TABLE of CONTENTS

THE PAWN AND THE ROOK

PROOF POSITIVE

ON PEACE NIGHT

ICKY OF OLUK LAKE

A DOG'S LIFE

AND THIS IS FAME!

A DAUGHTER OF NATURE

THE FOIL

THE PLATINUM CHAIN

THE WINGS OF CHANCE

THE PAWN AND THE ROOK

Published in the Townsville Daily Bulletin, Wednesday 8 September, 1926.

Mrs. Shan Vanderdkle passed out of the palatial establishment of Macon. Freres in the Rue Rovill with some half-million dollars worth of pearls in her pocket. Nothing romantically historic, but really fine graded stuff which had taken years to collect. Nor was she particularly intrigued as to the settings. She 'guessed' that Tiffanys could see to it when she landed in New York. In the meantime, she was going to London for a spell.

It was Monsieur Jules Blinn, chief assistant, who saw her into the limousine waiting at the kerb. Then, without waiting to don his glossy hat, he walked down the street to the nearest telephone call box and asked for a certain number. Then——

"Is that you, M'sieur X?" he asked. "Z speaking, but yes. Ze madame she make ze purchase. Tres magnifique. Ze whole suite, yes. She take them wiz her to her pension unset. It is enough!"

The voice at the other end or the wire replied that it was. Whereupon, the immaculate Jules smiled and returned to his lawful vocations. With any average luck he was going to put something like six thousand pounds in his pocket.

Just how this was to be achieved calls for something in the way of explanation. Had they chosen, the Customs House authorities in New York could have given it. They could have told you, for instance, that the great game of jewel smuggling across the Atlantic was never more popular than at the present moment. Also, that great ladies with fathomless purses did not disdain to take a hand at the sport.

Now, some little time ago, the New York Customs awoke to the fact that in one way and another the State was being defrauded of something like ten million dollars a year by these gilt-edged smugglers. It was a pastime that hardly came within the criminal code, but none the less annoying for that. So it came about that wealthy ladies buying jewels in Paris and London were carefully shadowed, and it became discreetly known that shop assistants might add to their incomes without hindrance to present employment by reporting quietly in certain quarters as to big deals in gems on the part of America's fair citizens. And when it became known behind select counters that one fortunate assistant had netted over five thousand pounds as his share of a raid on a society lady smuggler in the New York Customs, being twenty-five per cent. of the spoil, other bright spirits began to sit up and take notice.

It was a ridiculously easy way of making money. Merely to report to a sheltered address on the purchases of certain ladies who were in Europe buying gems of price, and then, if a smuggling stunt was attempted, draw the the alluring percentage without coming out into the open to give evidence. It was a neat little scheme and New York Customs were reaping the benefit of it.

And this was why Monsieur Jules Blinn had spent a few moments in calling up a certain modestly anonymous individual at an address that New York had thoughtfully provided for such occasions.

Now, it is only fair to Mrs. Shan Vanderdkle to say that when that spoilt child of fortune came to Europe in search of some fine gems she had not the slightest intention of defrauding the revenue of her native land, or anybody else. She, of course, knew all about the heavy duty on precious stones, and wistfully recognised the necessity. Not that she wanted to pay it in the least. Neither did Mr. James Starlinger, for the matter of that.

Starlinger and his wife were two polished, travelled Americans staying at the Ritzor, and the lady of the pearls found them there when she returned from Paris. It took very little time for something like a friendship to spring up, which was only natural, considering that the Starlingers had taken up their abode at the Ritzor with the sole intention of establishing friendly relations with Mrs. Shan Vanderdkle. They knew precisely what she was doing in Europe and still more precisely, what had been her business in Paris.

To put it candidly, Starlinger and his wife were professional smugglers of jewels. It was a regular profession they had followed for years, and the Customs House authorities of New York were perfectly aware of the fact. But, up to the present moment, the authorities had had the worst of the game.

"So now you understand all about it," Starlinger said to the pearl lady, as they sat over an intimate luncheon in the grill room at the Ritzor. "You see, I have been perfectly frank with you, because I want, if possible, to save you paying something life a hundred thousand dollars when you get to New York. That is, of course, for duty. And, even after paying my fee, you would be more that half that sum in pocket."

"You mean. I should have to hand the stones to you——"

"Yes, that's the idea. And, when we reach New York, I hand them back again. You give me a cheque and there is an end of the business. Oh, you need not be afraid—we shall all travel on the same boat, quite openly, though, mind you, I shall be watched by one of the Customs House experts."

It sounded very thrilling to the lady of the pearls, all so open and above board that, after a little hesitation, she agreed to fall in with the suggestion. There was a certain amount of risk, of course, but this made the adventure all the more alluring.

"But aren't you afraid of being caught?" she asked.

"I have never been within miles of it yet," Starlinger smiled. "Now, at the present moment there is a man in this room who is watching us under the impression that I am trying to persuade you to be a party to this little scheme. He knows all about me, which may seem something of a drawback, but, as I know all about him and he flatters himself that I have not the least idea that he is connected with the Customs, that is where I have the advantage. He is a new man, engaged solely to track me across the Atlantic when I sail in a few days on the Auricula. That is the boat we are all going by. Just cast your eye upon the man in the blue serge suit over there, under the palm. His name is Hank Crowl, though he has not the least idea that I am aware of the fact. He thinks he is going to land me presently with Mrs. Vanderdkle's pearls in my possession, but he never made a greater mistake in his life. I have got the sweetest, prettiest little stunt you ever heard of. I am not going to tell it to you because it would make you nervous. Leave it entirely to me, and you will have no cause to be dissatisfied."

The man called Hank Crowl, especially appointed by the New York authorities to keep his eye on Starlinger, was perfectly satisfied with the way in which matters were progressing. He had a free hand, practically unlimited expenses, and, knowing that Starlinger was not leaving England for a few days, decided to slacken the bow, and enjoy himself. He was rather keen on seeing the night-side of London, and all he was seeking was a companion to help him with his laudable pursuit. And in the fine sportsman who called himself Gayford he seemed to have discovered his ideal.

He had found him at a loose end in the lounge of the hotel. From what he could gather the young man was in London on business in connexion with his own firm in Colombo. It was rather a slow, dragging business, entailing a long stay in London, so that Gayford more than once had expressed a half-desire to run over to the States to see if he could pick up a few dollars there. And it was some evenings later, after the conversation previously recorded, that Crowl walked into the lounge of the Ritzor to find Gayford there, seated over a cigar.

"Say," Crowl asked. "Got anything on to-night?"

"Rather expecting to meet a man here," Gayford explained. "If he turns up I'm fixed. It he doesn't then—but what do you want to do? Anything fresh to see?"

Crowl replied to the effect that he thought of putting in an hour or two at Maxton's one of the most rapid and yet sinister night clubs in the West End.

"Well, why not go on there," Gayford suggested. "I can come on about twelve or a bit after."

With that Crowl went on his way, and, shortly after twelve, Gayford put in an appearance at Maxton's. He discovered his new-found friend seated alone in a corner of the big dancing saloon with his head buried on his breast and apparently steeped in a profound melancholy. In other words, the American was monumentally drunk. Gayford exchanged a rapid glance with a waiter close by, and demanded a taxi. He managed to convey his burden to the lounge at the Ritzor, which was now deserted, and intimated to the night-porter that he was going to see his friend up to bed.

"Seems to want a bit of attention, sir," the night-porter said critically. "I have never seen a gentleman much worse."

"Yes, that is why I am going to see him to his room," Gayford said. "I will just remove his coat and shoes and collar, and leave him to himself. Perhaps you will have a look into his room later on. I don't want to be dragged into an unpleasant business. Looks to me as if he was drugged."

With that, Gayford shoved a pound note into the porter's eager palm, and, between them, they got the somnolent Crowl safely to his bedroom. It was considerably more than an hour later when Gayford finally left the room and sought the seclusion of his own apartment.

"I think he will be all right now," he told the night-porter. "I have made him as easy as possible. But one never knows. If there is anything wrong, call me, will you?"

But apparently nothing out of the common happened, and it was a surprisingly fresh-looking Crowl that came down to breakfast the following morning. He crossed cheerfully over to the table where Gayford was seated.

"Oh, here you are!" he said. "What the dickens happened to me last night? I was in Maxton's with a bunch of girls, and we sure did sling the bubbly round. And then, all of a sudden like, my memory seemed to go. When I woke up this morning——"

"I brought you home. Found you sitting in the comer of the dance-room like patience on a monument. If you get hitting it up like this I shall have to take you in hand altogether. I shouldn't mind a run across the water for a week or two. My business is a bit hung up, and I can spare the time."

"Then why not come along?" Crowl said. "You come along with me, and I will show you a bit of comedy later on that will be something to talk about when you get home again. I can't go into details now, but it will be worth your while."

"Dashed if I haven't a great mind to come," Gayford said. "If you are going to start in the course of a day or two——"

"Going to start from Liverpool on Saturday night," Crowl interrupted. "Sail on the Auricula. If you like to go down to the office and book a cabin. I will come with you."

Gayford being quite agreeable, the two set out on their errand. They passed the table in the dining room where the two Starlingers were breakfasting and Crowl smiled to himself as he pictured the discomfiture of that distinguished-looking individual when he came to confront him in the Customs House at New York. But there would be plenty of time for that. Then, on the Saturday morning, Crowl and his companion took train from Euston and, just before dark, found themselves comfortably on board the Auricula. It was a quick and pleasant voyage without any particular incident, so that Crowl had nothing to do but sit down and keep a close eye on Starlinger and his wife. And in this he was backed up by more than one authority on board. There were at least a dozen subordinates moving about the ship, more or less under Crowl's direction, though, as far as anybody could judge, no word had ever passed between them. All the same, the Auricula had been thoroughly searched, and if Starlinger had only known it, so was his baggage, and even the suit-case of himself and his wife in their cabin. Perhaps he did not know this, but if so, he gave no sign.

Crowl made no sign either. He knew, as well as he knew that there was a sky above him, that somewhere on board the Auricula those precious pearls were concealed, and that Starlinger would make every effort to get through the Customs with them. But this time, for once, he was going to be disappointed. He was going to have the surprise of his life. He would not be lost sight of during the whole of the voyage, and when he presented himself at the Customs, he and his wife would be shepherded carefully on one side and searched with a thoroughness that would prevent so much as a pin getting past the eagle eye of authority.

It was still daylight when the ship at length came to anchor and the placid calm on deck had given place to bustle and confusion. Down below in his cabin, Crowl waited. He was just a little eager and anxious, because this was his first big case of the sort, and he was more than anxious to make good. All his preparations were completed, he merely had to step out of the cabin with that neat expanding suit-case in his hand and stand by the long counter where the passengers' intimate baggage was examined, and wait until Starlinger and his wife appeared on the scene. Then, just as he was about to climb on deck, Gayford came through the doorway.

"Well, old man," he said breezily, "are you ready? No use hanging about here any longer, what? Where are we going to stay? What's your usual pub?"

Crowl responded to the effect that he usually put up at the Bilter Mansions when he was in New York. He expected to be there for a day or two on business, after which he was going on to his home in New Jersey. But he made no effort to move, despite all Gayford's signs of impatience.

"Oh, come on," the latter exclaimed. "No sense in hanging about here like this. I am dying to have a look at little old New York. Here, get a move on."

With that, Gayford grabbed his companion's suit case and started for the companionway, carrying a case in either hand.

"I'll carry it, you needn't bother," he said. "What the dickens are you waiting for? Get a move on."

"Well, you see, I have a little business to do first," Crowl said rather hesitatingly. He was beginning to find this breezy companion of his a little bit of an encumbrance. "Matter of fact. I am waiting to see a man——"

"Oh, in that case I'll push on," Gayford cried. "Look here, suppose I pass these two bags through the Customs and then take a taxi as far as Bilter Mansions and book a couple of rooms?"

"Oh all right," Crowl said a little briefly.

At that moment, an official put his head inside the cabin door and nodded curtly in Crowl's direction. Without a reply, Crowl bustled out of the cabin, followed by Gayford, and then proceeded down the gangway and thence into the covered Customs House. A long line of impatient passengers stood there waiting to have their baggage examined, and at the end of the queue, were Starlinger and his wife, bearing their intimate possessions.

"This is going to take a bit of time," Gayford said. "Something special is it? Here, let me get a move on."

He elbowed his way through the crowd and slapped his suit case on the counter in front of one of the officials there. He unlocked the case and flung it wide open, as if defying the enemy on the other side of the mahogany to do his worst. It was a long examination too, though there was nothing in the suitcase except personal belongings. But the official examiner was taking no risks. He probed the suitcase with needles, he measured the thickness of the bottom with a little ivory rule, so that it was a good quarter of an hour before the case was locked again and the official permit stamped on it. Then Gayford returned to his companion, who was standing at the end of the counter with a fine assumption of indifference.

"Evidently took me for one of those smuggling thieves," Gayford exclaimed indignantly. "By James, at this rate, some of those people will be here all night. But say, Crowl, what about your suitcase. How am I going to get that through?"

Crowl smothered an impatient exclamation and flung his suitcase on the counter. At a sign from him, one of the disengaged officials came forward and proceeded to affix the seal on the case without the formality of opening it.

"There, don't stop to talk," Crowl said, as he saw the gaping astonishment on his companion's face. "I will explain it all when we are having dinner to-night. Off you go."

Without another word, Gayford vanished past the barriers and flung the two suit-cases into a waiting taxi. Directly he had vanished, Crowl approached Starlinger and his wife and curtly motioned them to follow. A bunch of officials had gathered round, apparently out of nowhere, and Starlinger smiled as he saw them.

"Why this special attention?" he asked.

"None of that," Crowl snapped. "You just come with me. We want those pearls, my lad. I am not mentioning any names, but you know what I mean. The pearls from Paris."

"Oh, very well," Starlinger said with a shrug of his shoulders. "Come along Naomi, we had better get it over. At any rate, we shall get through a great deal quicker than I expected."

For the best part of two hours, with the aid of male and female searches, Starlinger and his wife were examined to the bone. Their personal belongings were subjected to a scrutiny that was absolutely microscopic. And then, very reluctantly, the eagles relinquished their prey. Without the slightest sign of triumph, Starlinger and his wife passed the barrier and, hailing a taxi waiting there, drove off having given the driver directions to take them to the Armadale Hotel. But strange to say, they never reached that fashionable caravanserai. Without a word said on either side, the taximan piloted down town until they came to a modest apartment house in Lexton Avenue. And here, for the moment they vanished from the ken of the authorities.

