when the door of the store was flung open and three men entered. Macnaught recognised them at a glance. They were the sergeant and two troopers who had been told off to help him. One look into their faces, and Macnaught knew that they had failed. And the other men seated round the stove looked, too. They wanted no one to tell them what this detachment of Mounted Police was doing in Eagle Ridge. Macnaught saw a smile pass from face to face, a smile of quiet triumph, as he knew, and an indication that these people here were all on the side of Hayes. And they knew that justice had been baffled.

"Hello! So you've got here?" Macnaught's fellow-sergeant greeted him. "Any luck?"

"Most infernally lucky to get here," Macnaught said.

"Same here," the other man responded. "The storm caught us last night, and we had to stop. Question, where is he now? Any of you men seen Jim Hayes?"

Again the slow smile went round the stove like a mental telegraphy. The police had failed, and every man listening rejoiced in the fact. A lean individual seated in a corner turned slowly to the questioner.

"Not since yesterday morning," he drawled. "Jim, he come unexpected, just out of nowhere, as it might be. And we 'uns here thinkin' him dead, and not one of us expecting him. He didn't come as you 'uns come now, sitting round the stove and passin' the time o' day. He come and stands by the side o' the grave where we was burying that wife o' his. It were yesterday mornin', an' most of us had turned out, because, you see, Jim's wife, she were sort o' popular, an' there wasn't one of us as wasn't ready to lend her a helpin' hand. She'd have died earlier, she would, but for some of us."

"Well, get on," the Sergeant said impatiently.

"You asked for facts an' I'm givin' 'em you, pard," the old man went on. "If ever a woman was murdered, it were Jim Hayes's wife. And who murdered her? It were that pesky skunk of a Marks—him as is lyin' in his hut now with a bullet through the shoulder that ought to have killed him, the dirty swab. Not as we knew it, because we didn't know as the claim had turned out so well. But we know it now, because yesterday, Jim he up and told us."

"Oh, do get on!" the Sergeant exclaimed.

"Oh, I'm comin' to it all right, mister. There we was round the grave of the whitest little woman in the State, and she done to death by Marks because he thought her husband was gone, and that he could rob her of what was her due, and she working to keep body and soul together, and half dying o' the cold! And if we'd only known it, we'd have had his black heart out o' him long ago!"

The Sergeant stirred impatiently, but nothing seemed to disturb the even tenor of the speaker.

"We was standin' round the grave," he said, "an' parson, he just spoke his last piece, when there comes a man pushing his way through the crowd, right and left, and he stands by the side o' the grave an' looks down at it sorrowful like, though his face was hard enough as if it had been frozen. And there 'e stands, and we wonderin', till I looks at 'im again, with his bowed head and bent shoulders, and that brown beard o' his with the streaks o' grey in it, an' I says to myself: 'By the livin' Moses, if it ain't Jim Hayes!' An' Jim Hayes it was—aye, Jim right enough."

The old man paused, with some sense of the dramatic values, and gazed triumphantly around him. Macnaught sat there, the illumination almost blinding him.

"Stop a moment," he said, in a voice that he hoped was steady. "How long had Jim Hayes had a beard? From our description of him—"

"I don't know nothin' about that," the old man said obstinately. "He used to be smooth-faced, but he's got a beard now right enough, and it was Jim, too. I calls out, and the others see I was right, an' Jim, he turns to us when it was all over, and he asks where Marks was, and when we'd heard his story we told him. So he lays out for Marks, an' late in the afternoon he got him. Left him for dead. Then he gets his team together and off he goes. And that's the truth, Sergeant, as any man around the stove will tell you."

A long silence followed, whilst every man was turning the problem over in his mind. Either Hayes had got away down the pass in the direction of the valleys on his way to the frontier, where he would be safe, or he had been caught in the big storm and had perished. As to this, they would know in time. But the one man there who could have told them everything sat sucking at his dead pipe and stared into the stove.

For Macnaught knew that Hayes had got away in safety, and, so far as he was concerned, there was one incident in the chronicles of the North-Western Police that would never be told.

THE END

THE BROKEN LUTE

ILLUSTRATED BY HOWARD K. ELCOCK

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. LIII, May 1921, pp 604-609

THE strange and tragic disappearance of Eugene Lastaire created quite a sensation even outside musical circles. It was too big a thing for the newspapers to miss, and accordingly they made the most of it. From such meagre information as the Press could gather, Lastaire had left London for a remote village in Devonshire after a somewhat unpleasant interview with Dennie Morthoe at the National Opera House. Everybody knew Morthoe was the lessee of that famous building, and one of the leading impresarios in Europe. A rich man himself and a musician of undoubted power and genius, Morthoe's great ambition was to form a school of opera of his own, and for this purpose he had sunk a vast fortune in the National Opera House, where he had gathered around him a collection of the most famous singers and musicians in the world. And not the least amongst these was Eugene Lastaire.

He had come to Morthoe a few months before, without reputation and without introduction, from one of the big schools of music on the Continent. What his nationality was, Morthoe had never gathered, for on that point Lastaire was both shy and secretive. That there was native blood in his veins Morthoe had not the slightest doubt. All he could gather was that this protegé of his had drifted westward from somewhere on the American coast in the neighbourhood of the Gulf of Florida, and that he had picked up a certain amount of education where he could find it. He was very dark—so dark, indeed, that the suggestion of negro blood in his veins was apparent to most people, which might have accounted for his sensitive nature. But this mattered little or nothing to a broad-minded and cosmopolitan musician and sportsman like Morthoe. It was enough for him that Lastaire was a great musical genius, with an almost boundless future before him. Like most pioneers, he had had to struggle hard; but Morthoe saw to it from the first that he had his chance, so that within a few months the discerning critics began to point Lastaire out as the coming man. And, indeed, one or two of his compositions had already carried him a long way.

It was at this point that he came to Morthoe with a first complete act of a new opera which aroused Morthoe to a high pitch of enthusiasm. The wonderful colour and melody of the work appealed strongly to him, for here was not only a great musical attainment, but a breadth and originality that promised fine things in the future.

Morthoe had literally jumped at it. If the opera finished as it had begun, then without doubt the new work would see the light at the National Opera House. Lastaire was advised to go away and devote his whole time to the completion of his masterpiece.

With this commission in his pocket, he went down to the north coast of Devon, where he worked on the opera day and night, writing and publishing musical trifles in the meantime as a kind of relaxation. And it was one of these slight melodies of his that led up to the tragedy.

It was only a little trifle in the way of a folk song, a weird, haunting, curious bit of work, full of original touches and alive with the fire of genius. It had been published by a West End firm, and immediately jumped into popularity. A few days later a letter from Sir John Follett, the well-known English composer, had appeared in The Times, in which letter Follett deliberately accused Lastaire of stealing one of his own original melodies. Sir John's work had not yet been published, but he was able to prove on pretty conclusive evidence that he was the composer of the work that Lastaire had published. And naturally a man so prominent before the public and of such high standing was believed in preference to the passionate protest made by Lastaire that his melody had been inspired by some rude folk song that he had heard in his youth in the huts of the aborigines on the Gulf of Florida; but as he had no evidence to prove this, and as ho was in direct conflict with the great English composer, he suffered. Works of his were sent back by publishers, and it looked as if Lastaire's star was setting almost before it had begun to rise.

That a man of Lastaire's temperament should take the thing greatly to heart was only natural. Seeing himself baffled and defeated, not to say disgraced, and knowing that what he said was true, he had turned his back on London and gone into Devonshire. He had refused to see Morthoe, who still believed in him, and who, in spite of everything, was quite prepared to carry out his promise so far as the opera was concerned.

A day or two later Lastaire disappeared. He had gone for a lonely walk along the cliffs on a stormy afternoon, and he had never returned. His stick and hat were found, but though the days went on, no single trace of the missing musician had been discovered. Morthoe went down there himself to investigate, but, however, without result. And so a month passed, and Lastaire was beginning to be forgotten.

And then a strange thing happened.

One morning Sir John Follett burst into Morthoe 's office at the National Opera House in a great state of excitement. His kindly, rosy face showed signs of every concern, the eyes behind the gold-rimmed spectacles were full of remorse. He flung himself into a chair opposite Morthoe.

"Well, what's the matter?" Morthoe asked.

"Oh, my dear fellow," Follett said, "I hardly know how to tell you. I have behaved like a scoundrel, an absolute scoundrel! How on earth I came to forget it, I don't know. Look here, Morthoe, I feel like a thief! I am a thief! I have stolen a man's reputation!"

"Ah, you are talking of Lastaire!" Morthoe cried.

"I am. Now, you know what I told you. You know what I wrote to The Times. When I sent off that letter, I honestly believed every word of it. It wasn't true, Morthoe, it wasn't true! I feel as if I had that poor young man's blood on my soul! I murdered him!"

"Tell me all about it," Morthoe said soothingly.

"What is there to tell? You know as much about it as I do. I thought that Lastaire had managed to get sight of that melody of mine one day he called at the School of Music. He could have done so easily enough. And you know I proved that my melody was written before he thought of his. And now I am not so sure. Not so sure! I know that I have done him an injustice. My dear fellow, my melody wasn't original."

"What on earth " Morthoe began.

"Well, it was like this. Late last night I was looking over a pile of yellow manuscript that I bought years ago in Scotland. It's quaint stuff, and must have been written I don't know how many centuries ago—folk melodies from the Hebrides, melodies that go back to the beginning of music, melodies played on a sinew stretched on a bone— and quite unconsciously I must have adapted the disputed song from those manuscripts. You know how things go round and round in your mind till you begin to think they are your own—sort of unconscious plagiarism. Poets and novelists have done it, and why not musicians? I have compared my music with the source from which I obtained it, and the similarity is remarkable."

"That's very strange," Morthoe said. "And yet I don't know. Music, like language, must have come from somewhere. Some genius invented it in the Dark Ages, and it must have spread from continent to continent, very likely in the glacial period, before the great oceans were formed. I shouldn't be surprised if the folk music of the world had come from a common stock."

"Ah, that's the point." Follett said eagerly. "I am an Englishman, and I learnt my music in London. I wonder how much of my work has been inspired by this old folk stuff, if I only knew it? And all the time I have been priding myself that it is my own! I have done Lastaire an injustice. I don't doubt for a moment that he was telling the truth when he said that melody of his had been adapted from an air played on a tom-tom or suchlike instrument in some native village away yonder on the Gulf of Mexico. And here am I, past the meridian of life, cruel enough to kill a genius! That's what it comes to, Morthoe. I murdered that wonderful genius of yours. I am a thief, a charlatan living upon my musical memory! I can't tell you how distressed I am. What can I do? I can only write a letter to The Times, deploring my mistake, and do my best to give the dead man back his reputation. He was a genius, Morthoe."

"He was indeed," Morthoe sighed, "and if things had gone all right, he would have stood before the world as the composer of the most magnificent opera we have had for the last twenty-five years. I say that because I know, because I have the first act in my safe yonder. I have never shown it to a single soul, and I don't suppose I ever shall now—unless, perhaps, I play it as a fragment—because I should never be vandal enough to give anybody the commission to complete it. I was going to take that opera round the world. It was going to be the great new work with which I was proud to identify myself. The tour is all complete. We are going to Paris and Stockholm and Milan, thence to America and Australia, and come back to Long Beach and those famous winter resorts along the coast of Florida. We shall start in about six months' time, and probably be away for three years. It's the biggest world's tour undertaken by an operatic company. And, after what you have told me, I would give half what I possess to know that Eugene Lastaire was going with us. He was to have superintended the production of his own opera and, of course, conduct it. The rest of the time I had engaged him for first violin in the orchestra. This is a shocking business, Follett." "It is indeed," Follett groaned. "I am entirely in your hands, Morthoe. I'll do anything you like." "Yes, but what can you do?" Morthoe asked. "You can only write what you have told me to The Times, and do the best you can to rehabilitate the poor chap's memory." And so itcame about that the musical papers and others were flled for some days with the strange story that Sir John Follett had to tell. Reams were written on old folk songs, and one of the daily papers went so far as to print the facsimile of Follett's song and the crabbed inspiration from which it was derived. Undoubtedly a great reaction had begun in Lastaire's favour, and his memory was held to have been cleansed of all suspicion and dishonour.

But unfortunately all this could not bring the dead man back to life again. Naturally enough, in a few days the incident was forgotten, except by Morthoe and one or two friends who had liked Lastaire, and were genuinely grieved over the mistake that had caused him, in a moment of despair, to lay violent hands upon himself. And so the time went on. Months passed, and the great world's tour of the Morthoe International Opera Company was drawing to a close. They had been all over Europe and the colonies in one long blaze of triumph, and at length they had reached the fashionable town of Long Beach, where all that counts in America had gathered for one of the most brilliant winter seasons that that famous spot had ever experienced. Big as Long Beach was, it was not big enough to detain Morthoe more than three nights.

On the third night it was his intention to conduct "La Bohème" himself, as he had conducted "Pagliacci" at the opening performance, filling up his time during the day with fishing in the bay, a sport of which he was passionately fond. The hotel in which he was staying was full of sportsmen, all of whom were there for the tarpon fishing, and with some of these Morthoe had gone out each morning until the last day of his stay there, when he took a boat and a native, and went out alone.

It was a perfect morning, with a light breeze blowing from the west, an ideal day for the sea. Here and there along the bay little islands and peninsulas were dotted, green oases in that glorious sea, where the few original natives who were left plied their craft and tilled their ground much as their forefathers had done any time since the world began. They were inviting little islands, these—indeed, some of them were of considerable extent—only a mile or two from the mainland, and therefore in close touch with the shore.

Morthoe sat there in the boat with a sort of glad feeling that he was alive, his mind intent on his sport, which, by the contrariness of things, was anything but good. He had not as yet succeeded in hooking one of the big silver fish to his own rod, and, as time was short, he was loth to leave that delectable corner of the earth until he had added to his sporting experiences.

The copper-coloured native working the boat shook his head gently. So far as Morthoe could gather from his jargon, he was deploring the fact that the wind was in the wrong direction for tarpon fishing, and that it would have been better if there had been a ripple on the water. But it lay now in one sheet of gold and opal and pallid blue right away to the misty horizon, where a few smudges of cloud were drifting inland from the sea. There was nothing else to do but to sit quietly in the boat, smoking and idling the time away until perhaps late in the afternoon a breeze would spring up, and then it might be possible to land a fish that was worthy of the occasion.