It was just one hour later, under cover of the darkness that a manly figure, bearing a suitcase in his hand, let himself into the apartment house and proceeded to the sitting-room upstairs where Starlinger and his wife were seated over a cosy meal. They rose smilingly to greet the newcomer.

"Well, Danster, old man," Starlinger cried.

"Yes, Danster, alias Gayford," the newcomer laughed. "I dare say you wondered where I had got to, but I had to cover up my tracks. And how did you enjoy the third degree?"

"Oh, it wasn't a very pleasant experience," Starlinger confessed. "Still, they weren't quite as bad as they might have been. And they didn't find anything, of course."

"No, of course they didn't," Jackie Danster grinned. "Because there was nothing to find. Now, if they had kept their eye on me and not been so infernally anxious to lay James Starlinger by the heels, they would have done a great deal better, because——"

As he paused, he laid the suit case on a side table and proceeded to open it. Then the contents were thrown out, leaving nothing but the empty receptacle with its leather lining. Then Starlinger took a knife from his pocket, and, cutting some of the stitches in the soft leather, drew from underneath a length of hollow cane, which was plugged at either end with cotton wool. This he removed and shook out the contents.

And there lay Mrs. Vanderdkle's pearls!

For a few minutes the trio stood by the table, more or less lost in admiration.

"It was a great stunt wasn't it?" Starlinger chuckled.

"About the neatest you ever pulled off," Danster agreed. "A real priceless stunt getting Crowl to bring that stuff all across the Atlantic in his own suit case. But you couldn't have done without me, old man. I had to play up to Crowl, and I had to see that he got properly soused that night at Maxton's. And I had to shove the pearls in his own suit case when he was lying insensible in bed, and made a really good job of it."

"And afterwards?" Naomi Starlinger asked.

"Oh, afterwards was easy. It wanted a bit of bluff to get away with that suit-case but I managed it, and I managed it all the easier because Crowl was in such a breakneck hurry to keep an eye upon you and be in at the death when you came to be searched. He let me walk off with that suit-case with the idea of taking rooms at the Bilter Mansions for both of us, and he never dreamt what was in the case, when he got that Customs House johnny to O.K. it. And I flatter myself that my expressions of astonishment when he did so was a fine piece of acting. Lord, if they had only known! The thing right under their nose, and—oh, well what's the good of making a song an dance about it. Anyway, you get your money and I get mine, and all I've got to say is I would like to have a job like this every week of my life. Open that bottle of fizz, old man, and let's drink to Mrs. Vanderdkle and her pearls. Here's luck to both of you. And here's luck to old Crowl, waiting for me so patiently at Bilter Mansions."

THE END

PROOF POSITIVE

Published in the Western Mail (Perth, W.A.), Thursday, 4 August, 1927.

One thing old William Lane could never forget and that was the fact that Connie Danvers was Miss Danvers of Holsworthy Manor. She might be to-day the mere housekeeper of a tenant farmer in the shape of her brother Walter, and that the old place was let on a long lease to those odious Samley-Gedge people, but the basic fact remained. Lane might be a rich man now, as he undoubtedly was, but he had been born under the shadow of the Manor and moreover he was the foster brother of the last but one of the prosperous and mighty Danvers in those days nearly seventy years ago, when things were very different. And because of that and because he had neither kith nor kin he was intensely proud of the fact that Connie and her brother treated him as an equal.

Over half a century ago he had emigrated to Australia with his father, and had been left as a mere lad entirely without education to face the world alone. He had done well in one way and another being naturally shrewd, and in the course of time had made a fortune of no small dimensions, after which he had come home to settle down in the village of his birth, with his confidential secretary, Godfrey Curtis, whom he had originally found in some Australian bank and brought with him to England to look after his monetary affairs. The coterie was made up by one Sam Crichton, an old schoolfellow of Walter Danvers, who had joined him in the more or less vain hope of making a competence out of the one farm Danvers had retained when he let the old place on a long lease in the hope of clearing off the mortgages in time. It was a very fine let to those odious and vulgar Samley-Gedge, husband and wife, who had come into that part of the country more or less, so Gedge said, because he had known Lane out in Australia and had, indeed, once been a sort of partner of his. The Gedges seemed to be very wealthy and hospitable in their vulgar way, and made much of Lane who, however, was not too responsive as Connie Danvers did not fail to notice. Anyway, their coming was more or less due to William Lane and Connie was not ungrateful.

But dear old William Lane was a different proposition altogether. He was one of nature's gentlemen, and did more good in the neighbourhood in a month than the Danvers had done in generations. So that he was a welcome guest at the farm where he bought Connie's butter and eggs and poultry with a lavishness which made her blush to take his money. It was some consolation to know that most of her produce went in charity.

Both she and her brother were very fond of old William Lane. So was Sam Crichton, Walter Danvers' partner. But it never once crossed the mind of either of them that some of these early days they might benefit through this one-time employee on the family estates. His money, of course, would go to Godfrey Curtis, who was to all practical purposes the old man's adopted son. When Lane died Curtis would return to Australia and settle down there with his own relatives. And that would be that. They all liked Curtis, who was a fine chap, and persona grata at the farm. Honest Sam Crichton was a little jealous of him, though he would not have had Connie guess it for the world. But then Connie was something more than a lovely and well-born maid, and women have a natural instinct for that sort of thing. That fine individual Sam Crichton would have been amazed and dismayed had he realised that Con had discovered his secret long ago, though never by word or look had he betrayed his feelings. Dear old Sam! And when a girl begins to think of a man she respects and admires as 'dear old Sam' or anything else—. Moreover Godfrey Curtis was at present in Australia on business connected with his employer and would not be back for many months to come. And there was a girl on the other side. Which secret he had confided to Connie.

But it was weary uphill work at the farm. The fact was more or less forced from Walter Danvers one night shortly after Curtis's departure for Australia as he smoked his pipe in the dining-room.

"I feel like chucking it sometimes," he sighed. "The rent we are getting from those Gedge people pays the interest on the mortgages and small reductions of same, but it is a devil of a pull. Why don't you chuck it, Sammy, and leave me to carry on?"

Sam Crichton shook his honest, handsome head, and flushed. He was watching the lovely figure in the big armchair with a pile of darning on her knee. What would Connie be like in twenty years' time, he asked himself. All that work and drudgery.... He managed to voice his thoughts in a few discreet words.

"Don't you worry about me," Connie laughed. "According to all the precedents dear old Lane must leave me everything when he dies. Especially if Godfrey Curtis fails to come back. Don't frown, Walter, I am only jesting."

"Much more likely to leave it to that Samley-Gedge lot," Walter growled. "They are all over him these days."

With which Walter rose and drifted moodily out.

"It is a bit hard," Connie sighed.

"On you," Sam said. "If I wasn't here perhaps things would be easier. I haven't said a word——"

"No, you are always quite the grande seigneur, Sam," Connie said, demurely. "You are too proud, Sam. There is a certain pride that spells conceit. That's yours, Sam. Placing yourself on a pedestal and admiring the statue from a distance. So poor that you could never ask a girl to marry you. That would not be playing the game from the statue point of view. But if the girl cared for you, isn't there something to be said from her point of view? Do you realise, Sam, that you have been making love to me for the last two years and more?"

Sam reddened through his tan like a schoolboy.

"Me!" he cried. "M-m-making love to you! I wouldn't dare. I swear I have never said a single word——"

"Not one, Sam," Connie said, demurely. "But, then, you see, love recognises no language limits. In the Victorian novels the hero always spoke of a lifetime's devotion. But what was the use of that so long as it led to nothing. A girl might have all that and die an old maid all the same. And no true girl ever hankers after that. Oh, I know that you study me——"

"Who wouldn't?" Sam said, sotto voce.

"Thank you, Sam. That was very pretty and sincere. There is nothing that you will not do for me. You are always on the look-out to save me trouble. You have rather nice eyes, Sam, and they talk, if you don't. They were quite eloquent just now when I was gabbling all that nonsense about Mr. Lane's money. Sam, are you not ashamed to sit there as if I was not worth answering?"

Sam's honest soul was bathed in illuminating light.

"I couldn't ask you to marry me," he said, firmly.

"Purely as a matter of argument, why not?" Connie asked. "We are both poor and, I hope, very honourable. This, of course, is a great drawback in life's progress, but I think that it makes for happiness in the end. And if I am going to be a dairymaid all my life, why shouldn't I have somebody to look after me and, equally, why not somebody to look after you. Eh, Sam?"

Sam seemed to hear the words from a long way off. The afterglow of a gorgeous sunset filled the room and framed Connie like a picture. Then from the outer world the sound of hurried steps and Walter burst into the room.

"Lane," he cried, "poor old Lane. Dining at the Manor with the Gedge family. In the library afterwards transacting some business with his host. I met Harrison, the butler, running for a doctor. A most ghastly thing."

With a little cry Connie sprang to her feet.

"You don't mean to say?" she gasped, "that——"

"Dead," Walter whispered. "He just fell back and died."

It was something more than a nine days' wonder in the village. The poor old gentleman was dead and gone and scores of local poor would miss him terribly. Gossips standing at cottage doors asked one another what would become of his money. He hadn't a single relative in the world, for, had such been the case, he would have looked such relations up and they would have benefited. What was to become of the Hospice and all the wonders it contained?

Then, as is inevitable in country places, rumour began to get busy. Everything had gone to that there Samley-Gedge! They had been partners in business years ago in Australey. A crying shame, it was, and him making such a fuss of the poor young squire and his sister. 'Sides, them Gedges had money enough already. And not one penny for the poor of the parish as promised.

Not that Walter Danvers or Connie had expected anything. Such a thought had never occurred to either of them. Still the late William Lane had hinted at such great things that Walter took the first opportunity of speaking to his burly tenant on the subject. The big man with the heavy red face and small gimlet eyes smiled.

"Wonderful how these things get out in these villages," he said casually. "I have not mentioned the matter to a soul and I am sure my wife hasn't either. Still, the will has to be proved and it will be public property then so you might as well know now. You see, years ago Lane and myself did a lot of speculating together. We were both poor struggling men and for a time things were all against us. And when the luck turned and we both stood on firm ground we had a bit of a quarrel. I might have been wrong, but Lane was sailing a bit too near the wind for me. However, he is dead and gone now, poor chap, and I'll say no more. The very night he died, he came up to the Manor and showed me his will in which he left everything to me. He was going to alter it and make all sorts of provision for the poor here and so on when he just laid back and died as you heard at the inquest. All he intended to do but didn't put down in writing shall be done, Danvers, you can bet on that. I told my solicitors as much when I wrote to them enclosing the original will. I regard poor Lane's wishes as a sacred duty. I shall see that nobody suffers."

Danvers made no comment though he went his way by no means easy in his mind. Intimate as he had been with the late William Lane, the latter had never said much about his past in the way of business details. But more than once he had alluded to Gedge in a way that was not exactly extravagant in the way of appreciation. They exchanged visits and dined with one another, but——. And now apparently Lane had left his quondam partner everything. Well, the world would know all about that in good time. And, in any case it was no business of his, Walter decided.

Yet the proving of the will in the Probate Court dragged on in the inert, languid manner peculiar to legal processes and at the end of a year the estate was still in the hands of the Court. Some difficulty in getting in contact with the witnesses to the document, Walter understood. The will had been made years before in the back of the Australian beyond and these witnesses had more or less vanished into darkness. Nor had the will been made by a lawyer but was on a single sheet of foolscap paper in the handwriting of the testator himself. Still, Walter understood from Gedge that as the signature and handwriting was not in dispute it was only a question of time before the Court would presume the genuineness of the testament and pass it for probate.

There was only one man who could throw any light on this very dubious darkness and he was far enough away. Not one word had reached the home from from Godfrey Curtis since his departure over a year ago, and probably now he would never visit England again. He had not even left his address behind him, so that chapter was closed and the romance of William Lane ended.

And then, one fine morning in October following the old man's death—that is, October in the following year—Curtis walked into the home farm dining-room as if he had never left. They were just sitting down to luncheon, and welcomed him with open arms.

"Give an account of yourself," Walter cried.

"The short and simple annals of the poor," Curtis quoted. "Fifteen months hard work—no more. Then, when my mother came back completely restored to health after a long illness, I deemed it time to run over here, if only to visit the grave of that dear old man."

"Then you knew all about it?" Connie asked.

"'Why, of course. From the local paper which I had sent out to me regularly. Of course, I ought to have written to some of you, but you know how one forgets such things. And you hadn't my address, either. And so Gedge comes into all that money! Over Six Hundred Thousand Pounds! Rather rough on some of us, eh? But Gedge hasn't got it yet."

"No, but he will in a month or so," Walter pointed out grimly. "Did you happen to know anything about this will?"

"Not a word," Curtis confessed. "Though I can throw a lot of light on it if I am asked to. However——"

With which Curtis changed the conversation as if so far as he was concerned, the subject was finished. He was uncertain as to how long he would stay in England, but, as to that, he could be more definite the following night after he had seen a firm of solicitors in London on the morrow.

It was just after noon next morning as he entered the offices of Steel, Brights, and Steel, and asked to see one of the partners. It was a Bright he saw, and what he had to say deeply interested that gentleman. He was still more interested in a memorandum which Curtis placed on the table before him.

"Now, this is in my writing. Mr. Bright," he said. "It was taken down from dictation, and the date is 23rd July last year, as you can see. The signature at the foot is that of my late employer, Mr. William Lane, of The Hospice, Caveaham. It was dictated the morning following a heart attack. My employer suffered that way. Your legal experience will tell you that the memorandum was intended as the basis of a will the old gentleman intended to make. Sort of instructions to counsel. It was intended that I was to come up to town and see your firm with those instructions, but I didn't come, because I was suddenly called away to Australia. I was to come to you because of the high reputation of your firm, and the fact that you are solicitors to the Danvers estate. In ordinary circumstances that memorandum might be accepted by the Court as a real will. I seem to have read of such cases."

"Quite," the lawyer agreed. "But not in case of a properly signed and witnessed will which provides for a contingency the very opposite to the instructions in your memorandum."

"But the memorandum is witnessed by my late employer's butler and housekeeper," Curtis pointed out. "Highly respectable people, whereas no witnesses to what we may call the genuine will are to be found at all."

"Precisely. But considering that the will that Mr. Samley-Gedge seeks to prove is actually in the testator's own handwriting——"

"Even that mountain might be got over," Curtis interrupted, with a smile. "Listen to my prologue, or, rather, my epilogue."

Mr. Bright listened politely until at a pregnant sentence from Curtis he jumped from his seat and appeared to go in off the deep end with a vehemence the like of which that decorous office had never seen before.

"Does anybody else know this?" he demanded.

"Not a soul," Curtis replied.

"Then we must get to work at once. I'll lock that memorandum up in the office safe if you don't mind. Thank you. Now put on your hat, and come with me as far as Somerset House. I want to have a good look at that will of Mr. Lane's."

Nobody seemed to know anything definite, but it was common talk that there was something wrong in connection with the testimonial intentions of the late William Lane. Somebody had entered a caveat—whatever that might mean—against the will, and the case was coming on for hearing before Christmas. And if this meant that Gedge was going to lose all that money, then a hundred per cent. of his neighbours would be pleased.

But Mr. Samley-Gedge wasn't going to lose. Nor did he make any secret of the fact. Nor were the poor in the district going to suffer. Their care would be a sacred duty. The Hospice where Lane had lived would be turned into a cottage hospital properly endowed, as Mr. Lane had always promised, though the scheme was not mentioned in his will, which, however, had been made twenty years ago in Australia at a time when he and Gedge were more or less partners. He was not going to say much, but the neighbourhood would know all about it within a very short time now.

It was 'The Southern Daily Messenger' that afforded those interested in the progress of the case all the information they required. Through that paper they learnt for the first time of the memorandum that formed the base of the action which Godfrey Curtis and others were taking to annul the will. In brief, the memorandum, duly signed and witnessed in July the previous year, provided that the estate should be equally divided between Walter Danvers, his sister, Samuel Crichton, and Godfrey Curtis, in equal shares, subject to certain charities and that the estate should be administered by the public trustee.

This was exciting enough, but there was more to follow when, on the second day of the proceedings, Godfrey Curtis went into the witness box to give his evidence. 'The Southern Daily Messenger' gave the following almost verbatim account of the proceedings:—

Mr. Godfrey Curtis, an Australian, and late secretary to the testator, then entered the witness box and, under examination by Mr. Walbrook, K.C. (for the plaintiffs) testified that for some years he had acted as confidential adviser to Mr. Lane. He had resigned his post as cashier in the bank where Mr. Lane kept his account to take up the post. Mr. Lane was an entirely self-made man, with little education, and therefore, needed assistance as his wealth grew. Acting under witness's advice, the testator realised most of his assets, and on coming to England, invested practically all of his money in War Bonds. The dividends were collected through the dead man's bankers, so that he was saved the trouble and worry as to his investments. Witness had never heard of the will propounded by the defendant Gedge until he read about it in a paper which reached him in Australia, though he knew that many years ago the testator and Gedge were in some sort of speculative business together. The memorandum in which the action was founded was dictated to him (witness)a few days before he was suddenly called home to Australia in consequence of illness in the family, and was more or less inspired by a heart attack which the testator had had, and witness had ventured to expostulate with him on the fact that he has never made his will. On the strength of that the memorandum was dictated to witness by the dead man, and, as a precaution, signed and witnessed by Lane's butler and housekeeper, who, however, were not informed as to its contents.

A COURT DRAMA.

Cross-examined by Sir Charles Morley, K.C.: Kindly look at this document. You see what it is?

Witness: Yes; the original of the contested will.

Sir Charles: So you say. You are familiar with Mr. Lane's signature. Do you dispute the one to the will?

Witness: Had I seen it anywhere else I should have said without hesitation that it was my late employer's signature.

Sir Charles: I am greatly obliged to you, sir. Will you be so good as to examine the body of the document. Have you any doubt that it is in the handwriting of the late William Lane?

Witness: Every doubt. In fact, I know it is not.

Sir Charles: And why, pray?

Witness: For a very good and sufficient reason. An illiterate man can easily learn to scribble some sort of signature, but it does not follow that he can write.

Sir Charles: Do you mean to suggest——

Witness: I am not suggesting anything. The calligraphy in the body of this document is not Mr. Lane's, for the simple reason that he could neither read nor write.

The poor old man's secret had been well kept. The one thing in life of which he was ashamed. Not even Gedge had guessed it. But the evidence, taken on commission from certain bank officials in Australia, had been sufficient to establish the forgery, and the case collapsed as Curtis left the witness box. And when the nine-days wonder was over and Gedge in custody and his shaky financial position disclosed, Walter Danvers and Connie went back to the Manor, though the latter is not likely to remain there long.

THE END

ON PEACE NIGHT

Published in the Townsville Daily Bulletin, Tuesday 14 May, 1929.

Leonard Antony Fox sat in his weekend cottage on the edge of Swinford Heath golf links nursing a sprained ankle. He was quite alone in his luxurious nest, for he had deliberately sent his solitary factotum away for an hour or two so that he might have the place to himself when his anonymous correspondent of a few days before came to keep a more or less secret interview which had been arranged through the medium of the box office of a popular London daily paper. The sprained ankle was a bit of a nuisance, because the business might be part of a trap, but Fox was not the man to flinch whatever happened. He knew that sooner or later the man Swiney would seek to get his revenge.

Swiney was the one to be really feared—as to the rest of the gang Fox could afford to treat them with contempt. But, given the chance and a clear opening, Swiney would not hesitate at murder to get those diamonds back again.

Not that they really were his diamonds. Fox told himself, as he sat there in his lonely cottage late at night waiting the coming of his anonymous correspondent. By every law of right and justice, save the cold legal side of the affair, those stones were the property of Leonard Antony Fox. They had been found on the claim near Parrsberg, which he had located himself. He had been too busy to register his claim, and Swiney and his creatures had jumped it and completed the necessary legal forms with the Diamond Fields Commissioner.

It was not till this had happened that Swiney came out in his true colours. The diamonds a fortune in themselves, belonged to him and his unsavoury satellites. Fox could go to the devil so far as they were concerned, but not a cent was he going to get. They jeered at him for a fool who did not know how to take care of his own, and bade him begone.

But they had reckoned without the grit and dogged courage that comes of breeding and a public school training. Fox had gone out to South Africa to seek his fortune, and since luck had literally made love to him he was not going to throw her smiles aside without a struggle. So he held on to Swiney's gang, swearing and grumbling and abiding his time, what time the others called him a white-livered cur.

Then the hour came to strike, and Fox struck like a tornado. He fought the gang single-handed on the way down to Cape Town, a desperate affray with revolvers in it, and when the dust cleared away the stones were in his pocket, and Swiney lay by the roadside with a bullet through his lungs.

So Fox came back to England a rich man, after all. So far he had made no effort to get rid of the stones, feeling that he had not yet heard the last of Swiney. And, moreover in the eye of the law those diamonds were legally the properly of Swiney, who had registered the claim in his own name. Swiney was not the man to be shaken off as easily as that. Even the fact that he was badly 'wanted' in more than one country would not deter him from what would be at the least a nasty scandal. If there was only a way of getting rid of the scoundrel so far as England was concerned, Fox would be content. Something to drive him out of the country, never daring to return.

Fox sat there in his sitting-room under the electric light impatiently awaiting the advent of his anonymous correspondent. He came presently, humbly knocking on the front door and timidly entering at a shout from Fox. A little, red-haired man who carried his sly character on his weak yet cunning face. Jackal was written all over him. A parasite and hanger on of superior animals of prey and as cowardly as his prototype.

"Sit down!" Fox commanded. "So it's you, is it? Ginger Joe. Swiney's little dog. Come from him, eh?"

"It's not quite like that, sir," Joe cringed. "I'm out with Swiney, curse him! That's why I wrote to you. Done all his dirty work for years, and now nothing but the dirty kick out. Me as planned the details of that Mere Croft robbery."

Fox nodded—that famous burglary had been the sensation in the Press a fortnight ago.

"A fine haul that Joe," he said.

"Ay, I believe you. Not much risk and Swiney waiting round the corner for the swag. A fast car what was stolen and the boodle in a shabby suitcase smothered with foreign labels. What's that? Where's the stuff now? Ask Swiney. Left luggage office in some London terminus if you ask me. But not for long. The gang's cutting it thick at the Envoy Hotel. Private suite. Rich men from Australia game. By this time the Mere Croft stuff is in Swiney's hotel bedroom or I'm the biggest mug out. It was to tell you that and a bit more as brought me here tonight. Now next Thursday night about ten o'clock——"

"That's Peace Night," Fox interpolated.

"Course it is. That's why the gang chose it. There's going to be a big dance that night at the Envoy with about two thousand guests with Swiney and the rest of the gang very prominent. In the crush Swiney sneaks off and comes down here knowing you are on your back helpless like——"

"Oh he knows that, does he?" Fox smiled.

"Sure thing, boss. A fast racer will bring him here and get him back within two hours. As you ain't parted with the stones he thinks they are hidden here and means to get them. And he means to murder you at the same time. After that he can put up an alibi that no lawyer can shake. Seen on and off at the dance all the evening by lots of his new hangers on and standing fizz galore. And the rest of the gang helping. 'Seen Swiney?' 'I saw him five minutes ago in the cocktail bar.' Repeated loud. See the game? Easy as kiss your hand."

"Quite," Fox agreed. "But where do I come in? Why did you make up your mind to tell me all this?"

"Told you already," Joe grunted. "Gang turned me out and left me without a bob. On my uppers. Not daring to give them away. So I came here to ask you for fifty of the best so that I could sling it to America where I got friends. Is it a go?"

Ten minutes later Joe left the cottage with a roll of notes in his pocket, and Fox sat down to think.

"Less than a week to strike a real blow," he told himself as he sat in his chair. "Curse this ankle of mine, I'll get old Chris Cadell to run down and talk matters over. Nobody like old Chris in an emergency like this."

With that Fox turned to his elaborate wireless set, and for the next hour forgot his troubles in listening to Madrid.

Promptly to a telephone call the wily and volatile Cadell turned up the following night. A man of leisure now, he had played a fine part in the great war as an intelligent officer, and still loved an adventure for its own sake. Also he already knew all there was to tell about the diamond business.

"I see your point," he said, when Fox had described the matter of Ginger Joe's visit. "The last thing you want is a stink. Drive Swiney out of England for good and the incident is closed so far as you are concerned. With the facts of the Mere Croft robbery in your possession you can easily give the police the office and get him five years. After that when he has nothing further to fear he will be at you again."

"Bang on the bull," Fox agreed. "Just what I fear. Now can you see any way of driving Swiney abroad for keeps?"

A slow smile dawned on Cadell's keen sensitive face.

"The brain-wave works," he cried. "Came to me almost before you had finished your lament, listen to me."

It was a lot that Cadell had to say and he said it slowly and deliberately. When he had finished Fox grinned delightedly.

"Well, I'm dashed," he grinned. "Some scheme, old man, that. But where precisely do I come in?"

And Cadell proceeded to tell him. A grateful Leonard Antony Fox held out a hand almost reverently.

"Shake, learned Cadi," he whispered, "shake."

It wanted but a few minutes to eleven on the night of Peace celebrations that the crook known to a select circle as Swiney came slinking up to the cottage on the links like the wolf that he was with greed and revenge and murder in his heart. It had been no difficult matter to get away from the glittering turmoil of the great peace gathering at the Envoy Hotel. A big fur coat hidden behind a bank of palms in one of the dancing rooms, a deserted car in a aide street, and a convenient service staircase close by had enabled him to get away without being seen and thus away on his murderous errand. So far, so good.

He knew his route exactly. In disguise he had been over it more than once before. With any luck, the passing of an hour and a half would see him back in the hotel again, and in that time his two confederates would see to it that he was not missed. It was all a matter of a little careful camouflage. And then, when the big job was done, he and his gang would get away from England with the proceeds of the Mere Croft burglary plus the fortune in diamonds which Swiney was on his way to get now.

So far everything had moved according to plan. And here he was on the threshold of murderous adventure without a single hitch. He had pushed the fast racing car into a tangle of heather hard by Fox's cottage, and now stood outside it ready and eager to be getting along with his task.

Twice did he creep round the lonely cottage without hearing a sound from within. No doubt Fox had retired long ago, and, with any luck, was probably fast asleep. His man must also be in the same state of blissful unconsciousness in the cockloft above which served him for a bedroom. Very gently Swiney pushed back the catch of the scullery window and as gently stepped into the passage. So far the sinister gods of night were with him.

But the quiet was not entirely unbroken. From the sitting-room-hall houseplace came the faint strains of music. Dance music beyond the shadow of a doubt. Somebody playing there in the darkness. Strange sort of thing to do, Swiney thought.

"The devil," he muttered. "Not gone to bed then. But why should he sit there in the dark?"

There was nothing for it now but to take Fox unawares. Drop in on him and flash a light in his face and at the same time confront him at the business end of a revolver. Swiney crept on into the grateful warmth of the room, gaining courage as he proceeded. Nothing moved. There was no sound of breathing, no sound of a body moving in a chair. The sixth sense of the trained burglar told Swiney that he was alone. And then he understood.

A wireless set, of course. Swiney had never seen or heard one before, but he had read a lot about them. He could see the faint glow of the valves in the black gloom. Careless of Fox, no doubt. Gone to his room doubtless without switching off the L. T. and the aerial, and gone to bed in ignorance of the fact. So much the better, perhaps, Swiney crept forward.

Then there was a sharp click and the whole place sprang into a bath of dazzling light. In the ingle close to the wireless set Fox was seen seated in his armchair with a weapon in his hand and that weapon in a direct line with Swiney's head.

"Stand still," the crisp command came. "An inch and I fire. You are armed, Swiney, and as a burglar thus equipped I am justified in shooting to kill. Turn your back on me. Thanks. Slip a hand into your hip pocket and drop your gun on the floor. Once more thanks. Sit there and listen to me."

There was nothing for it but to obey.

"That's better," Fox smiled. "In a way I have been expecting you. The next move is yours. Go on."

Swiney was beginning to collect his scattered wits. After all, he had a few leading cards to play.

"Oh, all right," he swaggered. "About those diamonds. I'm not unreasonable. Share and share alike and say no more about it. The stones are here, of course."

"Not within miles," Fox said with a sincerity that carried conviction with it. "Intelligent anticipation my friend. But that bluff doesn't go. You came here for the lot and my life as well. Smart of you to realise so quickly that the dice were loaded against you and be ready for a deal, but I risked my life for my own and that I propose to retain."

"And if I go to the Courts about it?' Swiney sneered.

"Yes, I see the point," Fox agreed. "But you won't do that for reasons which I am going to make obvious. And I'm not going to hand you over to the police for another reason. This time I am going to get rid of you for ever."

As Fox spoke he stretched out his hand and slightly twirled a knob on his wireless. Instantly the music swelled until it filled the room. Beyond it was a din of voices and ripple of applause. From out of it rang a voice loud and clear:

"Hullo, Tony. Can you hear me, Tony?"

In the ether somewhere a clock was striking twelve.