Morthoe sat there dreaming, with his pipe between his lips, after a luxurious luncheon and a glass or two of champagne. He was seated in the bow of the boat, making himself as comfortable as possible on a pile of sailcloth, and half asleep, when he suddenly sat up and looked at the dusky native in the stern. The man was gazing out to sea with eyes almost as sleepy as Morthoe's own, his lips were parted as he crooned a peculiar melody gently to himself .

And Morthoe recognised it instantly. It was the very air that had been the cause of all the trouble between Follett and Lastaire. Very quietly Morthoe sat there until the last bar was finished. There was no question about it. Beyond doubt, thousands of miles away from London, he was listening to a melody that had cost one man's life, and the melody, moreover, which was common to that languid sun-kissed coast and the rude salt breezes of the Hebrides. With a curious feeling upon him and with a voice not altogether steady, Morthoe addressed his guide.

"Where did you get that from, Sammy?" he said slowly. "I mean, who taught you the song you are singing?"

The native showed his yellow teeth in a grin.

"Nonebody taught me, sah," he said. "We all knows him. Him come from nowhere. Him sung by little piccaninnies as soon as dey knows anything. Fousands and fousands of years they sung him dese parts."

"What's it called?" Morthoe asked.

"Not called nothing, sah. Got no name, same as gentleman an' Sam here. You give me half dollar, an' I sing you more."

"Go on," Morthoe said good-naturedly. "Go on."

For the best part of an hour he listened, with an attention that Sam found decidedly flattering, to little snatches of queer haunting melody that sounded strange and yet familiar. Here and there Morthoe could undoubtedly pick out an air that bore a queer resemblance to more than one classical bit; but all this was as nothing to the startling discovery that there, floating on the heart of the glorious summer sea, he had found proof positive of the truth of Lastaire's statement.

He came back to himself presently, to the realisation of things, and the fact that a strong breeze had come up from behind a bank of black cloud sliding along the horizon, and that the boat was dipping and pitching on the sea, that carried white crests as far as the eye could reach. The whole character of the afternoon had changed, and Sam, deeply interested in a conscientious endeavour to earn his half dollar, had not noticed it. Then he ceased to chant in that monotonous way of his and got the oars out.

By this time there was not a craft in sight—all the rest of the fishermen had put in long ago—and along the beach the surf was screaming and beating in huge waves. Every moment now the sea was getting higher.

Five minutes ago they had been safe enough, and now, to all appearances, they were in dire peril. With the tide against them, they could not beat inshore; there was nothing for it now, so far as Morthoe could see, but to run before the gale and make for one of those little green islands on the sea.

"We're in danger, aren't we?" Morthoe asked.

"Much danger for you, sah," Sam said coolly. "We no get back—can't be done. Then we make for one of de banks, an' when boat bump all to pieces on sand, you swim."

"Oh, indeed," Morthoe said between his teeth. "I'm a fair swimmer, Sam. but I don't think I'd have much chance in a surf like that. What about you?"

"Oh, Sam all right," that worthy grinned. "Sam swim before he walk. You no worry 'bout Sam."

"I'm not," Morthoe said. "Now push on."

They pushed on accordingly through a white whirl of water in the direction of one of the green patches, which was now blurred and indistinct behind a curtain of flying foam and torrents of rain. They lurched forward, buffeted here and there by the wind, and carried over and over again out of their track by powerful cross-currents, so that a score of times they were swept past the beach that Sam was making for, and where he knew that the shelter of the curving shore might afford a possible landing for his passenger. For himself, he cared not at all; he knew every trick and turn of the tide and every swirl of the ocean current as he knew the palm of his own hand. He might be tossed presently like a cork on the surface of that boiling sea, but he had no doubt that the time would come when he would find himself with his feet on firm ground again. And so they struggled on, drifting here and there until darkness fell and they lay in the heart of the violet night with the storm halloing round them. There was no word spoken, for they were both busy enough in baling out the boat. And then presently, when Morthoe was beginning to wonder how much longer this was going on, something seemed to strike him and toss him as if he had been no heavier than a feather, and when he came down again he was struggling and fighting for his life in a howling waste of water. The boat had come down violently on the sands, and in the twinkling of an eye had been torn to matchwood.

With the desire to live strong within him, Morthoe struck out wildly, fighting in the darkness, half blind and breathless for what seemed to him to be hours. Then his knees encountered something soft and yielding, and a moment later he struggled to his feet. A big wave, rushing up the beach, caught him violently in the back and tossed him headlong on to a dry spit of sand. By some blind instinct he scrambled forward until, so far as he could see, he stood under the shadow of a fringe of palms, and then it began to be borne upon him that he was safe. A little while later he started to make his way inland, with the object of finding some habitation.

He was not in the least cold, for the night was soft and warm, nor was he conscious of any particular feeling of fatigue. He did not know what time it was, he did not much care. It could not be very late yet, because he could see the big electric arcs all along the fringe of the mainland, and the lights glittering redly in the hotel windows. He smiled to himself as he thought of the story he would have to tell on the morrow. Then just in front of him he saw a light glowing in what he took to be the window of a small native house. He hastened towards it, with the idea of food and dry clothing uppermost in his mind, then suddenly paused just outside, as the sound of music struck on his ear.

Somebody inside the hut was playing the violin, and playing it exceedingly well. And, strangely enough, the melody that wailed from those strings was the same that Morthoe had heard that afternoon, and the same that had led up to the tragedy of Lastaire.

With a curious feeling of tightening across the chest and a strange premonition that something was about to happen, Morthoe crept forward and opened the door of the hut. In the excitement of the moment he did not even stop to knock.

He saw a neat little room, lighted by one oil lamp that hung from the ceiling. He saw a heap of MSS. littered on the side-table, and a man with a violin in his hand standing before a sheet of music propped up in front of him. Very silently Morthoe crept forward.

"Ah, Lastaire!"he said. "Thank God, I have found you at last!"

THE END

AN EYE FOR AN EYE

Published in The Queenslander, Saturday, 21 April, 1923.

Mr. Leon Ben Israel had been waiting in his office in Silver Square, Hatton Gardens, for Inspector Rhys, of Scotland Yard, with an impatience that almost amounted to frenzy.

"There, one thing at a time," the Inspector said. "Now, let me see if I've got the facts right. The night before last, about 5 o'clock, when you were closing down for the day, two strangers called upon you. At that moment, your three assistants were upstairs, and you were alone in this room, where we are talking now. I think your safe was open."

"That is quite right," Ben Israel said. "My safe usually is open about 5 o'clock. You see, I always lock it myself, and set the combination before I leave."

"I quite understand," Rhys replied. "Mind you, that's a habit of yours that any smart thief could find out."

"Yes, I suppose it is," Ben Israel reflected. "Well, I was quite alone when they came in, and, as they appeared to be gentleman, I had no suspicious. I was just about to secure the safe when they fell upon me suddenly and what you call knocked me out. But they were not quite quick enough, because I got my hands on one man's face, and I must have twisted his nose pretty well off. After that, I remember no more till I found two of my clerks bending over me and, as soon as I was equal to it, we went through the safe. Now, strange, to say, Inspector, there was nothing missing with the exception of a pearl which I had in a tiny wooden box. Good Lord, they might have taken fifty thousand pounds worth of stuff, but they didn't--only the pearl."

"Was it a very valuable stone?"

"Oh, yes," Ben Israel groaned. "One of the finest in the world. It was pledged with me for a comparatively small sum, a week or two ago, and I took it without question. You will perhaps remember, Inspector, that a little time back Princess Zenia of Monarcho lost a pearl necklace in the Cranleigh Restaurant where she was dining. I don't mean to say that she actually lost it, because, as a matter of fact, the string, if I may so call it, gave way, and the pearls were scattered all over the floor. They were all picked up, with the exception of one, but that one was the finest of the lot, and was at the base of the necklace. Of course, somebody stole it. But when that pearl was pledged with me, I had no thought of the Princess. It was only afterwards, when I heard the details, that I came to the conclusion that I had the missing pearl in my safe. You may say that I ought to have given it up, indeed, I meant to, but not at a loss to myself, if I could help it, and that's about all there is to it, Inspector. I want you to find, for me, the men who robbed me, and, when you have done that. I shall be quite content."

"Yes, I expect you would," the Inspector said drily. "You don't seem to be aware of the fact that a reward of two thousand pounds is offered for the missing pearl, and it's long odds that you didn't advance that much of it."

Mr. Ben Israel groaned dismally.

"I didn't," he confessed. "So if you can find those men and get the pearl back. I shall be fortunate."

"Oh, no doubt, no doubt," Rhys said. "But you can't arrest prisoners without some sort of clue. Now, tell me, did those chaps leave anything behind them?"

"Well, I'm not quite sure as to that," Ben Israel said. "I certainly found something that struck me as rather curious, but how it came into my office, I can't tell."

With that, the eminent jeweller took a small object, wrapped in a piece of tissue paper, from a drawer in his desk. It had the appearance of a glass marble, opaque for the most part, with a tiny medallion in the centre of green enamel, slightly flecked with blue. Rhys examined it with keen interest.

"Where did you find this?" he asked.

"Oh, close to the safe. I don't know if, but it looks very much to me like an artificial eye."

"That's exactly what it is," Rhys announced. "And a very fine piece of work, too. I am not going to say that one of those men dropped it during the attack upon you, but it looks very much as if something of the sort had happened. If you don't mind, I'll take this with me, because it might prove a valuable clue. Now, tell me, who pawned that pearl with you?"

"Ah, that I don't know," Ben Israel said mournfully. "He had every appearance of being a gentleman, tall and well-dressed, with a neat, black moustache, and a scar over one eye. That's all I can tell you."

"Well, that's not bad for a start," the Inspector said. "Don't make any sort of statement, and don't allow those reporter fellows to get anything out of you. It's just possible that, in a day or two, I shall have something important to tell you."

With that, Inspector Rhys made his way thoughtfully westward and came, at length, to a house, not far from the Admiralty Arch, where he stopped, and giving his name, was admitted presently into the presence of a little man in spectacles.

"Good morning, Dr. Johnson," he said. "I come to you for a bit of advice. I know that you are a specialist as far as artificial aids are concerned, and that you have done a good deal during the war to supply our unfortunate men with the necessary equipment. Artificial eyes, for instance."

"That's quite in my line," the little man said.

"So I am told. Now, there were a good many men in the Army of doubtful antecedents who are now at liberty. Some of these, of course, must have lost limbs or eyes, and a good many of them, no doubt, came to you for advice. Now, will you kindly look at this."

With that, Rhys took the eye from his pocket, and handed it across to the little Professor. The latter examined it with the eye of an expert before he passed it back again.

"A very fine piece of work," he said. "There's only one man in London who could have turned out an eye like that. You see how cleverly those little flecks of blue are mingled with the grey of the iris. It must have been faithfully copied from the owner's remaining eye. You would like to know who made it?"

"I came for no other purpose," Rhys said. "If you can tell me, you are furthering the interests of justice."

"Oh, well, in that case, I have no further scruples. The man who made that eye is called Elias, and he works alone in a little shop in Mead-street, off the Tottenham Court Road. It is the third house on the left hand side--you can't mistake it, and perhaps you had better mention my name."

A few minutes later, and the inspector was on his way to the street in question. He found an old-fashioned shop, very small and stuffy, as if it had been overlooked in the general improvements and forgotten. As Rhys stepped inside, he noticed at a bench in the back of the shop a small, dried-up looking individual working under a powerful light with a shade over his eyes. He seemed to be doing something with a delicate instrument, and was so engrossed that Rhys had to speak twice before the old man looked up and noticed his presence.

"I am Inspector Rhys, of Scotland Yard," the officer said. "And I have been sent to you by Dr. Johnson, who tells me that you can give me certain information. He says you are the best artificial eye maker in London, and that all the fine work for our wounded soldiers passed through your hands. Now, without any further argument, did you happen to make this?"

The old man's eyes lighted up as he saw the little object that Rhys laid on the desk before him.

"Yes, sir," he said. "I made that. That is my workmanship, sure, and one of my biggest triumphs, if I may say so. It is no easy matter to get those little points of colouring."

"Then you know, who this was made for?"

"Most assuredly I do. The man came to me with an order from a Government Department, and I not only made that eye, but I did all the enamel colour work before it was fired. All the work was done here, in this room, day by day, with the patient sitting on that chair yonder."

"Perhaps you can tell me his name?"

Elias reached down a slender-looking volume from a shelf over his desk, and proceeded to turn over the leaves.

"Yes, here it is," he said presently. "Though really there was no occasion to look. The man that eye was made for is called Calgar, and he lost his own eye not long before the war finished. He used to be a lieutenant, but got into trouble and was dismissed from the service. Rather a bad lot, I should say. It's a funny thing, but he came to me, only two days ago, for a fresh eye. He said he had lost the one I made for him, and that was evidently the truth, because that bit of glass you brought me was the original eye that I made. Now I am making another one for him. Here it is, Inspector. For some reason or another he wanted the back of it hollowed out. He said the original eye was a bit heavy, so you see, I am making a hollow eye, and if he doesn't find that comfortable, I suggest that he should fill it with some sort of hard wax. It's only a fad, of course."

Rhys, however, was not quite so sure of that, but he made no comment, and asked no questions, except as to where the man Calgar was to he found. He gave a hint to the effect that there was something serious behind this investigation, and warned Elias that he might find himself in trouble if he mentioned the fact that the Inspector had been to see him. All he wanted now, was the address to where the new eye was to be sent, and that Elias should communicate with him on the telephone directly the orb in question was in the post.

"I can't tell you where he lives," Elias said. "He is at a little flat in Carlisle Gardens with a gentleman called Massinger. I believe he is some sort of relation."

Rhys said nothing, but there was a sort of twinkle in his eye as he heard the name of Massinger. With a few final words of warning to the ancient artist in artificial eyes, he made his way back to Scotland Yard and at once called in one of his assistants.

"Look here, Walton," he said. "I've got that Silver Square safe robbery in hand. I may say I have got it so far in hand as to be practicably sure who the men are who made that assault upon Leon Ben Israel. Also I know why they did it. But, before I go any further, I must have a little more information. I have discovered that in a flat in Carlisle Gardens dwells a certain individual called Massinger. Ever heard of him? It's in your line, you know, and I want you to find out."

"Massinger, Massinger," Walton mused. "Oh, if it's the Massinger I know, then that's just his game. I had him in hand twice previous to 1914, and he slipped out of rather a nasty business because he volunteered for service. Till quite lately I haven't heard of him. But I know he was demobilised two or three months ago, and I gather, from what you say, sir, that he is up to his old tricks again."