"Sounds cheerful, what?" Fox asked. "A reveller calling to his mate. From some dance, probably. You recognise the cacophony of a jazz band. Somebody there is calling to somebody else who is not present. A sort of mild joke on the part of the said Tony's friend. Does it convey anything to you?"

("Hullo, Tony. Can you hear me, Tony?")

The constant cry was beginning to get on Swiney's nerves. There was a cursed trap behind this somewhere and he could not do more than merely sense it. He was feeling as helpless as a child who is being teased.

"I see you are puzzled," Fox went on. "Let me give you what is called a light. That Mere Croft burglary."

Swiney gasped and swallowed. The trap was in sight now.

"A fine coup," Fox smiled, "and a perfect getaway. Not a bad idea to hide the swag in your bedroom at the Envoy Hotel. There at the present moment, isn't it? And the rest of your gang ruffling it with the best of them on the dance-floor of the Envoy at the present moment. But not for long, Swiney—not for long. Ah!—I thought it was coming."

Again the voice spoke through space but with a difference.

"Listen, Tony! Our friends in blue have gone up to No. 47 bedroom and taken a party with them. I'm off now, Tony."

The voice faded away and was heard no more. Fox switched off the set. Swiney looked up swiftly, a horrible thought stirring him to the depths of his black soul.

"What's the game?" he demanded, hoarsely. "Where did that music come from? And who spoke?"

"Happen to remember my full name?" Fox queried.

"Course!—Leonard Antony Fox. Tony! Curse you! Listening to what was going on at the Envoy Hotel, were we?"

"Real clever of you to guess it," Fox purred. "And don't forget that my man in the ballroom mentioned a certain bedroom and gave the numbers. Yours, I think, Swiney."

Swiney burst into a torrent of futile oaths.

"Also my man at the other end spoke of a party in blue. Need I remind the wily Swiney that the police are so attired? The game is up, my friend. I laid a trap for you, and you have walked into it like an innocent child. I knew that you were coming here to-night and made my preparations accordingly. Also I knew all about that sensational burglary and where the swag was hidden. Even if my little scheme had failed your bedroom would have been raided to-night and your confederates arrested. They are under arrest at this very moment, and the stuff has been found in your room. And Scotland yard is after you."

"So you say," Swiney mumbled.

"So I have proved," Fox chortled. "The voice calling to Tony was my friend's voice. Direct from the Envoy Hotel. What he said passed in the general din, but I heard it. And when my friend gave the number of your room and spoke of the party in blue and their escort I knew that all was well with me. If you don't believe me, go back to the Envoy and see for yourself."

Swiney lay back in his chair utterly beaten.

"You cunning devil!" he breathed. "But you haven't finished yet. Why not nobble me with the others? Why this consideration for the man you have most cause to fear? Come, your ace!"

"Wrong!" Fox smiled. "I have no occasion to fear you—now. But I might have had, after you had served your sentence, if I had sent you to penal servitude with the others. You can serve it now if you want to and then worry me afterwards, but I wanted to give you a choice. That's why the trap was laid by means of my wireless. Now, which is it to be—a long term in prison or a sporting chance of getting out of England with no possibility of ever returning? It's for you to decide."

Swiney glared impotently at his tormentor.

"I'm done!" he confessed miserably. "Well, if the choice has to be made it won't be the stone jug. My name's Walker. But if ever I catch you——"

"Good night!" Fox smiled. "Not that way, please! Keep clear of your late revolver. You might be tempted, you know."

Without another word Swiney pushed out into the night, and once aboard his car turned to the south and held a course that pointed in the direction of the nearest port. With luck he had all the world before him and a total of much value in notes in his pocket always there for emergencies. And Leonard Antony Fox in his cottage slept the sleep of the just.

THE END

I

BIG BILL KOGGS had sent off a day-message, prepaid, rush, to J. Claudius Bruno, at the Grand Central Hotel, Butte, Montana. The news thus communicated was as follows:

WHAT THE HELL, JAKE? THE HOT SPRINGS HAS GONE COLD.
W. KOGGS.

In due course there came a reply—day-message, collect—addressed to

"William Koggs, Hot Springs Hotel, Oluk Lake, Montana," and reading thus:

YOU MUST HAVE LET THE FIRE GO OUT UNDER THE BOILER.
BRUNO.

Big Bill crumpled the yellow sheet into a crinkly wad and hurled it into the dark fire box.

"So that," he observed, "is what’s haywire with this layout! Damned if I hadn’t ought to 'a' stayed in the garage business. Yessir, I ought to 'a' knowed any hotel that open cutout Jake Bruno sold me'd have a cracked cylinder an' a flat tire !"

"Tire flat?" asked a deep voice at his elbow.

"No, but I am," snapped Bill. "Here, you big Indian cheese, what you know about this ?"

"All 'bout it," said the one addressed. "Me build um."

"Whassat?"

"I said I'm thoroughly familiar with the hot springs, because I constructed them."

Even in his dirty shirt and torn overalls, which somehow suggested horses, the Indian retained his dignity. In his humbler moments he might have posed for a statue of Powhatan telling the early Virginians where to get off his hunting grounds.

"Well, I'll be scrapped for a mess o' junk!" breathed the former garageman. "So you can talk United States when you want to, eh?"

"Sure! Me go Carlisle."

"Whassat?"

"I said I'm a Carlisle graduate. You may have heard of me. The late Walter Camp once did me the honor of selecting me for all-American end."

"And you knowed all the time them hot springs had to be heated! Why the hell didn't you say sumpin'?"

"You no ask um."

"Whassat?"

"I said you didn't inquire of me. If you had, I should have informed you."

"Well, if you're workin' here, get busy and help steam up this percolator instead of talkin' so much, or our guests 'll all run out on us—yessir, all three of 'em!" ·

With the telegram from the recent owner as a nucleus, a fire was soon glowing in the grate, and the hiss of escaping steam announced that another wonder of nature had been saved for summer boarders. Mopping his brow, Bill Koggs studied the sputtering array of pipes and the dejected-looking pile of coal with a professional eye.

"So that's where the profits in the hotel business goes!" he remarked to himself. "This here boiler'll eat up forty dollars' worth o' coal per week keepin' the hot springs hot. No wonder Jake Bruno was willin' to sell the joint cheap; and she looked like such a bargain!" He turned to the Indian, who leaned gracefully against the door jamb. "So you rigged up this here steam kettle, eh, chief?"

"Sure."

"Your own idea?"

"Nope."

"Whose, then?"

"Bruno say what do. Me fixum."

"Whassat?"

"I said Bruno conceived the plan of heating the springs. I merely installed the boiler under his directions."

"Well, as a mechanic, you're a fine car washer. That's a bum rig! We're losin' too much heat. I'll fix it better when I get time. You go with this place, do yuh?" .

"Sure," said the Indian.

Briefly he explained how, in the mornings, he consented to perform certain menial tasks in the saddle-horses-for-hire department of the hotel, in exchange for his room and board. This left him free to spend his afternoons parading before the admiring ladies in his more or less tribal finery, the while he disposed, at handsome profit, of genuine Indian bead-work which he obtained, postage prepaid, from a well-known mail order house in Chicago. He intimated his willingness to continue this arrangement under the new management.

Bill consented, tentatively. The hotel business was all new to him. He had much to learn, but with the aptitude of a good mechanic he was learning rapidly.

It had all sounded so inviting as the suave Bruno had presented it, while Big Bill deftly adjusted a carburetor and changed the oil, back there in Butte. No more struggling with faltering flivvers and misused motors, no more nicked knuckles and oily overalls, but fine clothes to be worn in the sunshine of a mountain resort as lord of the place! Bruno had mentioned the profits, too, and his own prosperous person was eloquent proof of the wealth to be obtained in the hotel business.

At the very first Mr. Koggs had been interested. Then, as the acquaintance between the two men ripened into the "Bill" and "Jake" stage, he had become convinced. At the last Bruno had tucked his friend's soiled check into the pocket of his faultlessly tailored suit, clapped his expensive fedora jauntily on his bullet-shaped head, and made for the bank.

"So this is what I bought!" Bill now reflected, as he stood on the wide porch of his hotel and looked off across the lake. "It ain't the first cost—it's the upkeep. For fuel consumption this baby beats any 1910 model on the lot. If I don't do sumpin' about it quick, she's goin' to ride me right into the poorhouse!"

II

THE season was still early, and Mr. Koggs took comfort in the thought that business might pick up as the weather grew warmer. As a matter of fact it did, but not enough to offset the cost of maintaining the big hotel and keeping the hot springs hot. Then the State of Montana kindly dumped a quantity of newly crushed rock on the highway from which a byroad led to Oluk Lake, and Mr. Koggs perforce became a garageman again. Hardly an automobile arrived at the Hot Springs Hotel but exhibited at least one lacerated tire and blown-out tube; so Big Bill donned his overalls once more and went to work, while dollars tinkled in the cash register, and the pile of discarded tires mounted in the garage.

The anxious pucker vanished from the hotel owner's besmudged brow as the ledger at last showed the venture breaking even—almost. An accountant would have mentioned such items as depreciation and interest, but Big Bill's bookkeeping was of the direct sort, free of encumbering technicalities.

As the summer days wore on, the stalwart Indian's attachment, at first tentative, became permanent. Tricked out in a Sioux war bonnet and Apache leggings, he made up as a scenic attraction for whatever shortcomings he might have as a stableman. Bill had more than once heard a sojourning dowager from east of the Mississippi remark, on beholding the statuesque figure:

"Ah, at last this is the real West!"

One drowsy afternoon, as Bill, having stoked the ever-hungry maw of the hot springs boiler, passed by the broad veranda on his way to replace two balloon tires on a newly arrived limousine, he was arrested by a sirupy contralto voice imploring:

"Chief, can you tell me what is the meaning of the name 'Oluk Lake'?"

The Indian stretched a dramatic arm toward the water.

"Oluk," he intoned, "in language of my people, mean 'serpent.'"

"Oh, how thrilling!" gasped the contralto. "Can you tell me why it is called Serpent Lake?"

The Indian glanced about the veranda, assured himself that his audience was attentive, and proceeded:

"Many summers ago wigwam of mighty chief Soaring Eagle stand by lake here. Long, long ago, so say story of my people, Soaring Eagle go away to war. He leave beautiful young squaw at home. Young chief Running Fox of 'nother tribe come along while braves all gone. Young chief Running Fox see beautiful young squaw. Young squaw listen to love talk of Running Fox. Many times young squaw go on lake in young chief's canoe.

"Bimeby Soaring Eagle come home. Him see um young squaw on lake in 'nother man's canoe. Soaring Eagle call in loud voice to spirits of water to punish young squaw. Out of deep come great serpent monster. Gulp! He swallow up young chief Running Fox. Gulp! He swallow up young squaw. Gulp, gulp! He swallow up canoe, and down go serpent monster to deep again. Pretty young squaw like you go on lake, you be plenty sure go with right man. Mebbe so bimeby serpent monster come back again. You like buy Indian beadwork?"

Big Bill chuckled and passed on to the garage. Presently the Indian joined him there.

"Some fish story," said Bill.

"Ugh!" said the Indian. "Story sell um beads."

"Whassat?"

"I said that that is one of my very best stories. It seldom fails to procluce a sale."

Big Bill flexed an inner tube absenly, his brow corrugated in thought.

"Think they's anything to it?" he asked.

"Ugh! No can tell."

"Whassat?"

"I said it's impossible to judge at this late date. Like most legends, it probably has some slight basis in fact."

Bill set his vulcanizer going and watched abstractedly as it sealed a neat patch over a ragged tear in the rubber.

"Oh, boy!" he murmured. "Wouldn't that oil the bearings?" He fixed the Indian with a rapt expression and exclaimed again: "Oh, boy!"

III

THE world rolled on for a week, during which William Koggs was little seen and the lordly Indian reaped a meager harvest of dimes and quarters from bored customers. Then, about the middle of July, the event occurred that put Oluk Lake on the map and the Hot Springs Hotel on the front pages of a nation's newspapers.

A party of sleepy-eyed fishermen, shoving off hopefully from the hotel landing at the first faint crack of dawn, came tearing back with a speed that stove in the starboard gunwale and roused the slumbering guests. A window was raised and an indignant voice shouted:

"Stop that racket!"

"It was thirty feet long!" replied the first fisherman.

"It had jaws like a shark!" cried the second.

"Flippers like a seal!" yelled the third.

"It was a sea serpent!" added the first.

"With red eyes!" bellowed the second.

"And a long tail!" roared the third.

Sounds of slamming doors and hurrying footsteps filled the hotel. A group began togather on the porch. Big Bill Koggs appeared, rubbing his eyes.

"What seems to be the trouble?" he inquired.

"It's thirty feet long!" replied the first fisherman.

"It has jaws like a shark!" cried the second.

"Flippers like a seal!" yelled the third.

"It's a sea serpent!" added the first.

"With red eyes!" bellowed the second.

"And a long tail!" added the third.

"It came up right beside our boat!" they concluded in chorus.

The story spread like measles. At the Hot Springs Hotel nothing else was discussed, and at each repetition the monster gained new anatomical details. By the time the breakfast dishes had been cleared away, there was no one at Oluk Lake who did not know that the creature, appearing first as a huge gray dorsal fin, had slithered up through the lapping waves in its entire enormity, lingered a few minutes on the surface, its sides pulsating as with deep respirations, and then sunk slowly from sight.

News of the phenomenon trickled out to the incredulous world, and nearby newspapers published the story with a wealth of amazing details. More cautious press associations sent it out, much condensed and qualified by "it was said" and "it was reported by alleged observers," to the great journals of the country. Learned scientists replied in the academic equivalent of "there ain't no such animal," and the debate attracted nation-wide interest.

Big Bill Koggs preserved an attitude of neutral skepticism.

"I ain't heard," he stated, "of no new sport model fish being put out this year. I'll have to see the thing first."

Just one week after the first appearance of the monster—on the following Friday, to be precise—the thing happened again. This time there was no room for doubt. Now that its rooms were all full and reserved in advance, the Hot Springs Hotel was renting tents to the overflow crowd. It may have been partly because of the uncomfortable sleeping equipment provided with this emergency housing that there was a crowd of early risers on the hotel porch and about the lake when, in the first light of a new day, the mysterious beast raised its awful gray bulk through the dark water, heaved its ponderous sides in rhythmic pulsations and then submerged.

This time the newspapers treated the affair more respectfully, and congestion at the hotel became acute. Among the early arrivals was Professor Ignatius Harvale, than whom no living authority could boast a closer intimacy with the extinct monsters of past ages.

"Tell me all about it," the professor commanded each and every individual to whom the unknown creature had revealed itself. "Your information may be the means of bridging the gap between the Jurassic and the Cretaceous dinosaurs. Think of it!"

Then he translated into perfectly unintelligible notes the eager accounts of the favored spectators.

"It is truly marvelous," declared the professor to Big Bill Koggs, as the proprietor vainly sought to escape to the boiler room. "I am convinced that this creature is a survivor from remote ages—nothing less than an icthyosaurus!"

"Icky what?" gasped Bill.

"Icthyosaurus, the dominant marine reptile of the mesozoic age, millions of years ago. Its fossil remains abound in certain European and South American strata."

"Gosh!" said Bill. "Millions of years old and still in runnin' order— that's some durability, ain't it, perfessor?"

Three representatives of rival feature syndicates pressed about them.

"What is it, professor?" they demanded as one.

The professor drew into his shell and closed the shell in the conventional pose of a fossilized oyster.

"I have been misquoted in the press so often," he stated, "that I dislike to make any direct comment. My published monograph on this phenomenon will appear at the proper time."

The reporters drew Bill Koggs aside.

"What did he say?" they insisted.

Big Bill was desperate. These men must be disposed of before the springs went cold again.

"He said," replied Bill, "that the critter's first name is Icky. I forget its last name, but it's millions of years old."

"Wow!" said a reporter, slapping his deadly rival on the back. "Icky! Oh, that's great! Won't that give the headline boys something to work on! Come on, gang, 1et's get together on this and cook up a good one!"

The result was all that P.T. Barnum could have desired, and more. Bill Koggs was obliged to telegraph a rush order for more tents—auto tents, pup tents, anything to house the frenzied crowd that surged around the Hot Springs Hotel and ate in relays in its spacious dining room. Mr. Koggs had no time even to compute his profits.

Friday at dawn being now established as Icky's regular breathing time, the next Thursday brought an influx that made the Hot Springs Hotel look like an overgrown gold camp. One of the fresh arrivals was conspicuous, even in this hectic throng, for the natty splendor of his attire. Finding Bill Koggs in earnest conversation with his Indian aid, the dressy guest approached with a let's-be-friends-again smile.

"Jake Bruno!" exclaimed Bill. "I didn't think you'd have the nerve to come here, after the dirty deal you give me!"

"Pshaw!" said Mr. Bruno. "That was a bit raw, wasn't it, Bill? Well, I've felt pretty bad about it, and I've come to take the place off your hands. I'll give you back just what you paid for it, Bill. How's that for a fair offer?"

"It's all wet," said Bill. "I'm makin' money on this here layout now, and I'm goin' to keep right on. You couldn't buy me out if you was as rich as you look, and you ain't."

With which remark Bill turned his back on J. Claudius Bruno and strode to the hotel garage, where his two assistants were busy changing tires.

Bruno's face reddened until it matched his tie.

"Damme!" the Indian heard him mutter. "Imagine that guy getting high hat with me! Well, he'll sell to me, or he'll wish he had, if I have to sink his pet sea serpent. No greasy garage mechanic can make a fool out of Claudius Bruno!"

IV

FRIDAY dawned, as Fridays did at Oluk Lake. There was a streak of light above the eastern tree—tops, a ripple on the water, and a gray bulk emerging from the depths, blending with the dark water, but dimly visible to the eager crowd on shore.

From a hilltop beside the hotel a rifle cracked, and a bullet struck the water a few feet away from the behemoth of the deep. A second shot seemed to find its mark, for lcky shuddered horribly, listed to port, and vanished.

A cry of protest welled from the crowd, but the deed was done.

Big Bill Koggs, pushing his way to the front rank of spectators, ran head on into Professor Ignatius Harvale, who was frantic with indignation.

"To think," stormed the antiquarian, "that any one in this enlightened age would be so basely, so abysmally ignorant as to shoot the only living icthyosaurus! Think of the opportunity lost to science! Why, we have thousands of dead icthyosauri, but this was the only one alive—think of it!"

Grappling for the carcass was dis- cussed, but the lake near shore was deep and the proper equipment was lacking. It was suggested that the body might rise to the surface after a while. No one seemed eager to engage hand to mouth, so to speak, with a wounded and possibly angry icthyosaurus, so the crowd settled down to await developments.

The next morning an insomniac tent dweller reported that in the dead of night he had seen two large men, one looking like a bronze statue in the moonlight and the other dressed in a mechanic's overalls, meet before the hotel, go together to the garage, and presently emerge thence and push out on the lake in a boat. There had been a short glow of light over the water, as if some one in the boat had struck a match, and then the tent dweller had gone back and tried again to sleep.

The dawn of another Friday found the Oluk Lake population in breathless suspense. As the stars faded in the east, every vantage point on the lake shore and the hotel porch was occu- pied. Was Icky dead, or would he come up for his weekly breath of air?

A ruddy streak appeared over the tree—tops, and still the surface of the water was as a mirror. Then two men were seen getting into a boat and shoving off from the landing. They were Professor Harvale and J. Claudius Bruno.

"I want to see this thing close up," said Bruno.

"Your interest," stated the professor, "is no less keen than mine."

A tense silence gripped the crowd as the boat moved slowly over the glassy water. Day was dawning. Small objects were becoming visible. The monster was overdue.

Suddenly there was a shrill cry from the boat. The bow of the little craft tilted upward, and Bruno and the professor, clinging desperately together, splashed noisily into the water. Then the watchers on shore saw, beside the overturned boat, the ponderous mass of the monster from the deep. Paying no heed to the two wild-eyed creatures who stared at him over the bottom of their boat, Icky lingered on the surface, worked his great sides in undulating rhythm, and slowly sank from sight.

Bruno and the professor were dragged shivering into another boat, and a dense circle of humanity pressed around them on the landing.

"Marvelous!" said the professor. "It is truly an icthyosaurus. There's nothing else it could be. Most remarkable of all, I actually saw the place where the bullet pierced its hide. The wound is now marked by a red spot—think of it!"

Big Bill Koggs elbowed his way nonchalantly through the crowd.

"Did Icky show?" he asked.

"Did he?" echoed a bystander. "He attacked two men in a boat and dumped 'em in the water!"

"So it's you again," said Bill, gazing on the haggard features of Bruno. "What you tryin' to do to my Icky?"

"I w-w-wanted," chattered Bruno, "to s-see if it was real. Gosh, it is! Bill, I'll double my offer for this hotel!"

"Not enough," replied Bill. "Three times!" said Bruno. "You paid me ten thousand. I'll give you thirty."

"Sold!" said Bill.

The rest of the story may be told in three telegrams. The first, dated August 27, and addressed to "William Koggs, Acme Garage, Butte, Montana," was a day-message, prepaid, rush:

MONSTER HAS NOT SHOWED FOR THREE WEEKS. GUESTS LEAVING. HOW ABOUT IT?
BRUNO.

Big Bill's reply—a day-message, collect, addressed to "J. Claudius Bruno, Hot Springs Hotel, Oluk Lake, Montana "—was prompt and instructive:

PERHAPS YOU FORGOT TO BLOW ICKY UP.
FIND AIR PUMP AND RELEASE VALVE IN BOILER ROOM.
W. KOGGS.

A week later Big Bill had another message—a night-message, collect—to send his friend at Oluk Lake:

SORRY TO LEARN OF YOUR GREAT LOSS. ICKY WAS MADE OF OLD INNER TUBES.
YOU OUGHT NOT TO HAVE GAVE HIM MORE THAN TWELVE POUNDS PRESSURE.
W. KOGGS.

THE END

A DOG'S LIFE

Published in the Sunday Times (Perth, W.A.), Sunday 19 January, 1930.

To begin with, Mr. John Maggs, of somewhere in Bethnal Green, derived his inspiration from the 'gossip' column of his favorite evening paper. More than once he had derived considerable unearned increment from the same source. Paragraphs anent the rich and powerful and their treasures of gold and silver—especially gold stored away in remote country houses with owners blissfully unaware of the Maggs tribe on the lookout for such costly trifles. For that was precisely the sort of man John Maggs was. By day a worker in a garage, by night a lover of nocturnal rides on a motor bicycle but always with an eye to ultimate income.

He liked that bit in the evening Press about Sir Walter Rumbelow of Brayside, near Margate, and the account of his wonderful collection of gold coins. Not as numismatic specimens, but as sterling which he knew how to melt down and dispose of at its full market value. Portable, too, Maggs reflected.

So in due course, Maggs took a long week-end holiday together with his motor cycle. He located the cliffs of Bray from a guidebook, and found that Brayside was a large modern house on high ground overlooking the sea; indeed, the front of it was within three hundred yards of the cliff which at that point was as many feet above the tideway with two paths running along the basaltic bastion on which the house was perched. A score of yards below the wall, fencing Brayside from the cliff, was a sort of footpath which was a right of way and unfenced, and this path met with Mr. Maggs' decided approval. Firstly, because it was public and, in the next place, because a climb up the precipitous slope afforded an easy access to the grounds of Brayside House.

Of a second public path down below and not more than a score of feet from high water mark, Maggs knew nothing. It was no sort of concern, anyway. Nor was he particularly keen on the upper path save for the fact that it was a distinct convenience. He was not accustomed to cliffs and that alarming steep slope ending three hundred feet below in the sea made him giddy and gave him an unpleasant sensation in the pit of his stomach.

It looked to him that if a bloke happened to slip off the upper path he would be certain to drop to the bottom like a stone and dash his brains out on the rocks fringing the water. Had he known of the lower path not far above high water mark he might have been easier in his mind. Here and there, due to the passing of time or erosion, were long slides of slippery shale, and Maggs—not devoid of imagination—could picture a cove setting that grey avalanche in motion and after that—Blimey!

As a matter of fact the danger was not as bad as it looked. Maggs might have seen that had it not been for a thick fringe of larch trees far down the giddy slope. These half hid the sea and by so doing, heightened the suggestion of a sheer precipice. The more Maggs studied the situation the less he liked it.

But if he was to enter the grounds of Brayside House and come away again in comparative safety, there was no way save by the cliff path. That must form his entry and his egress unless he was prepared to take serious risks. And he was not prepared to take any risks that could be avoided.

Therefore, the attack must be made from the upper cliff path and once having made up his mind to this, Maggs proceeded to commit to memory the exact lie of the land. More than that, he contrived to enter the area of operations by the simple process of swarming up the few feet of cliff above the public path and climbing into the domain sacred to Sir Walter Rumbelow. Lying perdu in a thicket of heather and gorse, for—save the lawns and garden—the owner had left the terrain in its wild beauty, the marauder had a full view of the house. Facing him, and not more than a hundred yards away, was the library where he knew those precious coins reposed in their locked cases.

A big room with three long windows. Maggs knew this because he had learnt so much from a gossip in the village public house. Moreover, the gossip aforesaid was a jobbing carpenter who did work for Sir Walter from time to time. An old man, he had in his youth actually seen Brayside House built. Maggs regarded this Joe Gittens as a distinct manifestation of providence. He was as good as a guide and a plan of the house combined.

Let it not be assumed that Maggs was taking undue risks in discussing Brayside House and its owner with Gittens. When the inevitable happened—and Maggs was sanguine on that head—it was inevitable also that Gittens would open his heart on the subject to the stranger who asked so many questions anent the place and was so liberal on the score of alcoholic refreshment.

But that Maggs was prepared for and had fully discounted in advance. In reality Gittens had never seen the real Maggs or Watkins, as he preferred to call himself. As Watkins he presented a man with a thick thatch of silver grey plus Victorian side whiskers and a chin beard, the long upper lip being bare. Add a pair of brass-rimmed spectacles and the disguise was complete.

Nor did Magg's precautions end there. If the raid proved a success, it was necessary to provide some rapid means of transport to a haven of safety before Sir Walter's servants discovered their employer's loss in the morning. The motor cycle was ready and snugly hidden not far off, for Maggs had not been so unwise as to come into the village riding his trusty steed. A disused barn and a bale of rotten hay afforded the necessary cover.

Add to these strategic advantages the fact that Sir Walter Rumbelow was away from home for some days, and it will be seen that Maggs had little or nothing to fear—save one thing.

There was no moon and the weather for the time of year was mild, but there was a little more fog hanging about than the burglar liked. There was fog at night and far into the morning, that blanket of fog which is one of the characteristics of the south coast in late autumn, especially when there was no wind as at the moment. And this fact worried Maggs because he would be compelled to follow the cliff path round the headland after securing the swag because it was imperative to avoid the village and the motor cycle lay in ambush in an opposite direction.

The thought of that, to him perilous walk in utter darkness oppressed him like a nightmare. He knew that he could easily strike the cliff path after the raid, but if that cursed fog held, he might take a step too far and finish his career at the foot of the cliff and end as 'found drowned.' Still an occasional gleam from his flashlight might avert tragedy. But the fog held and on the third night, just before closing time, Maggs bade farewell to his village gossip.

"Just time for one more," he said heartily. "Make the most of it for I leave to-morrow. Back to work, old sport, more's the pity. Well, so long. Take care of yourself."

So, with every preparation made and his modest baggage on his back, Maggs set out on his errand. Up to a certain point the road along the cliff was easy—a wall on one side and a thick hedge on the other. Even in the fog no danger was to be feared so far. But, once beyond a wicket gate, the trouble began. So many yards would have to be traversed ere it was necessary to start climbing upwards at a right angle, until the boundary wall of Sir Walter's domain was reached. And these steps with his heart in his mouth Maggs counted. Just a hundred and seventeen of these he registered, then turned left and began to swarm up the heather clad slope until, with a sigh of relief he bumped into the boundary wall. He dropped over on the far side on to what seemed like turf under his feet. So far, so good.

He crept on and on in the dead silence of the place until the house itself loomed up before him ghostly in the fog. Maggs was feeling easier now for he possessed a fine geographical sense and, moreover, he had visualised the landscape inch by inch by daylight. It was as if he had the whole world to himself. And, in the midst of it, a haunted house, forsaken and deserted. Not a single glimmer of light to be seen anywhere. Probably the whole domestic staff had taken French leave and gone off to the weekly dance in the parish hall.

Not that Maggs was banking on this probability. He scouted round to the back of the house and thence to the garage, the door of which was open and no sign of the chauffeur in the blank window of his quarters overhead. No doubt Sir Walter had taken the car with him on his temporary departure from his home.

Then the house was deserted. What blinkin' luck. Given one uninterrupted hour, or less, and Maggs would be away round the cliff path in search of the hidden motor-cycle awaiting him. And, if his luck held good, he would be home and asleep before those servants had discovered the robbery.