"I am quite sure of it," Rhys said. "Well, there you are, Walton. I want you to find out all that this chap has been doing lately, and, if you can, whether he was dining at the Cranleigh Restaurant the night that the Princess Zenia of Monarcho was there and lost a pearl from her famous necklace. Wait a minute, that's not quite all. I am told that Massinger has a friend staying with him--a man called Calgar who is blind in one eye. He had, or has, an artificial one. Now, off you go, and get all this information for me as soon as possible."

Walton drifted into the office quite late the same evening with a fair budget of news for his chief. Massinger was living in a Carlisle Gardens flat, apparently in a condition of considerable prosperity. This was all the more strange, because, a little while back, he had been compelled to accept the hospitality of one of the Rowton Houses. Now he had the flat furnished, and was sharing it with a man called Calgar. Calgar had not been out the last day or two, in consequence of a slight accident, to all of which Rhys listened with placid satisfaction. It was quite plain to him that he was on the right track now, and equally clear that Calgar was more or less in hiding until the artificial eye that Elias was making for him could be delivered.

But there was a good deal to be done yet. In ordinary circumstances it would have been an easy matter to arrest Massinger and Calgar, and confront them with Ben Israel, but then the eminent jeweller had told the Inspector that his office was dimly lighted at the time of the assault, and that he was not prepared to identify his assailants. Therefore, it would be necessary to wait until he was in a position to strike a vital blow. And there was some hurry, too, because, on the following morning, Walton turned up with a fresh piece of information to the effect that Massinger and Calgar were giving up the flat in a day or two, and that already they had secured their passage to America.

This was somewhat disturbing. It pointed to the fact that those two shady individuals were leaving their country for a long term, and that, beyond the shadow of a doubt, they were taking the big pearl with them. On the other side of the water they would be able to get a good price for it, and no impertinent questions asked, provided they could smuggle it across, which would be no easy matter, considering the cleverness of the Customs House officials. That was, unless they could devise some ingenious hiding place for the pearl, which, no doubt, they had done. And Rhys smiled to himself as he recalled the various bits of information that he had gathered during the last few days. He began to see, quite plainly, where the pearl would be hidden, and before he slept that night he had worked out the drama to the last detail. All he had to do now, was to wait until the telephone message from Elias arrived, and that came all in good time.

It reached him the following afternoon, about four o'clock. The message ran to the effect that the new eye had been posted that morning, shortly after ten, and that it would probably reach Calgar somewhere near four o'clock the same afternoon. Almost on the top of this information came a further piece of news from Walton to the effect that Massinger and Calgar had packed up their belongings and were turning the flat over to the agents before noon the next day. They had ordered something rather special in the way of a dinner from an adjacent restaurant, which meal they intended to partake of in the seclusion of the flat.

It was about half-past ten before Rhys set out for Carlisle Gardens, and a little later he was shot up to the fifth floor in the lift. He rang the bell at No. 17, and was not at all surprised when Massinger himself came to the door. Evidently there were no servant left, or this would not have happened. Nor was Rhys long in realising that he had found the man he wanted. He saw a tall, slim, well-set-up individual with a slight, black moustache and a scar over his left eye. Massinger looked superciliously at his visitor and demanded to know what he wanted. Very dexterously Rhys inserted his foot inside the door and pushed his way into the hall.

"What the devil does this mean?" Massinger demanded.

"I think you had better take it quietly," Rhys said. "There is my card, from which you will see that I am representing Scotland Yard. Moreover, my business is not entirely with you--I also want to see your friend, Calgar."

"Calgar? Calgar?" Massinger bluffed. "Really, I don't know what you are talking about."

"It really isn't the slightest use," Rhys said, almost pityingly. "The man I speak of is in the dining-room. The Preston Restaurant people sent in a dinner for two to-night. You had better take it quietly, because, you see, I have got three of my men downstairs waiting if there's any trouble. I want you and Calgar on a charge of stealing a pearl from the Cranleigh restaurant on the night of the third instant, and also for fraudulently pawning the same with Mr. Leon Ben Israel, of Golden Square. Also, on a charge of robbing that gentleman with violence. Let me see, isn't that the dining-room door? Yes, I thought so. Now, will you be good enough to precede me, and, if you are foolish enough to try any violence----"

"Oh, that's not in my line," Massinger said insolently. "Of course, I know all about that lost pearl from the papers, and if you can find it here, you are welcome to keep it, as far as I am concerned. Come along and get it over."

In the dining-room Calgar was seated, smoking a cigarette and sipping his liqueur. Rhys noted with intense satisfaction that Massinger's accomplice was wearing his new eye. He introduced himself to that individual, and stated his business as crisply as he had done to Massinger.

"Now then," he said, "don't let's waste any further time. I know everything. I even know what a part Mr. Elias, of the Tottenham Court road, has played in this clever business. Calgar, would you be good enough to remove that new artificial eye of yours, or shall I call up my men and have it removed by force?"

There was no fight in either of the criminals as this remark fell from Rhys's lips. They stared at one another in consternation and then after a little prodding, Calgar, slowly and reluctantly, removed his false eye. As Rhys had expected, the hollow in the back had been filled with some hard waxen compound, which gave a little as Rhys crushed the thin, fine glass between his thumb and forefinger. As he did so, the missing pearl rolled out on the table and Rhys coolly dropped it in his pocket.

"Very neat, gentlemen," he said. "Very neat. And now perhaps you will put on your hats and come along with me."

THE END

EARLY CLOSING DAY

Published in The Queenslander, Saturday, 5 April, 1924.

The man in the white waistcoat and undeniable spats was pleased to approve of the Major, and in this his wife was graciously pleased to agree. As a rule the Vellacotts were particular with regard to their friendships, as benefitted second generation people, with offspring at Winchester and Magdalen College, Oxford, but the Major had a way with him that few people could resist. And the Majestic Hotel at Sandbourne did not take everybody in.

"I like this place very much," the Major remarked to Vellacott after dinner on the Saturday night, they having had a day on the links together. "Like you, I have dropped into the habit of running down here for the week-end: The golf is none too good, as you know, but it is convenient to town, and we can't all run to Rolls-Royce cars."

It was a pleasant bit of chaff and touched Vellacott on the soft spot, because he was proud of his Rolls-Royce car in which he always made his weekend journeys to Sandbourne. In the city he was a dealer in bullion and specie, to say nothing of occasional excursions in the realms of pawnbroking, which latter transactions were restricted severely to advances upon family jewels, collections of historic plate, and the like. A little later he found himself talking freely and eloquently on the subject of city business, to one who appeared to be as interested and intelligent listener.

"Yes," said the Major, pulling at his cigar. "Yes. Do you know, Vellacott, I was precious near going into the city myself once. I wish I had now. Certain anxieties, of course, but no adventures, and no risks———-"

"Ah, there you are wrong," Vellacott said eagerly, "Why, my dear fellow, handling valuables as we do, we've got to be on the alert the whole time. Only last year we were very nearly done out of twenty thousand pounds."

"I hadn't thought of that," the Major said. "I suppose your strong room is like a bank. All sorts of patent locks, and ingenious devices, and all that sort of thing."

Vellacott winked across his whisky and soda.

"You never can tell," he said. "My strong room is especially built in the basement, and goes right under the pavement, flush with the curb. Moreover, on top is a round sheet of glass just like a coal chute, about eight inches thick, and the police have been told that the electric light is burning in the strong room every night, and if the light goes out, they will know there is something wrong. But still, there are times——"

"Oh, quite so, quite so," the Major said. "It's rather funny that you should introduce this subject, because I am rather interested in a device suggested to me by a young friend of mine for getting even with the sort of gentry you speak of. You see, I was an engineer myself, and I am rather a dab at mechanics. If I had the capital, I should try and develop it."

At the mention of the magic words "capital," and "development," Vellacott pricked up his ears. He was never averse to a proposition in which the risk was small, and the profit proportionately great. He leaned eagerly forward.

"Tell me all about it," he said. "If you have got a decent thing, I can introduce the capital."

"Well, it's like this," the Major said. "In a few words, it is an entirely new form of burgular alarm. One of those simple things that the wonder is it has never been thought of before. You attach it to your telephone at night, and by leaving the receiver off the hook, a bell rings at the other end of the wire if the door of the room where the telephone is, indeed, the slightest interruption sets the telephone going. Now, suppose, for instance, you had a private wire from your office to your house at Sutton——"

"I have," Vellacott cried. "I have,"

"So much the better. I suppose a good many of your city magnates have private wires? Well, in that case, you might be disposed to try it. I can carry a wire from your 'phone into the vault, and if the door of the vault is opened, my device will give you instant warning in your private house. I suppose I need not ask if you have got an extension of your telephone at home into your bedroom? You have? Very well, then. In that case, if anything was wrong, you would be instantly aroused in the middle of the night—call up Scotland Yard, and within a couple of minutes, the police are on the spot. This is rather a lucky day for me, I think. Some of these days, when you have half an hour to spare, I'd like to give you an experimental test. What about Saturday afternoon, when the office is closed?"

Vellacott beamed pleasantly on his companion.

"Now, do you know, that sounds real good," he said. "If only your invention is not too expensive——"

"Less than five pounds," the Major interrupted. "We should open a sort of central office to which all you city men should subscribe, and where an extra wire from each big office would converge and be numbered. Now, by another simple device those wires would give an alarm in that central office, where a couple of operators would be at work all night, and those wires would be numbered. All the operator had to do is to call up Scotland Yard, and tell them that something is wrong, say, with number ten. What do you think?"

"Think!" Vellacott cried with an enthusiasm rare at his time of life, "I think you've got a fortune there! Don't mention it to anybody else. I'll speak to my—er—friend in the city, and he'll find the money fast enough. Now, how long do you think it would be before we could try the thing?"

"Oh, I don't know," the Major said. "I might manage to get the machine itself ready within a week. Yes, I'm quite sure I can. But one part will take a little longer. Still, I can get the instrument itself inside your strong room. But I shall have to see it first. But isn't it rather a shame for me to rob you of you week-end holiday?"

"Not at all, not at all," Vellacott said, "Now, shall you by any chance be down here next week-end?"

The Major rather thought he would. He would probably turn up by the Friday afternoon, as usual, and thereupon, Vellacott made a proposal. They would dine together on Friday night, and, run up to London in the car after an early breakfast on the Saturday morning. If they started early enough, they could be in the city, inspect the strong room, and be back at the Majestic in time for lunch, after which they could play a well earned round of golf in the afternoon. To this suggestion the Major gave a cordial consent, and therefore, on the following Saturday morning, a little after eight o'clock, the two set out together in the Rolls-Royce car, and in due course arrived at the palatial offices in Moorgate-street.

"I have said nothing to my partner," Vellacott explained. "Neither have I mentioned the matter to my manager. This is the sort of thing that it is not well to talk about until it is accomplished. Now, come along, and have a look at the strong room."

With that, Vellacott dived down a flight of stone steps, and opened a massive door, which led into a room some twelve feet square. A light was burning in the room, and, overhead, the Major could see the disc of thick plate glass that Vellacott had explained to him. Round the strong room, on three sides, were small doors, and sliding trays faced with steel, and these, Vellacott had explained, contained not only masses of bullion, but some of the finest treasures in the world.

"I suppose every tray is locked?" the Major asked.

"Well, no," Vellacott said. "You see, if anybody could get through that door, they could get into the trays easily enough."

The Major asked no more questions, pertinent or otherwise. He took from his pocket a dainty little foot rule, and a note book, which he was exceedingly busy with for the next few minutes. There was something so businesslike about him that even Vellacott was impressed. Then he looked up from a mass of figures, and smiled with the air of a man who is quite pleased with himself, though he vouchsafed no information.

Half an hour later the two emerged from the vault and made their way into Moorgate-street, where the big car was awaiting them. Almost in front of the palatial premises of Vellacott and Co., a small group of workmen had congregated in the street. There were four of them altogether, and in their peaked caps was the badge of the Universal Electricity Company, the great corporation which supplied that part of London with its electric power. They had with them a closed-in truck, from the depths of which they had produced a sort of collapsible canvas tent, together with a mass of technical instruments, which the Major regarded with a favourable eye. It was evident that something had gone wrong with one of the cables, and that the gang of workmen was there to repair it. The Major stood watching them whilst waiting for his companion, and, presently he made a technical remark or two to the foreman.

"I am rather glad these chaps are here," he said to Vellacott when the latter emerged. "They have given me an idea. I find that the main cable is close to the kerb, and upon my word, I think it would be possible to run a tunnel for my apparatus inside the channel. That would give me just what I want without disturbing existing arrangements. Um—yes, that's a rattling good idea."

"Oh, that's all very well," Vellacott grumbled. "But these fellows are always pulling the streets about. Hi, foreman, I hope you are not going to be very long over this job."

"I don't think so, sir," the foreman said, civilly enough. "I hope we shall finish to-night. If not, it will be some time to-morrow morning. That's why we came to-day, so as not to interfere with you gentlemen in business hours."

With that Vellacott turned away, and, before long, the big car had left London behind it. It was a beautiful morning, and Vellacott was looking forward eagerly to his afternoon's golf. He had little or nothing on his mind, business was not pressing, and it was just possible that he might take Monday off as well.

"I'll telephone my partner first thing in the morning," he said. "I suppose you are staying on for the present?"

"I think so," the Major said. "As a matter of fact I was down here all last week. If this invention comes off, then I and a plus golfer of my acquaintance are buying a furnished bungalow close to Sandwich. If it does materialise, I shall be pleased if you will come down and join us occasionally."

Vellacott replied emphatically that he would. They were discussing the question on the Monday morning before setting out for the day's golf, when a pert page boy in a veritable rash of buttons solemnly summoned Vellacott to the telephone. He came back a moment or two later, white, trembling, and almost incoherent, and in striking contrast to the Major, who lay back in a comfortable armchair enjoying his second after-breakfast cigarette.

"Good heavens, what's wrong?" the latter asked solicitously.

"The most awful thing," Vellacott gasped. "Our strong room was broken into between closing time on Saturday afternoon and the early hours of this morning. Nearly fifty thousand pounds' worth of valuables stolen. They only found out about a quarter of an hour ago when my partner got into the office."

"I've got it," the Major cried. "Depend upon it, those men we saw in the road were not bona fide workmen at all, but a gang of audacious thieves, led by some technical expert."

"It looks like it," Vellacott groaned. "But how did they manage it? How on earth did they manage to get through the walls of the safe?"