Then back again to the front of the house. He stood on the ledge of the centre library window, working back the catch with a thin-bladed knife. It was as easy as kiss me 'and. The thick velvet curtains cautiously parted, Maggs was inside. There was a warm, comfortable smell of leather and underfoot a carpet so thick and soft that it was possible to move without the slightest sound. A quick flash round with a pocket lamp and Maggs caught his breath.

Yes, there the boodle was—glittering and winking in the glow, thousands of coins, a large proportion of them gold. It was compact stuff that could be easily stowed away in a big inside pocket, and every ounce of it saleable at its face value—at least two thousand pounds as mere metal; the find of a lifetime.

Maggs wasted no further time. Ere long most of those thin scraps of precious metal were transferred to his capacious pocket, and no sign of life within a hundred miles.

And then suddenly there came a sort of glow through the thick curtains and what sounded like the hum of a car. After that voices in the hall and a flash of illumination, as if somebody had switched on the lights outside the library.

"Dashed funny thing, Monty, old chap," one voice said. "But where the deuce is everybody? Withers, Withers, WITHERS."

The cry echoed through the house, but the mysterious Withers had no reply. Withers was non est.

"Nice game," the voice went on. "Dear old Nunky away and the servants off on some beano. Dashed if they haven't taken the faithful hound with 'em. You hang on here for a sec. Monty, whilst I go and have a look round."

"Righto, old fruit," the invisible Monty rejoined.

Maggs felt his way silently in the direction of the window. By sheer good luck he found his way there without disturbing any article of furniture en route. Who were these intruders, he asked himself, blowing in so unexpectedly. Relations of the old bloke, of course. And hadn't one of them said something about a dog? Maggs had seen no dog, he didn't want to see a dog—no right-minded burglar ever does. Noisy yapping brutes.

Maggs was outside the window now, intent on making his way without delay to the spot where the motor-cycle awaited him. Once astride of that, he had little to fear. There was just a chance that those toffs might enter the library and if they did.....

Maggs didn't want to think of it. All he wanted, like the Arabs in the poem, was to fold his tent and silently steal away.

Outside the fog still dripped and clung. But Maggs knew his way. He had only to follow his nose and reach the boundary wall, then drop over into the heather, make a bee line for the cliff path, and thence to the cycle and safety. He hated the idea of that cliff path in the fog and inky darkness, but, once clear, an occasional pinpoint of flame from the pocket torch would suffice to guide him to safety and the high road to home, sweet home.

He pushed on resolutely until the wall was close at hand. And then he was conscious of a sort of asthmatic wheezing a few inches behind him and something moist and damp and cold pressing against his left leg. Snakes in the heather, perhaps; Maggs had heard of such things—vipers that bit and sometimes killed people. It was only by sheer will that Maggs refrained from a shout.

But he must see what the perishin' thing was. Even if he ran a risk, he must know. He turned down the nozzle of his torch so that the pencil of light showed only on the ground, and then he saw something that brought his heart into his mouth.

There, within two inches of his leg, was an enormous bulldog showing a magnificent set of teeth in a ferocious grin.

"Erump, tump, tump," quoth the bulldog, in the rich, fruity baritone of his clan. "Erump, burp, parp."

With one wild yell Maggs flung himself over the wall and raced down the heathery slope in search of safety. All he wanted in that hectic moment was to place as much air and space as possible between himself and the animal, which he sub-consciously recognised as the 'faithful hound' alluded to in the fragmentary conversation he had heard in the library a few minutes ago.

In his headlong panic he raced across the cliffs without realising that he had crossed the path and plugged down the precipitous slope at the foot of which lay the sea. And, in so doing, he alighted on a wide bed of loose shale such as he had noticed when spying out the lie of the land. His feet slid from under him and, sprawling on the flat of his back, he set the shale in motion, and down he went as if he were slithering to perdition on the face of an avalanche. In vain he turned and twisted and clutched in an endeavor to obtain some sort of a grip, but the more he struggled the faster the loose erosion rumbled downwards towards the waves breaking on the rocks at the foot of the cliff. The crash and grind of the sea sounded in his ears like the crack of doom. In vain to cry out, in vain to scream for help with the fog blanketing his voice and black darkness before his eyes. A few seconds and there was an end of John Maggs!

Somewhere overhead the bulldog was wailing like a lost soul. But not so loudly as Maggs some 200 feet below.

Those few seconds of long-drawn out agony seemed like years to the unhappy marauder. Down, down he went with a crash and rumble of sliding shale until, in a state of mental paralysis, he shot clean over square bluff into space and, for a few moments, remembered no more. Then the crushing impact.

But not the crash he dreaded. Some hard substance struck him in the small of the back and knocked all the wind out of him. Something that seemed to sway and toss and yet hold him in a close grip. Not so far from the water either, because Maggs could hear the swish and suck of the tide unpleasantly close. Then, as his scattered senses began to reassemble, he recognised dimly the thing that had happened.

His fall had been broken and his body supported by the latteral branch of some trees perched on the cliff side. It was a wide, flat branch that smelt like fir of some kind. If he could only reach the bottom of it! But at the slightest movement the branch swayed ominously and the paralysing fear came back again. Another slip and the adventure would be definitely finished.

It was so dark, too, and the fog as thick as ever. Maggs could hear it dripping around him like the flopping of so many frogs. Not a breath of wind moving, silence everywhere.

It was 'ard, crool 'ard, Maggs told himself, with tears of self-pity in his eyes; but better, perhaps, than being a mangled corpse on the rocks below. All the same, he was just as much a prisoner now as if he had been chained by the leg or behind stone walls. Here he was with his pockets bulging with gold and that blinkin' motor cycle, and safety, only half a mile away.

Perhaps he might get away with it yet. If only he could see something of the lie of the land! But in his headlong flight from that perishin' dog he had dropped his torch. There was nothing for it but to wait till daylight and then see if it were possible to scramble up the cliff and make a dash for the cycle before the world began to wake to another morn. A slim chance, but not impossible. And hours of this yet.

Gradually Maggs dozed off. He had sunk deeper into his cradled bower, and no longer feared a fall. The doze faded into a dream and the dream into a sound sleep——

When Maggs finally awoke it was morning, early morning with a smudge of smoky light overhead and a lifting of the atmosphere, but no breath of wind yet and no fading of the blanket of fog. So thick was it still that Maggs could not see two yards beyond his nose. He could hear the ominous growl of the sea below and the cry of the gulls—beyond that, nothing.

If only that perishin' fog would lift!

Came at length sounds of life behind the thick curtain of blinding mist. Voices! A faint puff of wind. Another. Overhead a pallid sphere like a new cheese. The sun at last! Then the fog rolled back fold upon fold as a moving curtain might do and the palpitating Maggs could see at last.

"Luv a duck," he blubbered, "luv a duck. If I'd only knowed. Crool luck. An' me orl the time——"

He was lying on the lateral branch of a weather-scarred and stunted cedar-tree barely fifteen feet in height and overhanging the lower path, which was not far above high water mark.

Absolute safety in his grasp. Almost. But not quite.

For on the path, looking up at him and showing that splendid range of teeth, was the cause of all the mischief.

"Erump, tump, tump," said the bulldog. "Wrupp."

Along the path came a large man in thigh gaiters and rough shooting jacket—evidently a gamekeeping sort of person. He looked at the dog and followed the direction of his upturned, blunt nose. And saw Maggs on his perch.

"Seemin'ly," he said, "Seemin'ly you be the bloke what we 'uns be lookin' for. Come down."

"That's torn it," Maggs almost wept.

THE END

AND THIS IS FAME!

Published in the Sunday Times (Perth, W.A.), Sunday 18 October, 1931.

WHEN Tommy Allnatt, the famous comedian, arrived at the studio of the equally famous painter, Alonzo Paradine, there was no sign of the lunch to which Tommy had been invited; in fact, there was no sign of anybody, not even a servant to answer the bell. Therefore, Tommy was pardonably annoyed.

None the less because the front door gave to a turn of the lock and Tommy found himself free to enter the studio proper. Just like Paradine to forget all about the lunch and give his domestic staff a holiday for the day.

Left to himself. London's leading low comedian—and the greatest practical joker since J. L. Toole—prowled about the studio where the immortal Paradine painted his pictures and entertained the salt of the earth.

But Tommy was not concerned with Paradine's greatness at the moment. He was torn between wolfish hunger and humorous irritability. None the less so because this was not the first time Paradine had played the same trick on his friends. Time he had a lesson. Time to teach him that his absentmindedness was not a paying game. Perhaps an epoch-making practical joke——

The idea shaped as Tommy sat eating caviare and biscuits looted from a Tudor buffet and washed down with a whisky and soda imbibed from a priceless goblet of Venetian glass. As the inner man swung to equilibrium the grin on Tommy's face broadened. The great idea was burgeoning like a flower.

"It would serve him right," he muttered. "Hang me if I don't do it!"

From a huge wardrobe in ebony and ivory inlay Tommy produced certain sartorial properties such as artists keep for their models. A wig and a beard and a pair of spectacles; a suit of rags, complete with rusty boots; and in these Tommy proceeded to array himself. An impromptu make-up completed the picture of honest poverty under a cloud of financial depression. Hastily gathering together half-a-dozen or so of canvasses from a corner of the studio, Tommy crept into the street until he reached the spot he had in mind, and there on a stretch of pavement in view of Chelsea's best and brightest, sat down to do business with all and sundry in search of masterpieces at jumble sale prices. Not that he would sell a single one, and thus, cover the great Paradine with confusion and ridicule.

For some time he had the cold, hard world to himself. In a harsh, commercial age, art seemed to be a drug on the market. Then presently there shuffled into sight a snuffy man whose beady eyes lighted on the array of pictures displayed on the pavement. The little man checked and for some moments stood contemplating the show with his head on one side, like a thrush gloating over a particularly fat snail.

"Dear me!" he piped. "Your own work? What?"

"And for sale, sir," Tommy said meekly.

"Very sad, very sad!" the little man declared. "Clever, very clever. Distinct touches of originality. The later French school. You have studied in Paris?"

"Never had a lesson in my life," Tommy said, truthfully.

"Amazing!" the little man cried. "Amazing! you haven't stolen those sketches by any chance?"

Tommy contrived a sad, disarming smile. The little man hopped around excitedly.

"I apologise!" he wheezed. "I am in a humble way a collector. But my means are limited, very limited. If you care to take fifteen shillings each for those——What, what?"

Tommy shuffled uneasily. The great joke was not developing according to plan. His scheme had been to sit there the best part of the afternoon peddling choice Paradines and being able to boast afterwards that he never secured an offer for one. It was imperative that he should hedge.

"Sir," he said, grandly, "I may be poor, but I have my pride. And the laborer is worthy of his hire. A fiver a head all round and call it a deal."

If Tommy was under the impression that this appreciation of stock would choke off the snuffy old gentleman he was speedily disillusioned. He merely smiled a crafty smile.

"My friend," he wheezed, "before you took up your stand here did it occur to you that a hawker's license was requisite—indeed, imperative?"

"Is that a fact, old bean?" Tommy asked, forgetting himself in face of this startling riposte. "Mean to say——"

"Quite," the little man chuckled. "Show me your license, or the policeman on point duty yonder——"

"All right," Tommy said recklessly. "Take the bally lot at your own price. A quid a piece. Come!"

The snuffy little man produced a roll of notes and counted out six of them into Tommy's shrinking palm. A few moments later the purchaser was rolling away in a taxi and Tommy was after him in another. There was a little delay in getting away, for the driver of the second cab shied openly at Tommy's rags until the sight of a Treasury note calmed his fears.

"I'm fly, gov'nor," he grinned. "Not the first time as I've 'ad a copper in disguise in my keb."

Exactly seventeen minutes later the first cab pulled up in front of a palatial mansion in Park-street, where the little man alighted, and let himself in with a latchkey.

"Well, I'm done!" Tommy groaned dismally.

It was well into the marrow of the afternoon when Tommy, divested of his rags, crept into the smoking room of his club and ordered a whisky and soda. He was grateful to find the room comparatively deserted, save for a group of three discussing art in the big bay window. The big boom of Lucius Farmiloe laying down the law came mistily to Tommy's ears. The great editor of 'Thought' holding his audience in thrall like the Ancient Mariner. It was a way that majestic art critic had.

"These amateur collectors are all alike," he said. "A man like Grimstein thinks he knows everything, because he possesses the money-making instinct. Oh, I grant you his collection of modern art is a fine one, but when those chaps come to rely on their own judgment—well, there!"

"Go on—we'll buy it," a listener said wearily.

"Well, it's like this," Farmiloe went on, "Grimstein 'phoned me about three o'clock to give him a call as he had just got hold of a lot of early Paradines. Bought 'em from a marine store dealer or something like that. All rot, because there are no early Paradines knocking about. I ought to know."

"Course," Gregory of the 'Daily Messenger' agreed. "Paradine was invented and patented by you. Did you go?"

"What do you think? I knew what I was going to find, my boy. Forgeries. Still, if Grimstein was anxious to pay my fee as a professional expert, I was agreeable. So round to Park-street I went without delay."

Tommy Allnatt started. The words 'Park-street' struck on his ears like a bomb. Beyond a doubt Farmiloe was speaking of the snuffy little man who had brought the great joke tumbling in ruins about the comedian's head.

"Well, go on," Gregory said. "The plot intrigues me."

"So I went," Farmiloe resumed. "There were six of those things altogether and it didn't take me long to tell my man just what my opinion of the rubbish was."

"Then they weren't Paradines at all?"

"Naw," Farmiloe snarled in deep contempt. "Not altogether bad stuff and not devoid of feeling, but palpable forgeries. The old chap was mad with me because I refused to be bullied, and we paraded on terms of armed neutrality. Just as if Paradine ever painted a picture I couldn't trace, you chaps."

All of which was pleasant hearing for the unhappy Tommy. He sat there apparently absorbed in a paper whilst he was drinking in every word that the eminent critic was saying. The great Joke had not only fizzled out, but the aftermath promised to make Tommy a figure of fun for many a day to come. And suppose that Grimstein chose to appeal to Caesar himself, represented in this case by Paradine? If he did, what then? The whole story would trickle into the popular press—just the kind of thing the master of pungent paragraphs, one Hannibal Barr, would love to handle in one of his social columns.

And then, as fate would have it. Barr himself appeared just in time to gather what Farmiloe was saying.

"Let's have that all over again," he demanded.

Tommy smothered a groan. Unless some miracle happened, he could see himself the victim of every little street boy in London. But what could he do? Go to Paradine and make a clean breast of it and invoke his aid. But then he had always regarded Paradine as little better than a child in arms in worldly matters, which in point of fact, he was. Or perhaps Farmiloe himself would help. But he didn't want to go to that superior person with his patronising pomposity if there was any other way out. And he didn't want to be laughed at—it is the one thing your practical Joker all over the world most dreads.

Meanwhile the paragraphist was gleaning what promised to be a rich harvest of copy from Farmiloe's story. Tommy could almost see the pungent narrative in print.

"Mean to say the stuff was all junk?" Barr asked when at length Farmiloe had finished. "Impudent forgeries?"

"Looks like it," Farmiloe said. "Lots of that sort of thing going on. Traps to catch flats like Grimstein."

"But I thought he was a connoisseur, Farmiloe."

"My dear fellow, they an are. Or think so. But when they start out buying on their own without consulting experts like myself they usually come a cropper as Grimstein did today. He was infernally cocksure, but I think I shook him up a bit. If he gives out to the world that he has bought a lot of early Paradines on his own judgment and exhibits them, as he threatened to do, he is asking for it, my boy. Fancy trying to bluff me into agreeing that that junk is Paradine's work!"

Hannibal Barr's dry chuckle irritated Tommy to the verge of manslaughter. Here was a rich field for the paragraphist and one on which Tommy Allnatt would figure as leading character. Nothing else would be discussed in the club for months.

"Funny chap, Paradine," Barr remarked. "Thorpe of 'The Bacon,' was chasing him yesterday and ran him to earth in some poisonous eating house in Soho where he was entertaining a tramp in filthy rags. Picturesque, murderous-looking bloke, Thorpe said. Picked up in the gutter by Paradine who was mad to paint him on his native heath, so to speak. 'Pears that the chap lives in some sort of wood in Surrey and subsists on roots and mushrooms. So nothing would do but that Paradine must rush off at once and sketch the unsavory hermit outside his cave. Last thing Thorpe saw was the two setting out for the wilds."

"The deuce!" Farmiloe exclaimed. "I happen to know that Paradine had an appointment this very morning with no less a personage than the King of Asturia."

"In other words, a royal command, what?"

"You've said it. It's like this. About a week ago Paradine was down at Hurlingham watching the polo and made a sketch of the King in action. One of Paradine's best, I'm told, though I have not seen it as yet. The King happened to hear about it and asked to see the drawing. He was so pleased that he asked Paradine to finish it in pastel for another royal potentate as a birthday present and the great man was going to the studio this morning for a final look at the work."

"And Paradine clean forgot it," Barr grinned. "Make a topping story out of that, what?"

"You'd make a story out of your grandmother's coffin." said Farmiloe nastily. "Surely you'd never have the cheek——"

"'Fraid not," Barr sighed. "It doesn't pay to bring royalty into tabloid journalism—editors shy at it. And, anyway, King Pedro is a topping good sportsman. But I'd like to have seen him this morning being received by the kitchen maid with the information that Paradine was off indefinitely in company with a lousy tramp. Bet His Majesty was amused."

A hollow groan rumbled in Tommy's throat. It had come to him with stunning force that a picture he had sold to the snuffy old gentleman was one showing a handsome, manly figure in polo kit, A gentle dew bespangled Tommy's brow.

It was a good half-hour later before Tommy contrived to get Farmiloe into a quiet corner with a view to enlisting the powerful aid of the distinguished critic in saving the stricken field. But would the arbiter of art do it?

On the whole Tommy thought that he would. The greatest practical joker of his time was rarely at a loss to escape the dire consequences of a miscarried jape, and now that things were at their blackest. Tommy began to see his way.

"Well, of all the infernal cheek!" Farmiloe cried when at length the tale was told. "What the deuce——"

"Just a rag," Tommy went on hastily. "Besides, I was a bit biffed at being done out of my lunch. So I decided to give Paradine a lesson. My idea was to sit on the pavement trying to sell genuine Paradines at break up prices, if you get me. But never expectin' to sell one. See the joke? Set the clubs laughin' like blazes for months, eh?"

"Rotten bad taste," Farmiloe sniffed. "I must decline to interfere. If it hadn't been for the King of Asturia, perhaps I might ... You are not seriously suggesting that I should go to Grimstein and bully those drawings out of him?"

"Well, something like that," Tommy grinned.

The maker of reputations shook his head vigorously.

"Forget it," he snapped. "With a name like mine, my dear Allnatt, with the great British public depending——"

"I'm not the British public," Tommy smiled, "but a poor devil of a comedian in a deuced tight place. And doesn't it strike you, pompous ass, that you are as deep in the soup as I am. If not, then let me enlighten you."

"Is this a threat?" Farmiloe demanded.

"Something like it, old bird. You are a great man in your own line and thousands of would-be-intellectuals sit at your feet and eat the literary oysters peddled monthly by your Review. From your edict one may judge that Paradine has the half nelson on John, and Orpen on the mat for the count. And, yet with all your wonderful flair and intuition for genius, you scoffed at a set of genuine Paradines when Grimstein showed them to you."

"What precisely do you mean?" Farmiloe stammered.

"Well, haven't I proved it? You, who can feel a Paradine in the dark actually handled a batch of his work in Grimstein's Park-street house and laughed them to scorn. Lord, if I wasn't a kind-hearted bloke, I could bust your wonderful critical reputation sky high in 24 hours."

Farmiloe winced, he saw the red light plainly now.

"What sort of a critic do you call yourself?" Tommy went on pushing his advantage home. "Granted, you made Paradine, but only to spite Inigo Chrome. One of the finest bits of logrolling ever put across the public. And with all your intimate knowledge of the great man's work, you fail to recognise it when it is actually shoved under your nose. What will your disciples say when they discover that fact?"

Tommy was feeling on firm ground now. He was the brilliant general who sees defeat turned to victory.

"But surely," Farmiloe stammered, "you wouldn't——"

"Oh, wouldn't I," Tommy cried viciously. "I don't propose to be laughed out of London if I can help it. If that is to be my fate then you will share it, old scout."

Farmiloe was beginning to see the point of the argument. Tommy lost no time in ramming it home.

"You laughed in old Grimstein's face. You insulted his judgment and touched his pocket. Then you came here to boast about it. Before Hannibal Barr, mind. London's premier paragraph gossip. If only he realises the real truth! My boy, you will never hear the last of it unless you manage to bluff Grimstein and get hold of those pictures before Paradine gets back to his studio. Make Grimstein realise that he has been had by some practical joker who laid a plant to catch him. Say that you have been making exhaustive inquiries, and, by a lucky chance, hit on the authors of the jape. Say you forced the truth out of the rascals and managed to get the money paid for the sketches back. If you fail to do that, then we are both up to our necks in it. And here's the notes Grimstein gave me this morning."

"You think it would work?" the unhappy Farmiloe gulped.

"Of course," Tommy said. "You have been a bluffer all your life, and it will come easy. Pose as the saviour of Grimstein's reputation as a judge of paintings. Condole with him, kiss him if you like. But, for heaven's sake, get those pictures back. And get them back now."

Farmiloe was moved at last.

"You little blighter," he snarled, speaking, for once, like an ordinary human being. "You little blighter, this stunt of yours has landed me in a nice mess. Not that I am entirely blameless in the matter."

"Blameless!" Tommy laughed. "Hoist with your own petard, as Bill Shakespeare says. Now get on with it."

"At once," Farmiloe said, quite meekly. "Stay here till I get back. Hi, waiter, call me up a taxi."

An hour later Farmiloe was back in the club with a bulky parcel under his arm, and, without a word, dragged Tommy into his waiting taxi and thence to Paradine's studio. And that was how a great scandal was averted, and Tommy Allnatt's face saved.

THE END

A DAUGHTER OF NATURE

Published in The Central Queensland Herald (Rockhampton, Qld.), Thursday 11 July, 1931.

Hartley Drummond, standing in the shadow of the plantation, watched intently the beautiful, lithe, sinuous animal holding the dead rabbit in her hand. The fact that it was his rabbit and had been poached in the spinney did not prejudice Sir Hartley against the huntress. Rather was he filled with a certain admiration for the tall girl in the vivid scarlet blouse. From the far side of the hedge came a drift of wood smoke, and the crackle of burning sticks. A man's voice was muttering something, and a woman was answering him shrilly. Here were three gaudily painted caravans, and as many dingy tents, for a horde of travelling gipsies had stopped here, and Drummond's keepers were much annoyed about it.

The girl strode almost noiselessly across the bracken; her bare feet gleamed like ivory against the vivid green. Came to her a moment later a man in a cloth cap and a muffler about his throat. She tossed the rabbit to him with a contemptuous gesture, and made as if to turn away when he caught her by the shoulder. It was something in the way of a caress, a touch of affection which might mean love in the wild, but it seemed to act upon the girl as if someone had put a match to the dark masses of her hair. As the man's hand tightened upon her shoulder she turned her head and hit the brown fingers savagely.

"Don't touch me again," she panted. "I have told you about it before. Why can't you leave me alone? Why can't you all leave me alone, for the matter of that? Keep your kisses for Meg Stanley: she'll welcome them fast enough."

THE young man laughed inwardly. He was not in the least angered or moved by this spurt of flaming passion. He might have been no more than a dog on which another one had turned in scorn and contempt of amatory advances. Without another word he picked up the rabbit and disappeared in the direction of the camp. The girl sat down on a fallen tree and took a slim volume from her pocket. A cracked voice calling for one Miriam brought a snarl to her lips as she threw the book down and darted towards the spot where the tents were pitched. Drummond was conscious of an intense curiosity to see what manner of literature this beautiful vixen of the woods affected. He could hear Miriam being shrewdly scolded for some dereliction of duly; someone was scoffing at the girl and demanding to know whether she meant to pass the whole day poring over 'that muck.' Obviously the speaker was alluding to the book which lay face downwards on the fallen tree. Drummond took it up in his hand and glanced at the cover.

"Swinburne,'' he muttered. ''Now what on earth——"

The girl was coming back again. He dropped the volume and discreetly vanished. Here was a problem startling as it was unexpected. Drummond was a sportsman and a country gentleman, but he was a wide reader and a philosopher as well.

And he knew the wild, and the strange creatures that dwelt therein in many parts of the world. He knew that some of the inhabitants of the jungle were gregarious, like the rabbits and the rats and coyotes and wild dogs of the Western prairies. He knew that they snarled and fought and made war on one another much the same as men do, and this strange instinct fascinated him.

But there were other creatures in the wild not gregarious. There were the hawks and the vultures, the leopards and the panthers, playing their lone hand or travelling in small parties much as the gipsies in yonder camp were doing. There were town rats and country rats, and to this latter clan the gipsies belonged. They could hibernate with the rest in the holes and burrows of the town till the spring came a-calling and the smell of the rising sap sent them aflame for the clear sky and the open road. They were a fairly wild, untamed lot, as Drummond knew, for he had had a fancy once out in Hungary to go camping with them. These people here spoke a different language but they were the same race, with the same swarthy, clear-cut features and dark hair and eyes. In the ordinary course Drummond would have given the girl Miriam no further thought, but a wandering Romany who makes clothes pegs and vicariously poaches rabbits in the intervals of reading Swinburne was a human document not to be lightly put aside.

The problem was still with Drummond as he sat in his library smoking his final cigar before turning in. He would like to have seen more of this girl; he would like to have questioned her as to where she had learned to read, and who had inspired her with the neurotic beauties of the poet. He would have been surprised to know that the girl was standing in the darkness not five yards away, looking through the window into the library with shining, covetous eyes. She was still there when Drummond pulled the window to and switched off the light.

It was some half an hour later when he came down again with an uneasy feeling that he had not properly fastened the window. He was thinking of the gipsies, probably. He made no noise in his slippered feet as he put his hand round the door and flicked on the light. And there, curled up in a big arm chair with a dark lantern in her hand, was the gipsy girl. She had a costly edition of Shelley in her hand. Her scarlet blouse made a vivid spot against the brown leather of the bookcases, her bare legs were still glistening with the dew, her little pink toes wriggled uneasily. She looked up from the tangle of her hair.

"It's a fair cop, mister," she said half defiantly. "But I'm doin' no 'arm; God's truth, I ain't.''

"No, I suppose not," Drummond said. "But you'll admit that I have the right to ask you a few questions. I take it that this is not your first visit here."

He half expected her to lie, but those bold clear eyes had in them no sinister light of prevarication.

"Every night for the last week," she said. "I see you here one evening as I came around by the house. Been borrowing a few cabbages from the garden, I 'ad. Your blind was up, and I looked in. And when I see all them beautiful books——"

"So you are a book lover like myself, eh?"

"Love 'em," the girl said. Her eyes were sparkling now. "Anything in print almost. I dare say you wonder where I learnt it all. When I was 12 I had something the matter with my spine. For two years I was in one of them 'omes. And they learned me to read and write, and they give me pretty well every book I wanted. I've got scores of books in the caravan. When ever I'm near a town, and I've got a few coppers to spend I find a second-'and bookstall—but look 'ere, you ain't going to charge me, are you?"

"You wound my sense of hospitality," Drummond smiled. "My dear child, you are perfectly safe here. Do you know, your case is very interesting? Your present mode of life must be horrible to a clever girl with an artistic temperament. Now I have friends and influence; there are schools and institutions——"

"I couldn't do it," the girl cried, "indeed, I couldn't do it, mister. It's in the blood. I didn't know what that meant till I began to read; didn't know why I felt so restless and miserable in that hospital. And they were very good to me, ay, as good as gold. Might have been a princess. And all the time my 'eart was out 'ere in the sunshine. And when they brought me flowers I seemed to see the daffodils and blue-bells in the woods—oh, don't send me to school. A month in the stir I could stand all right. Only if you've got any pity, don't send me to school."

She spoke in a voice vibrant with passionate entreaty. She seemed to be regarding Drummond as the avenging instrument of the law devising some terrible punishment for venial sin. But he understood her—understood a great deal more dearly than she knew. For the wild was to him an open book, and he had heard its call many a time before to-night. There was a kindly feeling in his heart for the beautiful half-shy, half-savage girl in the red blouse.

"You can make your mind quite easy," he said. "You are not going to be punished. This little adventure shall be a secret between us, and if, during the rest of your stay here, you should happen to wander this way at night, and the window's not securely fastened——"

The girl smiled, showing two rows of teeth white as the kernel of a filbert. Then her face overcast like an April sky.

"It's too late," she sighed. "Must think myself lucky to have been here so many times already. We are moving along Ashdown way to-morrow. Always moving, we are."