"Oh, that's easy enough," the Major explained. "They came along with a covered truck, which very likely had been stolen from the Universal Electricity Company, and it would be very easy to get hold of a set of badges. See, the whole thing looks so workmanlike and methodical that the police would suspect nothing. When things are done in this cool way, people take it for granted. But don't forget that the offices of the Universal Electricity Company would be probably closed at one o'clock on Saturday, after which all the employees would be away and those chaps would have all Saturday afternoon and all Sunday to work. Then once down the manhole, within a foot of the outer wall of your strong-room, it wouldn't have taken long to clear all the earth away, and expose the steel side. And don't forget that those chaps had got a tent over the hole, under cover of which they could work without the slightest fear of interruption. They could make as much flame and as much smoke as they liked, because that always goes with electrical repairs."

"The safe," Vellacott moaned. "The safe. With a solid foot of radio-steel——"

"Yes, into which the flame of an acetylene welding plant would eat as if the steel were so much rotten cheese. And, mind you, those plants are portable. You may depend upon it that those chaps have been planning this coup for months. Really, the more I think of it, the more I admire them. And then again, look how cleverly they arranged to carry off the swag! They carry it in that covered cart of theirs, and put all their tools on the top, then they coolly push the cart through the streets of London for miles until they come to their lair. Nobody would notice them, nobody would take the slightest heed of a Corporation cart going through the streets in broad daylight. You have been the victim of an absolutely priceless fraud."

"I have," Vellacott groaned. "I have. But I mustn't sit here. I must be off to London at once."

"Yes, I suppose you must," the Major said reluctantly. "If you are going up in the car, I'll come along with you."

"That's very good of you," Vellacott said gratefully. "To tell the truth, I feel too shaky to go alone."

Apparently, the Major's diagnosis had been correct, for when the two silent voyagers reached Moorgate-st. the police had already come to their own conclusions. Inquiries at the offices of the Universal Electricity Company elicited the fact that no employees of theirs had been near Moorgate-st. on the previous Saturday. But a covered cart and certain plant were missing from their stores, and these had been discovered a few minutes ago by the police, abandoned somewhere in the north of London. It was a powerful little plant, and given the necessary time was strong enough to have eaten its way through the dome of St. Paul's.

"Neat, very neat," the Inspector said, half-admiringly. "No one seems to have seen these men, at least, not near enough to identify them. It's very hard to spot a man when he's smothered in grease and dirt, but one of my men says that their leader was a tall man and wore a black moustache."

"Ah, there you are," the Major put in presently. "Now I happened to be waiting for Mr. Vellacott, and, having nothing to do exchanged a few words with the foreman. He was a fair, blue-eyed man, with a scar on his left cheek, and was as clean shaven as I am. As to the others, I didn't notice them. But if I can do anything now, or at any future time, you can command my services. If you ran lay your hand on the right man, I can identify him fast enough."

There was little more to be said or done. For the moment the thieves had got clean away with the spoil, and though the Inspector seemed to be confident enough he had really little hope of effecting a capture. It was a dreary afternoon that the Major spent with Vellacott, and night closed down at length with nothing in the way of a clue.

"Are you going back to Sandbourne?" the Major asked.

Vellacott shook his head sorrowfully.

"I am afraid not," he said. "I have 'phoned my wife to return by train, and she is coming. I may get down to Sandbourne at the end of the week, but it is very doubtful. I simply couldn't play golf in my present distracted state of mind."

"That's natural enough," the Major agreed. "And if this little speculation of mine comes off I hope to see you at Sandwich."

And with that they parted. Vellacott to look after his business and the Major to transact some pressing affair which took him somewhere down into the East End. It was late the following evening when he found himself once more in the Majestic at Sandbourne, and, after having partaken of an exceptionally good dinner, he repaired to his bedroom, where he wrote the following letter:—

DEAR MORRISON,——I have the greatest pleasure in telling you that I have been eminently successful with regard to that little business of mine. I am not disposed to go into details, because they don't matter, in any case, but I told you that I strongly objected to becoming one of the Poorer Poor when there are so many Richer Rich knocking about. They are not bad fellows to dine and play golf with, but that wouldn't prevent them from squeezing the last farthing out of you tomorrow morning if you ran up against them in business. It was one of these genial swine who caused me to leave the Indian Army some years ago, with considerable celerity and secrecy, and you are one of the few men who know the story. But I swore to get my own back one of these days, and I have done it—never mind how.

To cut a long story short, you can conclude negotiations for the purchase of that bungalow, and, if you will telephone me here any time within the next two or three days. I will send my cheque along for my share. Some good golf and an occasional run up to town will satisfy my requirements for the future. So let me know directly you are ready. All the best, Yours, aye,

PHILIP MEDWAY.

P.S.—I want to ask one of my friends down to Sandwich shortly. He's five handicap, and not a bad chap as business men go. He's one of the Richer Rich, but not quite so infernally so as he was last week.

THE END

THE MAN WHO RANG THE BELL

Published in The Queenslander, Saturday 20 September, 1924.

The body of Stephen Kelland had been found at half-past two in the morning, and Mrs. Larner, the old lady with whom the dead man had lodged, had gone off to the police station without arousing her neighbours. She was a grim, strong-minded old body, but if ever she had a weakness for one of her lodgers, it was for the dead man, who, up to yesterday, was acting editor of the "Mireshire County Herald."

On Thursday and Friday nights, which were publishing days, the dead man Kelland rarely reached home before 2 o'clock in the morning. Usually he let himself in with his latch key, and found his way to his room, which was at the back of the house, leading off the garden, where he rang a bell that communicated with the back basement apartment, where Mrs. Larner slept. There, over her bed, facing the window, she had a master switch with which she was in the habit of turning on the electric light when Kelland rang his bell, which she invariably heard, being a light sleeper, and so the light remained for precisely half an hour, at the end of which period it was turned off again, whether Kelland was in bed or not. It was one of the old lady's fads, a rule she would as soon have broken as she would the tables of the Commandments.

All this she explained to Venner as he sat opposite her in the ground floor sitting-room. She informed him that Kelland had come in just after 2, as she plainly heard, that he had fastened up the front door and gone into his own room. He rang as usual, a good long ring, which she heard immediately. Then the bell stopped more abruptly than usual, and was immediately followed by a heavy fall overhead. She would not have particularly noticed this, she said; the thing that aroused her suspicion was the fact that the light was not switched on in the room overhead. She knew that because her bed faced the window, looking into the back basement, and as this was lighted with white tiles so as to give as much illumination as possible, she would have noticed at once if the electric bulb in Mr. Kelland's sitting-room had been turned on. She had waited ten minutes without the darkness being broken, and then, feeling somewhat alarmed, she had slipped on part of her clothing and gone up the kitchen stairs to investigate.

"You can leave us now," Inspector Venner said. "Dr. Hack and myself will make the examination. Doctor, this is no suicide."

"Out of the question," the doctor responded. "You see, the poor fellow was standing on the right-hand side of the fireplace with his right hand on the bell, and was killed in the act of ringing it. Of course, I cannot speak quite definitely as yet, but a bullet from some weapon struck him immediately below the shoulder, and seems to have deflected through the heart. If I had found a revolver here with one chamber discharged, I should still be certain it was murder. No man could have shot himself in that way; there must have been somebody in the room."

The detective crossed the room to the open window, the blind of which was up, and the two old-fashioned casements thrown wide apart. Immediately underneath was the white tiled basement, some 10ft. deep, into which it would have been impossible for an assassin to have dropped, or indeed gained the room by that means, without arousing the landlady from her sleep in her back basement bedroom which had originally been used as a scullery.

"Nobody came or went this way," he said. "And if you look, you will see the switch by the door is still pushed up. No doubt Mr. Kelland came into the room and walked across to the fireplace to ring up his landlady without first pressing down the switch. I suppose that is rather a loud bell that rings down there in the basement."

With that, Venner crossed the room again and pressed his finger on the button. The clang that responded rang all over the house. With a little nod of approval, the police officer crossed to the window again and looked out through the still open window to the little old-world garden which faced, some 50 yards away, a similar avenue of houses, so that the two were back to back. They were situated in the ancient part of Padbury, and had been built perhaps a hundred years before. A party wall divided the two sets of gardens, a wall only a few feet in height.

"Did you know anything of the dead man?" Venner asked the doctor. "Was he a patient of yours by any chance?"

"Slightly tubercular," Hack responded. "That is why he always made a point of living practically behind open windows. I don't suppose his windows were ever closed. He was very careful about that sort of thing."

For some time after the doctor had left. Venner stood thoughtfully gazing out of the open window at the back of the houses in Watersmeet-avenue. They were houses built precisely on the same lines as those in Mayfield-avenue, and doubtless they both had been built at the same time. They were quite respectable houses, with basements, and two stories over, and each had its neat little garden in which the inhabitants appeared to take considerable pride. There were very few trees, the garden consisting mainly of flower beds and grass plots, with here and there a small greenhouse, with its back to the wall. It was quite a long time before Venner turned away and began a close examination of the sitting-room; all to no effect.

By this time the whole town was seething with excitement. Everybody was open-mouthed and everybody more than anxious to throw some light upon the mystery. But it was not till late in the afternoon, that Venner hit upon one of the residents in Watersmeet-avenue who was really in a position to tell him something worthy of note.

This was a retired seafarer named Kelly, who lived in Number 14, as a lodger who occupied a sitting-room at the back of the house, almost immediately facing that in which the tragedy had taken place. He had heard something, and had gone round to the police station to give his information. Confronted with Venner, he told his apparently simple story.

"You see, it was like this," he said. "I am a rotten sleeper, always have been. I am a great sufferer from asthma, and all yesterday and last night I had one of my worst attacks. From midnight till nearly three this morning I sat in my sitting-room with the window wide open, leaning out struggling for breath."

"And you saw something?" Venner asked.

"No, sir. I can't rightly say that I saw something, but some time after two o'clock I heard what sounded like a shot. I did not take much notice, but I don't think anybody else heard it, because I saw no lights anywhere, and heard nothing moving."

"And that is all?" Venner asked.

"Yes, that is all I can tell you, sir."

It was really a baffling mystery, but the old man could tell Venner no more. How had it been possible for the murderer to shoot down his victim in the pitch blackness of the sitting-room? And again, if Kelland had been murdered by a shot fired from the garden through the open window, how could the assassin be so sure of his aim? The mere fact that he was intimately acquainted with the ways and habits of his victim could not help him to that extent.

One thing, there was plenty of time. He walked back to the gardens in Mayfield-Avenue, and made a further examination of the basement outside Mrs. Larner's bedroom. It was some ten feet deep, and not more than four wide, enclosed on either side with a wall of polished white tiles, so that anybody down there would be held a prisoner unless he had something to stand on, so as to get a grip on the railing above his head. And there was nothing in the basement of any kind whatever. Certainly the assassin had not gone that way. He could not have shot his enemy and rushed down the basement stairs and out into the garden without attracting the attention of Mrs. Larner, who was wide awake at the time. And so Venner was forced to the conclusion that the murderer had not been in the house at all. He must have shot Kelland from the garden and escaped.

But this only made the problem harder still. It was, therefore, necessary at this point to try back a little, to make further inquiries, which Venner proceed to do. He elicited the fact that the dead man had only held his important post for the last few months, and that in the opinion of the office he had more or less supplanted one Barwick, who had by no means taken the set-back lying down. The proprietor of the "County Herald," Raymond Barringford, confirmed this. Venner found him at his country seat, just outside the town, and was received with every courtesy.

"I am terribly distressed over this dreadful business," he said. "If I had known a week ago what I know now, I should have got rid of both Kelland and Barwick."

"You were dissatisfied with both of them, then?"

"By no means. On the contrary, I had the highest opinion of Stephen Kelland, and I am bound to say that Barwick does his work exceedingly well. But he is jealous and easily touched, and extremely ready to take offence. One of those morbid sensitive natures that torments itself, and in his way quite a genius. He has a wonderful flair for the short story, and if he were not so morbid and prurient in his work, he might have gone far. That is a grievance of his against the editorial fraternity generally, but really some of his work is frankly disgusting."

"There was no quarrel between these two?"

"I don't think so. Barwick is not the man to openly quarrel with anybody. I hope you don't suspect that——"

"I don't suspect anybody," Venner interrupted. "I am not far advanced enough for that. And you may rest assured that anything you have said to me will be treated as confidential."

With that, Venner went back to Padbury very little wiser than he came. Then he repaired once more to the lodgings of the dead man and spent half the morning in the garden. He was about to turn away when a voice suddenly hailed him. It was a voice that seemed to come from nowhere, and one that that addressed him on terms that sounded like flippant familiarity.

"Hello, hello," it said. "Morning cocky."

Venner looked up to see a grey parrot seated on an overhanging bough, and evidently deeply enjoying his own demoniacal wit. Its head was on one side, and its little round, wicked eye twinkled with sly malice. Then the bird flew away and seemed to disappear through an open window opposite. Venner went back to the house and called Mrs. Larner up from the basement.

"To whom does that parrot belong," he asked. "It seems to be an exceedingly clever bird."

"Yes, isn't he a wonder, sir?" the old lady said. "He belongs to Mr. Barwick. I believe Mr. Barwick's family has had him for years. Jacko, they call him. He comes here just as if the place belongs to him, and I suppose in a measure it does, because Mr. Barwick lived here in Mr. Kelland's rooms a long time before the poor gentleman came to Padbury. Jacko flies all over the place, and everybody is glad to see him. In fine weather he lives in the gardens, but if it is cold or wet, he always comes back to his own rooms. You see, Mr. Kelland's window was always open, so there was no trouble about that."

Venner sighed deeply and thoughtfully.

"Oh, so Mr. Barwick used to live here, did he? Occupying Mr. Kelland's rooms? Why did he leave?"

"Well, you see, sir, we couldn't get on together very well. I have my own queer notions, and Mr. Barwick, he couldn't put up with them. I am all for economy, and Mr. Barwick, he didn't know the meaning of the word. He would come in late, and thought nothing of leaving his electric light on all night. So I had that master switch put in, and Mr. Barwick he gave me notice."

"Was he very late of nights?" Venner asked.

"Well, not so late as Mr. Kelland used to be on Thursday and Friday nights. But Mr. Kelland didn't mind. He used to laugh at me in a good-natured way, and said he should put me in a book some day. So Mr. Barwick left——"

"Where does he lodge now?" Venner asked.

"Just opposite, sir, in Watersmeet-avenue. There is his window, as you can see for yourself."

"Dear me, this is really interesting," Venner said thoughtfully. "Now, Mrs. Larner, I want you to do something for me. I want you to go into Mr. Kelland's room and ring the bell—I mean the bell that sounds in your bedroom. A good, long ring, if you won't mind."

As the old lady moved off to comply with this request, Venner strolled up as far as the end of the garden, where he stood in a listening attitude. At the end of a few seconds the electric bell trilled out sharp and clear, and a moment later Venner was on his way to the police station.

"Well, how are you getting on?" his Deputy Inspector asked.

"I think I am getting on very well indeed," Venner said. "But before I can go any further I want something done. I want you to make it possible for me to have the run of Number 15, Watersmeet-avenue, for a couple of hours or so, without anybody being any the wiser."

It was three days later when Venner strolled into Padbury Station with the intention of catching a train that left Padbury just before noon for Castleford, the country town, where the connection with the London express was made. He arrived a minute or two after Peter Barwick, who stood by the booking office, taking a first return to town. Five minutes later, they were seated in the same carriage together, and Venner saw to it that they were not interrupted. He also saw, with some interest, that Barwick was accompanied by a solid leather portmanteau, some three feet long. These men had spoken to one another more than once in the last day or so, and it was not difficult to drift into a pleasant conversation.

"A few days' holiday, eh?" Venner asked.

"No," Barwick explained. "I am going to town on the firm's business. I shall be back on Monday with any luck."

"Well, I am very pleased to have met you like this, because we shan't be interrupted, at any rate, not between here and Castleford. And there is something important I want to say to you."

Barwick looked up sharply, with a shade of suspicion in those brooding, sombre eyes of his.

"Anything I can do I am sure," he murmured.

"Yes, I thought you would say that," Venner replied. "It is about that unfortunate man, Kelland. We have three quarters of an hour before us, and I think I shall be able to say all I want to in that time. Now, in the first place I want to know why it was that you shot Stephen Kelland."

It was an unexpected homethrust, of the deadliest nature, but it did not seem to move Barwick in the slightest. He did not even change colour, and those moody eyes were quite steady.

"Do you want me to incriminate myself?" he asked.

"Not in the least," Venner replied. "You can refuse to reply if you like. When you arrive at Castleford I shall hand you over to the county authorities, and, so far as I am concerned, the case in at an end. You can speak, or you can remain as silent as you please."

"I admit nothing," Barwick said quietly. "Perhaps if you will put your cards on the table we can come to an understanding. Oh, I know when I am beaten, Mr. Venner."

"Very well," Venner said. "I will give you a general outline of my case. You were bitterly jealous of your late colleague, and you brooded over what you fancied to be your wrongs until the thing became an obsession with you. To begin with before you disagreed with Mrs. Larner, you occupied the rooms where Kelland died. You know all about the old lady's fads and habits, and you were perfectly aware of the fact that Kelland came home very late on Thursday and Friday nights. I understand that you got off on those evenings long before Stephen Kelland could leave. Now, you were in a back sitting room, some fifty or sixty feet away from Kelland's open window, and waiting for him to come back on the night of the murder. You knew the geography of Kelland's room as well as he knew it himself. You knew that he was in the habit of coming into the house in the dark and going straight to the bell and ringing it for the light to be turned on. With your intimate knowledge and your late military work, all you had to do was to train a rifle on the spot where you knew Kelland would stand when he had his fingers on the bell, and pull the trigger. Very possibly you had the rifle fixed in position on the window ledge, having trained it before it was dark. There was just the chance that you might not have killed your victim, but that was a small risk, and you were ready to take it. Directly you heard that bell sound in Mrs. Larner's basement you shot. It was a most brilliant criminal idea, and was unfortunately successful. But there was one thing you overlooked.

"Did I?" Barwick asked, dully. "What was that?"

"The evidence of the bullet. It was fired from a B.S.A. rifle which you had hidden away in your rooms, and, if I am not mistaken, you have the weapon in your portmanteau there in sections. You are going to get rid of it, but I think it would have been much safer if you had done that in Padbury. However, there never was a criminal yet who never made a mistake, and that is the small percentage that always runs in favour of the police. I am going to take possession of that portmanteau and hand it over to the chief constable at Castleford. I found the box of cartridges in the chimney of your bedroom when I searched your lodgings the day before yesterday."

"And that is your case?" Barwick asked, quietly.

"Yes, that is my case," Venner said.

"Then there is no more to be said. At least, except so far as I like to make a confession. But there is one question I should like to ask you. Did that confounded parrot of mine give me away?"

"To a certain extent, yes," Venner said. "But I think I could have managed without that evidence. Now, if you have anything to say I shall be glad to hear it, if not——"

"I don't think so," Barwick said with a queer twisted smile. "I will take my chance, and, honestly, I don't care whether I live or die. Well, here we are at Castleford, and, if I am not mistaken, there is the chief constable standing on the platform. I am a clever man, Mr. Venner, but not quite so clever as you. And there lies the whole tragedy. Now, then, put the handcuffs on—I am quite ready."

THE END

THE BLINDWORM

Published in The Queenslander, Saturday, 7 June, 1924.

Martin House for the first time in a lurid life was conscious of a fear. It was as if some high tension wire in his mechanism had suddenly relaxed, throwing his whole mental machinery out of gear. Just for an instant, and then he was himself again.

Still, the precious diary had gone—two minutes before it had been lying on the library table in its tin case, with the folio leaves neatly bound with wire clips, just as House had brought it back from the neverlands, from the interior of Brazil, where no white man had ever set foot before. Some day, that nightmare story would be told, but there was much to be done first, and the harvest of the great adventure to be reaped. And if some enemy behind the financial scene had got away with that priceless diary with its treasured secrets, then those five scalding, blistering years, were as dust.

One moment, and House was himself again. He rang the bell, and Herad, the butler, entered. He stood there the very pink and model of what a well-trained servant should be. He might have been cast in a mould and carefully dried in the sun. There was nothing about James Herad to suggest the fires of adventure.

"Did you ring, sir?" he asked with the right shade of deference. "I thought I heard the bell, sir."

"Close the door, Jim," House said in a whisper.

James Herad had heard that tone before. He had heard it on the reeling deck of a sloop in the South Pacific, he had heard it when he stood with a service rifle in his hand, when he was hot, spent, and raging with thirst, with a murderous mob of Pathans within twenty feet of the crumbling stockade and death was grinning in his bloodshot eyes. And Herad was an understanding man.

"Is it trouble, Captain?" he asked.

"Jim, my big diary has been stolen. I was working on it when Rogers passed the window and called to me. He seemed rather upset about something, so I stepped through the window and stood not more than a minute talking to him on the terrace. It seems that a rat has gnawed a hole in the back of one of the small reptile houses, and the two Martinique blindworms are nowhere to be found. They are probably hidden away in the mossy slope by the summer house overlooking the sea. But never mind about them now. When I got back in here the diary was gone."

"Somebody in the house then," Herad suggested.

"Not a doubt about that, Jim. But who? Captain Haines and Mr. Swainson I would go bail for, and as to Mr. Milton you know how harmless and helpless he is. See that nobody leaves the house without being watched. Get Rogers to help you. He was with us out yonder, and is to be relied on thoroughly. Keep a strict eye on the village post office. The thief might try to mail the diary to some accomplice. It would have to go by parcel post, as, with the tin case, it weighs about ten pounds. Call up Mr. Bly for me on the 'phone."

House sat down a little later with a big black cigar to think matters over. The loss of the diary would mean something like ruin to him and his daughter Etne. Practically all that he had in the world had been sunk in the purchase of the pretty little estate on the Sussex coast, which he had invested in when he returned from that wild adventure in higher Brazil. He and Bly and the rest had realised their fondest hopes there, and at the present moment, were in negotiation for the Government concessions necessary to turn that daring raid through hitherto unexplored territory, into substantial advantage. Two companies had already been formed, and the cash of scores of trusting friends invested in the promising adventure. But if certain unscrupulous business men in the city, whom House feared, got wind of what was still more or less in the air, then the whole airy fabric might collapse altogether.

This blow had been dealt him by somebody under his own roof, and there the sting lay. The servants were absolutely innocent, House was quite convinced of that. Both Herad and Rogers were true as steel. The same remark applied to Effie, his daughter. There only remained, then, Captain Haines and his wife, and John Swainson and his, and House had known these men for years both in India, where Haines held a commission in the Gurkhas, and had married the only child of a wealthy Calcutta merchant. There remained only one, Aubrey Milton, who was by way of being a sort of protegee of House's, a mild, harmless kind of youth with no money to speak of, and a burning desire to become another Robert Louis Stevenson. He had given birth to a slim volume of poems of the inevitable neurotic type, and he was anxious for House to find him some light, congenial employment in Fiji or elsewhere, where he could bask in a tropical climate and witch the world with noble penmanship. He had come to House with a letter of introduction from a recently deceased old chum of the pioneer's of Australia, and it was characteristic of House that he had given Milton the run of his establishment. House could not see Milton with nerve enough to steal anything more dangerous than a pin.

And yet the daring and audacious thief was in the house somewhere. House said nothing of his loss, and watched his guests with a stealthy furtiveness of which he was half ashamed. But watch as he would, the next two days pending the arrival of his friend and partner, Eldon Bly, he could detect nothing by so much as the flicker of an eyelid.

Bly arrived late on the third night, when most of the party had retired for the evening. He came, alert, vigorous, a little atomy of a man, with a thin hawk-like nose, and a restless black eye, that seemed to see everything. A distinguished career in the Indian Police had preceeded his partnership with House since when the two men had been inseparable, and now their fortunes were bound up in the concessions which they were still negotiating with a none too honest South American Republic. Bly went straight to the point.

"Yes, I had the main facts from you on the 'phone," he said rapidly. "The danger is plain. If the Mason gang got hold of that diary, we are done. They have the money behind them, and can outbid us with those Government officials."

"Right," House interrupted, "but some information has reached London from here. Not much, because the lookout has been too keen, but enough to justify Mason in inspiring his reptile rag, the 'Financial Post' with an article on our companies. And the same group are actually booming our El Maduros shares. I expect they are looking forward to controlling that venture before long. Perhaps you would like to see it. I've got the paper here."

But, strangely enough, the paper in question, which had been on the library table most of the day, was not to be found. Evidently some one interested in such matters had removed it, and Bly was disposed to regard this as significant.

"Who could have taken it?" he asked. "What about the poet chap you were speaking of?"

"Oh, Milton," House smiled. "He's only a child. What's puzzling me, is how the thief, whoever he is, managed to convey to the Mason gang that he had the diary, and give them the information on which that 'Post' article was based."

"What about the telephone?" Bly asked.

"Good Lord. I had forgotten all about that," House cried. "The thief might have managed that when we were playing tennis. I think you are right, old man, as usual. He 'phoned that he had got hold of the diary, and as an earnest of the fact he gave them such information as would enable them to print that article. But Mason's lot are more or less powerless until they can handle the diary itself, and so long as it is still near at hand——"

"That's our safeguard," Bly said thoughtfully. "The thief has not moved for fear of rousing suspicion. He has hidden the diary somewhere, and is content to wait until the scent grows cold. Now just think what happened on the morning you lost the book. Were you enticed to leave this room?"

"I wasn't," House explained. "Rogers came along the terrace in a great state because he had lost those two Martinique blindworms you gave me. He knew they were the only pair ever seen in England, and how rare they were, and I was very angry with him. However, it was a rat that was to blame. Ate a hole in the back of the hutch. We've got one back but the other has vanished completely."

"Bad luck," Bly murmured. "Though I could never understand your craze for running a sort of menagerie here."

"None of them dangerous," House pleaded. "Besides, it reminds me of old times. I wasn't with Rogers more than a minute, but when I got back here the diary was gone."

Bly pondered the point for some time in silence. One thing was certain—the thief was in the house.

"I should like to sleep on it," Bly said. "Is the same old woman still in charge of the village post office?"

House nodded absently. If Bly was seized with one of his happy inspirations as seemed probable from the more or less inconsequent question about the village post office, he was not in the least likely to be communicative until he was more sure of his ground. He moved about amongst the other guests the next day, exchanging notes with Haines and Swainson, both of whom he knew, and he made himself agreeable to Aubrey Milton, who struck him as being the last possibility in the way of an ass. The man seemed to be perfectly harmless, a weed of a creature, full of little mannerisms and affectations just as one might expect in the minor poet and would-be literary man sighing for the congenial atmosphere wherein to write the masterpiece that was to set the world ablaze. His vapid manner, his silly eyeglass that constantly fell from his watery orb, and his flowing tie, a la Byron, palled on Bly presently, and he ceased to sharpen his wit on the unconscious Milton.

The 'Mute Inglorious Milton' retired presently to his favourite alcove on the edge of the cliffs behind the reptile house, where he was supposed to be engaged on the first of the great novels which was in time to shake the literary world to its foundations.

"A lovely spot, an ideal writing place, Mr. Bly," he simpered. "I am looking forward to having you all to myself there this afternoon, and talking about those amazing scenes of tropical beauty with which you are so familiar. Ah, the inspiration of them! I shall never rest until I also have seen them with these eyes."

"I shall enjoy it immensely," Bly said drily.

He strolled away from the tennis ground presently and made his way towards the village, mooning along with the air of a man whose mind is an absolute blank. He gazed absently into the windows of the village shops until he drifted into the general store that did duty as the post office. It was quite empty as it generally was at that time of day, and the old lady in the horn spectacles behind the counter hailed him eagerly as an old acquaintance.

"Bless me if it ain't Mr. Bly," she exclaimed, "How be you, sir? Come down to see the captain again, yes, yes."

Bly sprawled over the counter talking in his most genial manner. Then gradually he contrived to lead the gossip into the channel he desired. Has Mrs. Lacy a general post office directory by any chance? He wanted the telegraphic registered address of a firm in London whose code he had forgotten. It was a long address, and he didn't want to waste money on superfluous words. Mrs. Lacey had unfortunately nothing of the kind but she was in sympathy with what Mr. Bly was asking for. And surely some of those addresses were strange reading. The captain—meaning House—sent off some funny ones now and then. But there was one gentleman who came in a few days ago and sent off a telegram, to a place in London with a registered address that fairly gave the good-natured old gossip the creeps. Of course she ought not to talk about it, but then Mr. Bly was different to most people, and he would not mention the fact. But the man she was speaking of had actually sent a wire addressed to 'Bloodshed, London.' Fairly made her creep, it did.

"What sort of a man?" Bly asked with a quizzical smile. "Did he look like a pirate? Was he armed?"

Bly's tone was jocular, but he was really interested.

"You're a rare gentleman for your joke," the old lady laughed. "I couldn't rightly say, sir. In motoring things, he were, and them goggles. And he sent that telegram, he did."

It was all quite wrong, of course, but Bly stayed there until he had contrived to have a good look at the original copy of the wire addressed to 'Bloodshed, London.' With the thin spidery writing clearly photographed on his mental retina, he strolled back to the house shortly before lunch time, just as Milton was crossing the tennis lawn on his way back from the alcove on the edge of the cliffs where he had presumedly been working. Bly retraced his steps until he came to the secluded spot which was immediately behind the range of glass houses, originally an aviary, where House kept his snakes and the few South American animals that formed his menagerie. In the alcove was a newspaper or two, and some sheets of original manuscript which Bly rightly judged to be in Milton's handwriting. He smiled in a pleased manner as he unblushingly read the poem on which the budding genius had been working. Then he folded up one of the newspapers and placed it in his pocket.

A little way off, Rogers was at work. He looked up and touched his hat as Bly approached. These two were old friends, and had been in many a tight place in the bad lands of unexplored Brazil together.

"Very pleased to see you again, sir," Rogers said. "We've lost one of them snakes of yours, I'm sorry to say, sir."

"Ah, so Mr. House told me. It's rather a pity, seeing that the Martinique blindworm is practically unique. I understand that you found the other one. I wouldn't give it up yet, Rogers."

"I haven't, sir," Rogers said. "He's probably hiding in the long mossy grass by the alcove. We haven't had any rain for over a month, and Sally, as I call her, must have moisture. She could snuggle down in that thick moss and hide for days, but when the rain comes she'll come back to be fed; that's if she's alive still."

Rogers moved off to his work, and for a moment Bly stood earnestly regarding the small square of thick mossy turf in front of the alcove. Undoubtedly the blindworm had come that way, when it had escaped, in preference to crossing the asphalt that surrounded the menagerie on the other three sides, and doubtless, had buried itself in the thick carpet of moss that underlay the course turf. Then Bly's keen trained eye made out the grooved track the snake had made in crossing the open ground. The track stopped suddenly and vanished underground. Prone on his face, Bly fumbled in the moss and parted it carefully with his fingers, using them as a comb. In the sunshine something glistened like a thin piece of rope made of gold and shimmering blue and emerald. Then there was a hiatus of an inch or two, and then the jewelled rope began again, to end once more some twelve inches further on in nothing. It was like a string of jewels on a broken thread, fractured in three places. But only eyes as keen as those of Bly would have detected it.

He gently touched the severed edges, and at the same time was careful not to move them. In that moment a fine flash of illumination had come to him, and, if he were not altogether mistaken, he had not only solved the mystery of the missing diary, but found the thief at the same time. It was one of those instances of luck that generally go to the man with the intimate knowledge.

It was nearly teatime before Bly had his chance to speak to his host alone in the library.

"Well," the latter asked eagerly, "I could see that you were on to something by the look in your eye when you came in to lunch. Mean to say that you have got to the bottom of it?"

"I believe I have," Bly said modestly. "But I can tell you more about that when I have had a look at your copy of the post office directory of registered telegraphic addresses. After that I want a strip of thin cardboard about a foot long and some three inches wide. Yes, I think that the diary is safe now."

House asked no questions. He knew Bly better than that. He produced the book that Bly required, and waited for further instructions. They were not long in coming.

"Look up 'Bloodshed, London,'" Bly snapped. "I think that they will prove to be old friends of yours."

"Mason, Blood, and Evershed," House announced presently. "That's the firm that Mason is head of. And a very fine nom de plume, too. Is this what you expected to get?"

"I should have been a bit sick otherwise," Bly said drily. "About a week ago somebody staying in this house sent a wire to Mason addressed to his firm, to the effect that the sender was staying in these parts for the present, and that he would communicate through the usual channel, but 'Bloodshed, London,' was on no account to try and reach the party who sent the wire from here. I know what I am talking about because I have seen the original wire, thanks to my friendship with Mrs. Lacy, of the post office. Now which of the men who are staying here arrived on a motor cycle?"

"Swainson did over a week ago, his wife coming by train. Mil——arrived here the same night, and so did Haines."

"Is the poet man enough to mount a petrol driven machine?"

"Yen, I think he had Swainson's out one morning for an hour just after he came," House explained, "But why?"

"All in good time," Bly laughed. "Now get me that piece of cardboard, and go back to your guests again as if nothing had happened. If I am successful, just before dinner, as I expect to be, I will give you the tip and directly after dinner I want you to join me in the library for a few minutes. So long."

Bly vanished with his slip of cardboard, and House was left to possess his soul in patience as best he could. But in due course, he caught a triumphant gleam in Bly's eye and joined him in the library, leaving the guests enjoying their after dinner smoke on the terrace. Bly said nothing, but pointed to a square object on the table, a tin box that had apparently just been dug out of the wet ground. House gasped in astonishment.

"The diary!" he gurgled. "Good Lord, Bly, how——?

"Presently," Bly smiled. "Meanwhile there is something else to be done. Ask the poet to come this way."

House beckoned to Milton through the open French window, and that individual drifted in with his inane smile and the usual suggestion of aloof superiority that marked him always. But, as his shallow blue eyes lighted on the tin case on the library table in the direction of the door, it was a different man altogether who turned a fighting face towards Bly. The dilletante had vanished, a man of action suddenly stood in his place.

"No, you don't," Bly said between his teeth. "You stay here if you want to keep a whole skin, my friend. Now then—how long has your name been Aubrey Milton, and how did you contrive to get that forged reference from the late Mr. Brightwell, of Sydney? Come, you know what I mean—the letter of introduction that gave you the entree into this house?"

"Really, I don't understand you," Milton drawled. "Mr. Brightwell was an old friend of my father's and I stayed with him in Australia. If you doubt my bona fides——"

"We will come to that presently," Bly said grimly. "In the meantime, let me ask you a further question. And don't forget that I am in a position to force a reply. How long have you been in the pay of Mr. George Mason, of the firm of Mason, Blood, and Evershed? What did he offer you in exchange for Mr. House's diary?"

"Never heard of the man," Milton said indifferently.

Bly turned with a look almost of regret to House.

"Very sorry," he murmured, "but I am afraid that we shall have to make a police matter of this after all. You'll have to give this man into custody, House. Of course you want to avoid a scandal, but there are limits. I'll look after this chap whilst you call up the police at Brighton on the telephone."

Milton wilted slightly. But he was game still, and in spite of it all Bly respected the new Milton far more than the old one.

"Think again," Bly said almost pleasantly, "think again."

"Well, put your cards on the table," Milton snapped.

"Right. About a week ago, just after you got here, you sent a wire to Mason, the scoundrel who is trying to ruin your host, the effect that you were safely landed here and would communicate in due course, but that Mason was not to try and get you here. You borrowed Mr. Swainson's mackintoshes and goggles, so that the sender of the message should not be recognised, but you wouldn't deny your own handwriting on the message. Then you managed to get hold of that diary, which Mason had heard of through the treachery of a clerk once in our employ, and very cleverly you did it. You are a brilliant psychologist, Mr. Milton. And your acting is uncommonly neat. Most men would have bolted with the diary, but you knew better than that. You hid it instead, waiting for the thing to blow over. And I found it by the merest accident in the world."

"So I see," Milton said quite pleasantly. "You are too many for me, Mr. Bly. I am on Mason's staff, and I volunteered to lay hands on the diary, which would have meant a fortune to the firm. Incidentally, perhaps one for myself. But how on earth——?"

"Heard enough, House?" Bly interrupted. "Better pitch this chap out, and tell the others he was suddenly called away. Motor him over to Brighton, what?"

Milton departed presently, unconcerned to the last and quite without shame. He had failed in his mission when on the very verge of success, and that was the one thing that worried his predatory soul. He was easy and smiling to the last, and seemed to bear no malice. There was something almost fine in the way in which he asked House to convey his regrets to the others that he had not the time to make his own adieux.

"Well, there's a pretty scoundrel for you," House cried.

"Let's hope it will be the last," Bly smiled. "My dear old chap, you have a perfect magnetism for the average rotter. They come round you like flies. And you are no fool either. Any rascal can get the tale over you. I can call to mind a score of Miltons."

"Never mind about that," House grinned. "Tell me how you managed to touch bottom over this business."

"It wasn't very difficult up to a certain point," Bly said as he lighted a cigarette. "Moreover, I had luck. And I didn't suspect Milton at first because he played his idiotic part so well that he fairly deceived me. But somebody in the house was pulling the strings, and somebody in the house was in possession of the diary. From the precautions you took it was obvious that the book was still on the premises. All the same, I thought that I could get something from old Mrs. Lacey, at the post office, and I did. I found out that somebody in these parts had sent a wire to 'Bloodshed, London,' which turned out on investigation to be Mason, Blood, and Evershed, the people we have most to fear. I contrived to see the original of that telegram, and made a mental photograph of the handwriting. A little later on, in the alcove where our ci devant poet worked, I found some of his manuscript. It was the handwriting of the telegram. That, of course, was blind luck. So was the finding in the same place of the copy of the 'Financial Post' you couldn't lay your hands on. So there was the thief properly earmarked."

"But how about the diary?" House demanded eagerly.

"I'm just coming to that," Bly went on. "I knew then who had the diary. That was something to the good. Then I ran into Rogers, who told me all about the missing Martinique blindworm. The other one had been found in the moss on the open patch by the alcove. It occurred to me that perhaps the mate was lying perdu in the damp, so I had a look for it. I found the track, and then as suddenly lost it. Then I found the worm dead, and, moreover, cut into three pieces with some blunt instrument, probably a spade. After it had buried itself in the moss, somebody had plunged a spade into the turf for some reason, not once, but at least three times. Why? To dig a hole. Why did somebody want to dig a hole there? It came on me like a flash. To bury the diary there. Close to the spot where Milton passed most of his time. I should never have found the snake, only the brilliant sunshine was full upon the place, and I just caught a glimpse of the glittering gaudy skin. Then with my strip of cardboard, I felt for the slender parting in the mossy turf, where the spade had done its work, and, surely enough, the cardboard went in quite easily. Up came the loose covering of moss, and there in a hollow lay the diary in its tin case. Of course, Milton had no idea, when using his spade, that he was cutting through one of the rarest snakes in the world. And the blindworm was too deep in the moss for him to see it wriggling, or, perhaps he was nervous and in a desperate hurry. And that's all there is to it, partner."

THE END

A BOOTLESS ERRAND

Published in the Western Mail (Perth, W.A.), Thursday 19 March, 1925.

The long, flower-decked balcony of Lady Barchester's house in Chesterton Place was the most intimate spot in London—a sort of tropical paradise snatched from the warm Southern Seas. In the purple, velvety darkness late on that perfect June night, two people were seated there.

"This," Augustus Openshaw sighed, "is great."

"But dangerous, darling," Angela Gilliland whispered. "If any of those dancers wandered in——"

"Oh, that's all right," Gus Openshaw smiled. "I got Betty Barchester to fasten the window behind us, so that there would he no chance of interruption."

Angela Gilliland snuggled a little closer to the young man with the orange-hued hair and the golden freckles lavishly bestowed on that blunt, good-natured face of his. She was exceedingly fond of Gus, and none the less because she ought not to have been there at all. When a young man has to eke out a miserable existence on about a thousand a year, he has no right to entangle the affections of a beauty like Angela Gilliland, who in her own right was mistress of twenty times that sum. Not that it was anybody's affair but theirs and Mr. Benjamin Openshaw's, and thereby hangs a tale.

Now, Mr. Benjamin Openshaw was not only Gus's uncle, but guardian to the fascinating young woman who at that moment was perched ecstatically on the fortunate young man's knee. They sat there talking over their troubles, and trying to find some scheme by which to avert the threatening danger, and put a spoke in the wheel of Mr. Openshaw's programme at the same time. And as Gus said, it took a bit of doing.

"Now, look here, darling," he observed. "We can't go fooling on like this. Your father was a dear old chap, but he made a bit of a bloomer when he shoved all those dollars of his—I mean yours—into the hands of Uncle Ben. I ain't quarrelling with the idea of your money being tied up till you are twenty-five. Of course, we can wait for the next four years."

"Yes, I suppose we can, Gus," Angela sighed.

Gus clicked his strong even teeth together as he thought of that fat, pompous old uncle of his, that elderly politician who still lived in hope that he might some day find himself endowed with Cabinet Rank. He was a heavy bore of the largest calibre, and he was the proud possessor of a son, another Gus, who was perhaps even a shade more serious and ponderous than his sire. And, quite within the bounds of honour, of course. Openshaw pere was exceedingly anxious to see the hope of his house allied to the dazzling beauty, and equally dazzling fortune of Miss Angela Gilliland.

"Is there no one who can manage it, Gus, dear?" Angela asked almost tearfully. "If you could only make him ridiculous. If you could only wound his family pride. If you could hit him through that Hamlet-like offspring of his!"

"That's a dashed good idea," Gus said. "Something in the public line, I mean, that gets in the newspapers. A stunt to make people laugh at him. Practical—or—got it!"

"Got what?" Angela asked.

"Why, the notion, the big idea. You know Jack Adair?"

Of course, Angela knew Jack Adair, the popular clerk in the Foreign Office, who led all the theatricals and generally presided as a sort of master of ceremonies over the gaieties of their particular set, and who eked out a rather slender income as one of the staff of a popular daily paper.

"Well, there you are then," Gus went on a little vaguely. "But Jack will do it, and he will see that it gets all the publicity it needs through the 'Morning Herald.' But mind you, it's going to take a bit of time. Let me see, isn't my distinguished cousin at present quartered in Rome?"

"British Embassy," Angela murmured. "In training for the Diplomatic Service, and all that."

"Good," Gus cried. "The great work begins to-night. Now, don't ask a lot of questions. And trust me implicitly. I am going out like another Sir Galahad, O.B.E., to take the road for the sake of my lady's bright eyes."

Ten minutes later, Gus was closeted eagerly with that brilliant young man, Jack Adair, in a quiet comer of the inner drawing-room. Then they left the house together and parted with much laughter at the comer of the street.

Half an hour later, the young man with the saffron-coloured hair and gold freckles stood by the side of the Serpentine looking down into the placid water. He was beautifully turned out with a shining topper covering his flaming locks, and with a light overcoat unbuttoned that showed the gleaming expanse of his shirt and waistcoat. And then he did a strange thing. He stooped down deliberately, removed his glistening pumps, and proceeded to divest himself of a pair of lavender socks shot with gold. This done, he rolled these articles up into a tight ball, and threw them into the water. A minute or two later, he was strolling towards his quarters with an air of absolute unconcern, until at length he found himself in Piccadilly. There he came face to face with a stalwart policeman who eyed him with astonishment.

"What's the gime?" the officer asked. "What are you playin' at? An' where are you goin'?"

"John o' Groats," Gus said. "Do I turn to the right or left, or do I keep straight on?"

"But what's the gime?" the man in blue repeated almost imploringly. "Look 'ere, you'd better come along o' me and see the sergeant."

"I decline," Gus said with dignity, "to see any sergeant. I am not interested in sergeants—they are the sort of people I have been in the habit of mixing with. My name is Openshaw, Augustus Openshaw. And if you don't happen to know it——"

Apparently the officer did, for his manner became a little more respectful.

"Well, sir," he went on. "It's no business of mine, of course, but I don't think, as Mr. Benjamin Openshaw will very much like it. And if you take my advice——"

At that moment another man in evening dress appeared upon the scene. With a twinkle in his eye, Gus recognised his inconsequent friend, Jack Adair. The latter stopped and regarded his confederate with a fine air of intense astonishment.

"What, do you mean to say you are actually going on with it?" he cried. "Look here, come along with me."

"I decline to come along with you," Gus said with dignity. "I have made a wager and I am going to carry it out. I am on my way to walk to Scotland, and if you will kindly tell me whether I turn to left or to right when I come to the end of the road, I shall be greatly obliged."

Without a word, Adair put his hand through his friend's arm and led him away with the air of one who is humouring a fractious child. He winked at the policeman over his shoulder and significantly touched his forehead.

"It works, old man, it works," Gus said. "I will tell you where to find me from time to time, but I don't think that I am going to walk quite all the way, and anyhow, I can manage to keep from permanent lameness if I carry a pair of running shoes in my tail coat pocket. Now, come inside and have a drink, and I will tell you——"

"Not on your life," Adair said. "It will take me all my time to reach the office of my rag if I am going to have that paragraph in all the editions tomorrow."

The countless readers of the 'Morning Herald' saw that striking paragraph as they sat at breakfast in their luxurious suburban homes:

AMAZING WAGER.
DRAMATIC SCENES IN PICCADILLY.

"Early this morning a young man of distinguished appearance was discovered strolling down Piccadilly wearing immaculate evening dress, and in every way resplendent, save for the fact that he was entirely divested of footgear and socks. He explained to a bewildered policeman that he was engaged in a wager for an enormous sum to walk, just as he was, from Piccadilly Circus to the North of Scotland. We gather from our representative, who happened to be on the spot, that one of the conditions of the bet was that the journey should be accomplished in bare feet, and that the protagonist in question should wear nothing but evening kit, and that he should, thus apparelled, walk through every town that happened to be en route. This, our representative had first hand and, moreover, he elicited from the chief actor himself the fact that his name is Augustus Openshaw. We understand, therefore, that he is the only son of Mr. Benjamin Openshaw, the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs who, we believe, is certain of Cabinet rank at an early date. Further particulars of this eccentric feat will appear in our later edition."

For the moment, the political world was standing still, there were no complications on land and sea, no lurid, salacious divorce case penciling, so that the 'Morning Herald' made a feature of the ridiculous stunt which they regarded as all their own. And, other papers kindly copied. The enterprising Openshaw was located here and there, he was seen in this town and that, sturdily plodding his way north, and occasionally encountered on country roads, where he prudently removed his unspiked running shoes at the slightest sign of life coming in his direction. Also, strange to say, no word of indignant expostulation came from the head of the family. And Gus found himself troubled and worrying.

The Eight Honourable Benjamin, Openshaw had been absent for some time on the affairs of his country in Brussels. So, because he had not seen the English papers for so long, this terrible scandal had not approached his august presence. And then, when his work was finished, and he found himself with a little leisure, he turned eagerly to the British papers and read the whole horrible catastrophe in a state bordering on collapse.

So the Right Honourable gentleman packed his traps and fled precipitously homewards, bent upon righting this terrible wrong and perhaps hushing up a scandal which threatened to ruin his political career. And the first person he met as he crossed his threshold was his erring son, in propria persona, looking mildly through his spectacles, and bleating in his accustomed manner.

"This is a nice business!" Openshaw bellowed. "What do you mean by it, sir? What do you mean——"

"My dear father," the other Gus said mildly. "I am as much in the darkness as you are. I got an English paper in Rome some days ago, and directly I read the paragraph there, I hurried home as soon as possible. I can't understand it."

A sudden, light illuminated the great statesman.

"It's that rascally cousin of yours!" he breathed heavily. "One of those disgraceful practical jokes of his. A wager, perhaps. He would not give a thought to any position, or the due he owes to the family. I suppose Sommerson is here. Get him to telephone to your cousin and say he must come round here at once."

Sommerson, deeply concerned, and anxious for his chief's political welfare, managed to find Gus at his club and returned a moment later with the information that the delinquent would be on view within the next half-hour. He came cheerfully enough, smilingly hailing the aged butler and apparently oblivious of the fact that Benjamin's late wife's sister and ruler of the household had deliberately turned her back upon him. He knew that Angela was in the house somewhere, but deemed it policy not to ask after her—at any rate for the moment. He strode across the hall into the sacred domain where Benjamin Openshaw composed those majestic speeches of his, and stood in the Presence entirely unabashed.

"I suppose you know why I sent for you," Openshaw asked.

"Oh, Lord—yes," Gus said cheerfully. "About that little stunt of mine. Upon my word, I am sorry. But, after all do you think that it really matters?"

Openshaw fairly gasped.

"Matters!" he echoed. "Do you know sir, that my whole political career is at stake—to say nothing of that of your unfortunate cousin? I have been made a laughing stock of, sir! And as the head of the family I have been held up to ridicule. Do you know that 'Punch' has had something to say about it?"

"By Jove!—that is something like fame!" the recalcitrant Gus said cheerfully. "But why blame me?"

"Why blame you? Why blame you? You did it on purpose, sir—deliberately to injure your cousin."

"Here, steady on!" Gus said. "I didn't put that paragraph in the 'Morning. Herald.' I had to tell the police who I was, and they naturally jumped to the conclusion that I was your son. Of course, I know you don't care for these jokes, and in any case——"

"Joke, sir! Do you call it a joke? Some idiotic wager, I presume. The sort of amazing folly that you inconsequent idiots are always indulging in. It may be too late to save the family name, but at any rate, I can only try. You, sir, will have to make an abject apology. I order you immediately to write to that confounded paper, whose politics, by the way, are diametrically opposite to mine, and eat dust, sir!—eat dirt!"

"Well, I think that is only fair," Gus said coolly. "I'll make as abject an apology, as you like. Fact is, I came prepared to do so. So if you will sling me over a pen and some paper——"

Openshaw placed the desired material in front of his sinful relative, and Gus proceeded to write. If Mr. Openshaw had been less concerned with his own dignity and had been a little more observant than he was, he would have seen that Gus, who couldn't write three consecutive lines of prose to save his life, was getting on with amazing rapidity. He paused once in the flow of his splendid composition as if carefully polishing a period. As a matter of fact, Gus was what he would have called bunkered over his orthography, having been badly tripped by the word 'apology.' He finally decided to spell it with an 'o,' and proceeded cheerfully on his florid way. Then, with a certain air of triumph, he tossed the sheet across the table.

"There, what price that?" he asked.

It was a humble enough apologia, as even the outraged statesman was fain to admit. It was quite sufficient that it would restore him in the eyes of his fellow-men, and place the other Gus back upon his pedestal of stolid British respectability.

"Um!—very good!" the other man said. "Now, if you will sign that, I will see that it is duly posted. But I am not appeased yet, sir, I am not appeased yet. You will be good enough to abstain from coming here in future, and you and Miss Gilliland——"

Gus looked up suddenly with a fighting light in his eyes. He might have been confronted with a long putt on the last green for the match and the championship. His Irish hair gleamed in the sunshine filtering through the window, and his mouth grey hard.

"Oh, indeed," he said. "I see what you are driving at. But, look here, there are conditions. If I like to make a wager to walk to Land's End on my hands, it is nothing to do with you. And if newspapers like to make mistakes in people's identity, then it is no concern of mine. Now listen, uncle, I have known Angela all my life, and I have been dead keen on her ever since she was a kid with pigtails. And I am going to marry her. I am going to marry her with your consent or not. I know you can hold her money over for the next four years, but we can manage on my thousand quid per annum. Take a cottage near some decent golf links, and do with one servant. We have talked it over."

"Oh, you have, have you? And perhaps you have considered the consequences."

"Consequences. What consequences?"

"Well—er—let us say offspring," Openshaw suggested.

"Topping," Gus said delightedly. "By Gad, I never thought of that. A couple of natting youngsters would suit me down to the ground. I shouldn't mind a bit; bathing and feeding the little beggars. Awfully fond of kiddies, always was. And Angela, why, she'd be fairly potty about them. Now then."

"You mean to threaten me, sir," Openshaw demanded.

"Well, not quite that. But dash it, it's a poor rule that doesn't work both ways. You have got my apology there, and I am quite prepared to sign it and send it on to the editor of the 'Morning Herald.' There. Stick a stamp on it and get one of your servants to post it at once."

Openshaw looked a little less majestic.

"I am glad to see, sir," he said, "that you have some respect for the honour of the house. Why you came near, very near indeed, perhaps to depriving a country of a future Premier, at any rate, a Cabinet Minister. Still," he went on loftily, "I accept your apology in the spirit in which it has been offered, and I trust that time will heal the wound. I have nothing more to say, nothing. You can go, Augustus, you can go."

The fighting light crept back into Gus's eyes. Sooth to say, he had come there a bit ashamed of himself with the consciousness that he had not been quite playing the game. The whole thing had been a piece of inconsequent folly, and he was feeling rather ashamed of it. But, dash it all, if the head of the family was going to ride off like that, he would have something to say.

"Look here," he expostulated. "Why should I take all the blame? It isn't my fault that there are two Gus Openshaws, and it isn't my fault because my cousin is such a mutt. And now perhaps we can exchange documents. Here is a bit of paper in my pocket which I think you might sign."

He handed it over, and the potential future Premier began to read. His cheeks swelled up like those of an angry turkey cock.

"Colossal impudence," he cried. "You are actually asking me in writing to give my consent to an alliance with my ward! Because that is what this means. Miserable boy."

"Not at all, sir, not at all," Gus said. "It is only a little interchange of compliments. However, being a sportsman, I waive it. The apology can go, and you can tear up the paper which you have in your hand. I heard you say once, years ago, that in your early day you had some ambition of being a sportsman yourself. I begin to see now where you have been a failure."

The great man stood there with the sheet of notepaper in his hand. He looked into that pleasant, rugged, attractive face of his nephew's with a vague regret that his own son was not a little more like this young man who stood before him. He was bound to admit that Gus was behaving rather handsomely. He was actually abasing himself for the good of the family, and if he had refused to put his name to that apology, then Mr. Benjamin Openshaw would have been an everlasting object of ridicule, and the great man knew only too well what that meant in the world of politics. But there was his brother's son actually throwing away his sword and depriving himself of what might have been a deadly weapon.

And a sort of sudden liking for Gus seemed to spring spontaneously in that ponderous bosom of his. Something inside him was heaving like the ice on a river before the west wind. He was conscious that the crust of years was cracking, and here and there were dim memories of the time when he was a boy himself. He had also been at the best public school in England. He was recollecting now how he had dreamt of the day when he, too, might have been amongst the Bloods—a member of the Olympian band that constituted the first cricket XI, and perhaps the proud wearer of a footer cap. He had dreams of the day when he would do the hundred yards in even time ... then he woke up.

He looked across the table with the nearest thing to a smile on his face that man had ever seen.

"My dear boy," he said, with a ponderous clearing of his throat. "You are behaving very well, indeed. An honourable course I should have expected from my brother's son. And—er—yes—um—I think, perhaps, on the whole, it would be better for me not to stand in your way, and I—er—rather think that you will find Angela alone in the drawing-room."

Gus took the stairs three at a time.

THE END

THE MAN WHO GOT THROUGH

ILLUSTRATED BY FRANK GILLETT

Published in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. LXI, Feb 1925, pp 297-303

WHAT his real name was, it doesn't matter. There were one or two cynical inhabitants of Nagaska who averred that he did not know himself; but that was a libel, though uttered in no carping or ungenerous spirit, for the man who was known as Jim Baxter was a long way the most popular person in that little community on the fringe of the North-West Frontier, where they farmed in a casual sort of way in accordance with the almanack, and a few of the more adventurous spirits did a little mild silver mining.

It was a sort of Sleepy Hollow, that little neck of valley between two ranges of mountains, and there life moved slowly, for they were a contented race, earning just what they wanted and no more, content to let the world go by as long as the snows were not too severe and a plentiful supply of firewood was to be had for the asking. Papers came to the little settlement occasionally, but if they failed to materialise from the station eight miles away, nobody troubled and nobody cared. Now and again they heard stories of crime and outrage, and on one occasion a notorious malefactor had invaded the settlement in search of food, and with the North-West Police hot upon his track. He had not looked in the least like the popular villain depicted by a highly-coloured press—in fact, he was insignificantly small, very ragged and dirty, and he had made no effort to hold up a peaceful community at the business end of a revolver. On the contrary, he had crawled almost on his hands and knees, and had begged for food like some harmless tramp, so that even the children had gathered round him quite fearlessly and without a shadow of hesitation. Still, he was a desperado, as his record showed, and, when the time came, put up an exceedingly pretty fight, during which two of the North-West Police had been severely wounded. But in the eyes of the people of Nagaska he had appeared more like a cat driven to bay by half a dozen dogs. And that, so far as the oldest inhabitant could remember, was the only bit of excitement Sleepy Hollow had ever seen.

But all this, of course, has nothing to do with Jim Baxter. He had drifted there eight or nine years ago, a tall, powerful man dressed in grey tweeds of a pattern unknown to Nagaska, though when Phillips, local superintendent of the North-West Police, first set eyes on him, he muttered something to himself that sounded like "Bond Street." For Phillips was an Englishman of family and a man of some means, and he belonged to the North-West Force only out of sheer love of the hardy life and an unholy thirst for adventure. He tried, in his genial, courteous way, to find out something about Jim Baxter, but that individual was not to be drawn. He admitted freely enough that he was an Englishman, and that there were powerful family reasons why it had become necessary for him to turn his back abruptly upon the land of his birth, to all of which Phillips listened sympathetically enough, though when he asked Jim whether he had ever worn His Majesty's uniform, the latter coloured up and reminded Phillips quite politely that there were limits to ordinary curiosity.

"All right, my friend," Phillips had said. "I don't want to barge in. But, you see, I am responsible for law and order in this part of the world, and I like to know as much as possible about newcomers."

"That's all right," Jim had replied. "I'm not a criminal and I'm not exactly a pauper—that is, I have enough to keep myself in clothes and food and an occasional glass of whisky."

With that the conversation came to an end, and Phillips went his way, with the intention of keeping his eye upon the stranger. But there was really no occasion, for the months went by and the years rolled on without any outbreak on the part of Jim Baxter, who settled down in the little community as if he would like to stay there all the days of his life. He did nothing except lend a hand occasionally up there in one of the small silver mines, but this was more to kill time than anything else.

He built himself a shack, where he spent most of his day reading—indeed, Jim's big box of books had given him quite the reputation of a scholar in those parts. But they were novels, for the most part, English classics ranging from Richardson down to Kipling, with a sprinkling of French literature. And with these for his sole companions Jim Baxter lived quite contentedly for upwards of nine years.

Not that he was, even in the slightest sense, a recluse. To begin with, he was exceedingly popular with the small handful of children there, who ran in and out of his shack at all times of the day without the slightest fear or hesitation. They would drop in to dinner or tea or supper, when Jim would tell them stories and see them safely home afterwards.

He was a familiar figure in the saloon, where it was said that he could hold more Canadian whisky than any two men in the settlement, which was no libel, though no man in that congenial company had ever seen Jim the worse for liquor during the nine years he had been there. He was a past master in the art of chaff and repartee, a big, easy-going, genial giant of a man who spent his money freely and apparently had no enemy in the world.

Whence he derived his means, no one knew, and no one particularly cared. Once a month he repaired regularly to Fort Falcon, the trading station some six miles away, where the police had their headquarters, and whence came supplies of all sorts upon which Nagaska depended. There he would transact certain business at the bank, and come back with his pockets full of dollar notes, which apparently lasted him for a month to the very hour. If there was anything of the man of action about him, he disguised it carefully, for apparently a more indolent man never breathed. And so things had drifted on for the best part of a decade, and it looked as if Jim had settled down to live and die there, when the thing happened that stirred Nagaska to its depths and brought it face to face with a peril which nobody had ever anticipated, but which was dire enough in all conscience. It was one of those bolts from the blue that swooped down out of a clear sky in the twinkling of an eye.

It was rather late autumn, a red and flaming autumn touched with gold, with just a touch of frost in the air to warn the people in the settlement of what was coming, so that outdoor workers pushed on in the usual leisurely way, the wood for the winter was gathered in, and the few odd animals belonging to the inhabitants had come back to the stables. A little later on the snows would come down in earnest, and for the next few months the little community of Nagaska would be cut off from the rest of the world, to sleep and hibernate, and eat and drink like so many squirrels till the spring thaw came and they could get into touch with civilisation once more. But this was entirely in accordance with the ordinary course of things, and so long as the little garrison was provisioned for the winter, nothing mattered.

There would be plenty doing in the course of a week or two, when every man, woman and child would be pressed into the service of the State, and every horse and vehicle busy on the road between Nagaska and the Fort. It was characteristic of the inhabitants that this was always left to the last moment, which mattered very little, because they knew almost to a day when the first fall of snow would take place. At least, that was the easy philosophy of the place, and they all acted up to it religiously. It never seemed to occur to anybody that one of these years Our Lady of the Snows might take it into her head to come down in her white and shining beauty a week or two before the annual advent of her court, in which case it might go mighty hard with Nagaska. It never had occurred to anybody, and by the same process of reasoning it never would, which is a form of philosophy not entirely confined to rude communities.

And, curiously enough, it was Jim, of all men, who raised the very point one evening soon after the frost came, as he lounged on an empty apple barrel in the saloon, with a glass of whisky in his hand, What would happen, he wanted to know, if the big snow came down suddenly?

"It never has," the oldest inhabitant said, "and, consequently, never will."

"Ah, but suppose it does?" Jim persisted. "It isn't impossible, Methuselah."

"Nothing's impossible in this world," the old man said solemnly, "but that's very near it."

"Very likely," Jim agreed. "But it might come—the big snow, I mean, when you couldn't get to the Fort perhaps for a fortnight."

"There's enough here to go on with," another optimist said, "enough for a fortnight."

"And after that you'd starve," Jim went on.

"Guess we should," another philosopher put in.

"But suppose there was nothing here," Jim returned to the point. "It's only a wooden shack, after all, and there are at least fifty barrels of petroleum out there. Supposing the saloon caught fire? It wouldn't last a quarter of an hour. And what should we all do then?"

The conversation was growing uncomfortable; it was felt by the slow-witted opportunists about the stove that Jim was trespassing on the debatable lands of good taste. So they bade him fill his glass again and talk about something else, which, in his amiable, obliging manner, he did. Then they went their way presently, each to his shack to sleep and dream and give no heed to the morrow. A big wind had got up during the evening, a raging gale from the north-east, with the smell of the snow in it, so that they were all eager enough to get under cover and feel the warmth in their bones again.

But not for long. For presently out there in the clearing appeared a spark or two of light, then a tongue of flame and a quick roar of a conflagration. Presently there was a report that shook the whole settlement, so that the men came hurrying out, hastily wrapping themselves in their skins, to see what convulsion of Nature had taken place.

And there was the saloon one blaze of fire. The flames ate up the dry wood greedily, they raced from beam to beam and room to room until presently they reached the barrels of petroleum in the sheds behind. Then followed a great sheet of dazzling fire, the roar of an explosion, and the place where the store had stood was just no more than a big handful of glowing ashes. The whole thing was over in a few minutes. Fortunately no lives had been lost, but beyond the small amount of food in every shack, not another mouthful remained in the settlement. Men talked over the calamity in low voices as they stood there, with heads down in the piercing gale, and muttered of what they would have to do on the morrow to make this thing good. It would be a case of all hands to the pump, so to speak, with every man and every animal on their way to the Fort in search of food. And with this decision uppermost, and with the houseless saloon keeper and his wife accommodated for the night, one and all turned their backs on the soul-searching gale and burrowed into their shacks like so many rabbits.

It was bitterly, bitterly cold, far colder than it ought to have been at that time of the year, and the voice of the snow was singing in the air. There would undoubtedly be a fall before morning, not heavy, perhaps, but it was coming, and Jim Baxter, as he turned into his buffalo skins, asked himself an uneasy question or two. It seemed strange that this calamity should befall within an hour or so of the discussion in the saloon. And if it did come in real earnest, then assuredly the little community at Nagaska was face to face with starvation. Then Jim put the matter out of his mind and went to sleep.

He woke up the following morning to the realisation of a white world. For a time, at least, it seemed to him, in a dim, uncomprehending sort of way, that the dawn was long in coming, before the real truth came home to him. Then he saw that the windows were piled high with snow, he could hear the hiss against them, and when finally he dragged himself out of his skins, he saw stark tragedy lying there before him.

For it was no herald of the coming winter that had come down on the gale in the still watches of the night, but the real thing itself—several feet of snow, with every sign of more to follow, and the north-west wind tearing round the house like a pack of angry wolves in search of their prey. It was intensely, bitterly cold, too—a freezing, biting cold that sent Jim headlong to the stove, where he piled up the logs and set about getting his breakfast.

This he did in his usual calm, methodical way, eating his bacon slowly and deliberately, filling his pipe afterwards. He knew perfectly well what Nagaska was face to face with, and not for a moment did he try to belittle the danger. He knew that the lapse of a day or two would see the end of the last ounce of food in Nagaska. He knew that the people over there at the Fort would not trouble anything about the settlement, for had not the authorities there every reason to believe that the big store in the village was amply supplied for all immediate needs, at any rate? And for the moment Fort Falcon would be busy looking after itself.

It was only a matter of six miles, but six miles of desolation and possible death for anyone who had the temerity to face the danger.

All this Jim knew perfectly well, and he knew perfectly well what he was going to do. The thought did not trouble him in the least as he sat there before the stove, smoking his pipe until at length it was finished, after which, with considerable difficulty, he made his way down to the little building which was parish room or school house—in fact, anything according to the point of view of the inhabitants. And there, as he expected, he found a little handful of men gathered round the stove, discussing the situation deliberately, with reminiscences of similar happenings.

There was no hurry, of course—nobody ever hurried in Nagaska. They would probably sit and talk and talk for hours. Jim stood there in the doorway, contemplating the ancient fathers with a humorous gleam in those sleepy eyes of his.

"Pretty bad, isn't it?" he asked.

"Well, I guess it is," the old man known as Methuselah drawled. "I've been here, man and boy, for nearly eighty years, and I disremember the big fall ever coming as early as this. And it is the big fall all right."

"So it seems," Jim said drily. "But say, boys, did you ever have the big fall before you got the winter provisions in before,?"

Old man Methuselah shook his head.

"Never," he went on. "We always goes by the almanack, and it's never throwed us down before."

"And you have never had a fire here before?"

"Well, that's an act of Providence," the old man said solemnly. "That's what it is —Providence."

"Very likely," Jim agreed. "But I've always been told that Providence helps those who help themselves. Now, look here, boys, it's up to us to do something. They won't worry about us over at the Fort, because they'll conclude that we have got enough to go on with for a week or two. Of course they don't know the store is burnt down, else they'd make an effort to get through to us with a few loads of provisions. Seems to me we've got to get to them."

"Ah, but how?" the old man asked. "It can't be done, Jim. There's no livin' man could face it. And, mind you, there's more to come, lots more."

"And meanwhile?" Jim Baxter asked.

The little group round the stove shifted uneasily. It was felt in a vague sort; of way that Jim was hustling, and anything of that sort was quite foreign to the ways and customs of the settlers in Nagaska, And yet there was not a single man there who did not realise the danger.

"How long can you last out?" Jim went on.

There were various opinions, more or less deliberately enunciated, but, generally speaking, it came out reluctantly enough that two days would see Nagaska on the verge of starvation. Jim beamed genially on the crowd.

"That's just what I want to get at," he said. "Now, we ain't going to starve—at least, the women and the kids ain't, if I've got anything to do with it. Somebody's got to go; the question is, who?"

They looked at one another apprehensively, for there was not a man there who did not thoroughly understand the lurking perils that lay in every yard of that six miles of snow. They began to discuss it with one another in whispers; they told tales of lonely settlers cut off in snows less deep than this, who had lain down and died within rifle-shot of their own shacks. And then someone a little more enterprising than the rest suggested that they should draw lots for it.

"Yes, that's right," Methuselah said. "And you can put my name in the hat, too."

"There's a fine old sportsman for you," Jim cried. "But there are not going to be any lots, not if I know myself. Listen to me, boys. Somebody's got to go, and there isn't one of you who is not married. You haven't all got children, but you've got wives. Now, I haven't either, not even relations in the proper sense of the word, and if anything happens to me I shan't be missed, except perhaps by the kiddies here. I'm a pretty useless sort of individual, but none of you have ever told me that. That's why I am going. And, what's more, I am going now. If I don't get there, you'll be no worse off, and if I do get there —well, I shall be no end bucked. So I'm going, whether you want me to or not."

They tried to dissuade him, they protested that every man should take his chance alike, but in his genial way Jim talked the others down; and so presently, with all the village to see him off, he set out on his errand across that white world, with the powder stinging in his face, and the wind smiting in mighty blows as he turned his eyes, in the direction of the distant pine ridge beyond which Fort Falcon nestled like some hawk on its eyrie. The pine ridge was guide enough, so that for the next three hours he fought unsteadily through the snow, that here and there was waist-deep, until the shades of night began to fall, and he had made four miles of his journey. By this time he was amongst the pines, that tossed and moaned overhead like things in pain. He had been most of the day coming so far, and now that splendid animal strength of his was beginning to fail. He was realising that he was not quite the man he had taken himself for, and he somewhat whimsically wished that his reputation as a champion whisky drinker had been a little the less merited. By this time his lungs were roaring like a pair of bellows, his eyes were nearly blinded by the white glare, and he was going over at the knees.

But still he struggled grimly and doggedly on, until at length he came, in the pitch darkness, to the crest of the ridge and between the flurries of snow looked down at the valley on the other side, where he could see the lights of Fort Falcon shining through the gloom. All this was encouraging enough, but, on the other hand, there were another two miles to go, and once Jim had put the shelter of the ridge behind him he encountered the full force of the gale.

It turned him round more than once as if he had been no more than a piece of paper. The piercing cold stabbed him to the bone. More than once he dropped to his knees, absolutely exhausted and worn out; then he struggled to his feet again, clenching his teeth and fairly sobbing with rage and disappointment to find himself thus baulked and broken with the haven absolutely in sight.

It was pitch dark by this time, so dark that he could only feel his way. He stumbled on mechanically down the slope until he was within half a mile of the Fort, where he collapsed altogether. He dragged himself slowly and painfully to the lee side of a hummock, where he was fain to lie down and rest. When he opened his eyes again, the sun was shining overhead, and the fury of the gale had abated. His hair and moustache were frozen to his face, and he had a curious sort of feeling that his ears were gone. He knew now that everything depended upon the final effort; he knew that he might win through, and he knew, too, that the end was near at hand as far as he was concerned. So on his hands and knees he crawled painfully along, until he fell in a huddled heap in front of the police station of the Fort. There he was picked up presently and carried into a room, where they laid him before the stove and tended him as carefully as if he had been a little child. They fed him and poured brandy down his throat, so that presently he came back to his senses again, and smiled to find that his efforts had not been in vain. Phillips was bending over him to catch the first words that came from his lips.

"Don't hurry," he said. "Take your time. Now, in the name of fortune, what's this madness, Jim?"

Slowly and painfully Jim explained. When he had finished, the troop looked from one to another in astonishment.

"I wouldn't have believed it possible," Phillips said. "I don't think there is another man on the American Continent who could have done it."

"That's good hearing," Jim panted. "At last I begin to realise what I was born for. Now, look here, Phillips, I'm done for. No, you needn't shake your head. I can see it in your face, and even if I couldn't I should know. You'll see to those people, won't you?"

"Of course I will," Phillips said. "We'll get all the teams out and rush supplies over to Nagaska within an hour. If the snow holds off, there's nothing to be afraid of. The doctor will be here presently."

Jim smiled faintly.

"Let him come if he likes," he said, "but I'm past all surgery. What's the good of pretending? You know it as well as I do."

"Well, you're pretty bad," Phillips admitted.

"I guess I am. I can hardly see you now."

"Poor old chap!" Phillips said. "Is there anything I can do for you? Any message? Anybody I can write to? You know what I mean."

Jim shook his head.

"No," he said. "There's nobody wants to hear from me; just say nothing and do nothing. Take my pocket-book, when I am dead, and destroy it, and that's about all."

It was, for those were the last words Jim Baxter ever spoke. And there was nothing in the pocket-book of any account, or so Phillips said. And there the record ends, except in the hearts of Nagaska, whence it will never fade.

THE END