Drummond was frankly sorry to hear it. There was something about this child-woman that fascinated him. It seemed a thousand pities that with her dark beauty and fine intelligence, to say nothing of her artistic dreams, she should be condemned to the inevitable end that awaits the female creatures in the wild. She would meet her mate some day and they would get up the smoke tents of Ishmael for themselves and wander and wander till the end came. He could see her beauty lined and scarred with the stress of the storm and the fret of existence. He could see her and the male wolf scouring the wild for the daily meal, see her bent under the weight of the child slung across her breast in the inevitable parti-coloured shawl. Her hair would be grey some time, she would grow foxy and cunning, sly and glib of tongue, a haunter of back doors and a preyer upon silly moon-faced domestics dreaming dreams founded on fiction as expounded by the "Housemaid's Companion."

"It seems a thousand pities," Drummond said. "I am not quite sure that my weak good nature is not depriving the world of a genius. You are very young yet, Miriam. Two or three years at school and you may be writing the poetry that you so passionately admire. You might become a novelist, another Borrow. Oh, with a mind like yours you might be anything."

"Oh, I know," the girl said simply. "I have lain awake and thought of it scores of times. I can sleep in the darkest wood, and, yet the town frightens me. All these stone walls and brick 'ouses give me the 'orrors. Seems to me sometimes that I'm not one girl, but two. I want to read and I want to write, but I want the open road most of all. No, it would never do, mister."

And Drummond could see that, too. He knew the utter folly of any attempt to cage this wild bird. It was as if one chained an eagle in an aviary and tried to tame him with bird-seed. The simile struck Drummond as humorous, and he smiled a little sadly.

"I am quite with you," he said. "If you ever do change your mind, be sure you write and let me know."

The girl rose to her feet and frankly accepted Drummond's outstretched hand.

"I must be going now," she said. "You have been so very good to me, mister, and I am very grateful. Maybe we shall meet again some day. I dare say we shall work this pitch again in a year or two. I should like to see all these books again before I die."

She looked round the well-filled shelves yearningly, with just a suggestion of mistiness in her eyes, much as if she were parting with some well-beloved friends.

"You are sure you won't change your mind?" Drummond asked. "You would prefer to go back to your relatives?"

"They are no relatives of mine," the girl said. "My own people are somewhere up in Scotland. When I came out of hospital I found these Stanleys, and I have been with them ever since. It's all the same, you know; it's all one clan."

"It seems a very great pity," Drummond murmured.

She turned to him with a certain fierce sorrow.

"It isn't because I will," she said, "but because I must. Ever read anything of Thomas Hardy? You have? Remember the first chapter of 'The Woodlanders'? Well, you've got it all there. And you know why I've got to go wandering and wandering, and—oh, I can't explain it. Mister Hardy would understand."

She turned away without another word and vanished into the night. In some vague way she seemed to leave a void behind her.

"Very strange," Drummond murmured as he went thoughtfully to bed. "I should like to follow that child's career, but, of course, we shall never meet again."

And that was where Drummond was wrong.

The hour was late and Drummond was lingering over a volume of Maeterlinck philosophy, but it seemed to him that he could hear a faint cry somewhere outside under the cover of the darkness. There was a suggestion as if steel had come in contact with steel, then that cry again, followed by a moan of despair. Drummond dropped his book and sat up rigidly. If might be possibly the poachers at work and that one of them had met with some accident. He pulled up the blind and opened the window, so that the electrics cut a broad swathe of light into the heart of the purple darkness. At the end of the blinding lane, as something lay huddled on the grass, Drummond could make out the glint of steel, the dull polish of lacquer work, and then it was borne in upon him that someone had been riding across the grass and had come utterly to grief with a bicycle. The rider had evidently come headlong over, down a flight of steps leading to the stone terrace. Drummond hurried forward and raised the prostrate figure in his arms. He saw a white face in a tangle of black hair, he saw the slim figure of the girl in her scarlet blouse. He lifted her in his arms and carried her into the house. With some trouble he coaxed a few drops of brandy down the girl's throat, then she shuddered violently and opened her eyes.

"It was my own fault," she whispered. "I came here without a lamp. I couldn't find a lamp anywhere, and if I had I daren't have used it, so I had to take my chance. If those two had found out what I was doing they would have murdered me."

"But what is all the trouble?" Drummond asked.

"You are," the girl gasped. "It is Red Stanley; he hadn't long come out of jail. He was tramping to find us, and spotted this place on the way. And he persuaded his brother George as it was all right, and they're coming here to-night to burgle the place. I only knew this about two hours ago. You see, we are on the other side of Ashdown Forest camping near a village, and in the shed of the vicarage Red Stanley found some of the young gentlemen's bicycles. Do you see the game now, mister?"

"It begins to dawn upon me," Drummond smiled.

"That's it. Borrow the bicycles and ride over here without lamps. Probably not meet a soul the whole way. Then take all they can lay their hands on and get back again. On a dry night like this it wouldn't take half an hour to clean those machines, and nobody would ever know as they'd been taken out of the shed. And that's what brings me here. And I've broke my collarbone."

Miriam's face was white and set with pain, but her dark eyes were keen and alert; she was quivering with expectation.

"They're coming," she whispered. "You can't hear them, but I can. I knew they wouldn't be far behind. Ring the bell, rouse all the servants in the house. They're coming."

But Drummond had no intention of meeting this trouble except single handed. He picked up the girl again carefully and tenderly and carried her into a small room on the other side of the hall.

"Now you lie here and don't worry," he commanded. "I am quite capable of dealing with these friends of yours. I suppose the gentleman called Red Stanley made the same discovery that you did—in other words, that I am somewhat careless in fastening the library window. I'll put the light out and wait for them. Meanwhile you will be perfectly safe here. You are a brave girl, Miriam."

He walked back to the library leisurely enough and turned off the lights. Then he sat down patiently to await the coming of the foe. Half an hour passed, then the catch of the window clicked, and there was a smell of strong humanity in the room. Drummond could hear a hoarse whisper or two, caught a tiny pin-point of flame flashed from a torch upon his cabinet of coins. He reached out his hand for the switch, and the room was flooded with light. Before the astonished burglars could recover from their surprise he had locked the library door and dropped the key in his pocket. Then he strode across and stood with his back to the open window. He held something in his hand, but the discomfited intruders had not noticed it as yet. From their point of view he was simply an unarmed man, and consequently an easy prey for these wolves from the wild. Drummond recognised Red Stanley at a glance—Miriam's description seemed to fit him like a glove. The ruddy hackles on his crest seemed to rise; he extended a hairy hand in Drummond's direction. Then, without a word, he charged.

It was all strangely familiar. Drummond had slain many animals of this type, but they had usually been quadrupeds of equal intelligence and cleaner and sweeter in every way than this red ruffian who Drummond would have shot down without hesitation or a grain of pity in his heart. But then the wild is limited so far as civilisation is concerned, and the law of the town is prejudiced, so that the shot that Drummond fired slipped through the right wrist of the sanguine Stanley, and he bent double, moaning with the pain of it. There was to be no more fight, the beast was cowed, and so was the other animal crouching against the wall and snarling strange oaths in the Romany vernacular.

"Sit dawn," Drummond said crisply. "There is nothing much the matter with you, Mr. Stanley. A cold water bandage and a week's rest will put that wrist right again. You see, I know all about it. You had better take those bicycles back to the place where you found them and fade out of the county of Sussex without delay. I have my own particular reasons why I don't want to ring up the police and give you in custody. Now be off, both of you. I don't think you will want to come here again."

He threw open the window and the two marauders slunk out into the congenial darkness. The whole episode had not occupied more than five minutes. With a grim smile Drummond closed the window and drew the blinds. He did not go immediately back to the room where Miriam was lying; on the contrary, he walked up the stairs and along a corridor till he came to a door on which he tapped gently. It was opened presently by a handsome, motherly looking woman, who even in her dressing gown looked the typical housekeeper to the life.

"And what mischief have you been up to now, Sir Hartley?" she asked. "I heard a noise just now, and was coming down——"

"My dear soul, do," Drummond said. "I have just captured one of the most beautiful specimens of natural fauna you ever saw. In other words, it's a girl—a dear little gipsy girl with a broken wing—I mean, a collarbone. I want you to make her comfortable whilst I telephone for the doctor. I'll tell you the story to-morrow. I think it will astonish even you."

Mrs. Deane frankly doubted it. She was too accustomed to her beloved master's eccentricities to be astonished at anything. The story left her absolutely unmoved. But one thing the motherly, kind-hearted soul was certain of. Miriam could not go back to the clan again, and it was Sir Hartley's obvious duty to make himself responsible for her future and see that she went to school.

To all this Miriam listened with revolt in her eyes and the red flag of rebellion flying in her cheeks. She could see the logic of the situation clearly enough. She could not go back to the clan; she would not be safe from their teeth and claws if they got on the trail of the truth. She wanted to go to school, and yet she dreaded the bare idea of it. She was like the dipsomaniac who shudders and sickens in the presence of the brandy bottle, knowing full well that he is too weak to resist. She could see down the long avenues of knowledge and power and the grip on the heart of hidden things, and she could see, on the other hand, that discipline and the prim restrictions which would be as prison bars. And with it all she was passionately, almost unreasonably, grateful to Drummond for what he had done. She fought it out in a conflict which would have staggered Drummond had he been able fully to grasp it. She came to him when in a dim, nebulous way she was conscious that mind had conquered body.

"I'll do it, mister," she said. For some strange reason she could not or would not call Drummond Sir Hartley. "I want to go, and yet I don't want to go. 'Tisn't that you are not right, because you are. And I'll go—for three years—in a town."

Drummond ought to have been satisfied, but he was by no means easy in his mind. He could not shake off the impression of coming disaster even when encouraging reports of his protege's progress came to hand. She was a little wild, of course, and restive under the iron hand of discipline, but nothing worse than this. So that gradually Drummond's uneasy suspicions were lulled to sleep, and he allowed himself to join a hunting party on a six months trip in the African continent. It was many months before letters reached him, and out of his first mass of mail he picked out an envelope addressed to him in Miriam's bold handwriting.

It was no frank communication from a child, though it sounded spontaneous enough. The words came red hot from the heart of a woman. And before Drummond had turned the last page he knew that his experiment had failed.

Miriam had left the school. She had gone away out into the world dressed in the tattered skirt and red blouse, gone with bare feet no longer hardened as of yore. She had gone to join the tribe in the restless wanderings.

"I've tried and tried," she wrote, "and I want you to believe this if you believe nothing else. Because I'm no longer a girl, mister. I don't believe I ever was one, judging from the standard of your class. They knew so much more than me, and yet they knew so little. They could play hockey and tennis and golf, and yet they were frightened to go to bed in the dark. Silly, quivering little cowards every one of them. And from the very first I always felt like a hawk in a cage of canaries.

"If it hadn't been for the books and the learning I should have left long, long ago. And now I'll tell you a secret. When they were all asleep I would let myself out of my bedroom window by a rope and wander out into the woods. On summer nights it was good to swim in the river and lay snares for the rabbits. And nobody found it out, no one suspected.

"In winter it was not so bad. There was the rain and the snow, and the knowledge that the Lees and the Stanleys and the Smiths were all herding in some slum waiting for the spring and the call of the woods. But when the almonds were in bloom and the wind came up from the south, it seemed to tear me as if something had wounded me, and I was slowly, slowly bleeding to death inside. And now it is April weather, and down in the spinneys where I used to poach your rabbits the daffodils are blooming. I can see them nodding to me as I sit here in this stuffy little bedroom, and they are weaving a chain round me and dragging me with them into the heart of the country.

"And I am going, mister, as sure as the sun will rise on the morrow. Whether all your kindness to me will make me a happier woman in the future, whether I shall repent of what I'm doing, I cannot say. But the wild is calling me, and I suppose my mate is waiting somewhere out in the woods for Miriam. And I am perhaps the most ungrateful woman who ever returned a kindness so ill. So pity and forgive me, and I will say no more."

It was some two and a half years later that Drummond, skirting along the woods in the early evening, paused for a moment by the spot where he had first encountered the gipsy girl who was still to him a warm and vivid memory. Nothing appeared to be changed; the fallen tree on which he discovered the volume of Swinburne still lay there. He could see her now in the scarlet blouse and the rabbit in her hand as she moved towards the encampment. And as he stood there she came again as she had done before, the same Miriam and yet strangely changed. She was older and more mature, a little slower of step, and yet with the free stride of the woods, and round her neck was slung a shawl, and within it a burden that moved and breathed, and then Drummond knew that Miriam had been right and that the thing that she had seen with dim, prophetic eyes had come to pass.

She saw him almost as soon as he had seen her; she came forward half shyly and half defiantly. As he held out his hand she bent over it, and Drummond could see that tears were in her eyes.

"Forgive me, mister," she said, yet half defiantly.

"There was nothing to forgive," Drummond answered. "The fault was entirely mine. It is always the same when puny man attempts to interfere with the laws of nature. So you found him after all?"

Miriam's cheeks flamed. She bent with a certain arrogant pride over the palpitating bundle in her arms.

"Yes, I found him," she said. "I always knew I should. He's over there on the other side of the hedge making baskets. We've been together now for eighteen months. He's my husband, and I'm proud of him."

"I'd like to see him," Drummond said.

"No, no," Miriam protested. "At least, not in that way. Michael knows nothing of my story—he would not understand it if he did. I am just to him the mate he needed, and I knew it the first time we met away up there in Sherwood Forest. He just put his arm round me and kissed me, and we went away to a good parson up there who knows something of our ways, and we were married. And I don't regret it, mister. I can't!"

"And all the literary yearnings?" Drummond asked. "What about them? You no longer hanker to be a female Borrow, eh?"

Miriam smiled. Once more she glanced down at the bundle in her arms. She smiled again and touched it very tenderly.

"All the poetry and all the romance lies here," she said. "And no words can express it. Now as long as I have this I am no longer restless and dissatisfied. But you are a man, and that is the thing that no man can understand."

A voice in the darkness called out the name of Miriam and a few words in a liquid tongue that Drummond could not follow. He could guess, though, who the speaker was.

"That is your husband calling you," he said. "On the whole, perhaps I had better not see you again."

"I think it would be just as well," said Miriam.

She turned away and walked towards the camp with the rabbit still swinging in her hand.

THE END

THE FOIL

Published in the Sunday Times (Perth, W.A.), Sunday 23 October, 1932.

A bitter twist of Gunfort's lips and an almost murderous expression on his thin, saturnine features marked the intensity of his dark mood as he read the letter which he held in his hand. Otherwise, he was a handsome man carrying his profession in every line of him, and that profession the stage. A fine figure, slender, but athletic, and that of one who has cared for himself well and looking nothing like his close on fifty years.

The letter he was reading was short and to the point.

"DEAR GUNFORT (it ran), Barton tells me that you are at a loose end for a month or so and has given me your address. We are at Barchester for a fortnight's run in Shakespeare, and Melville is laid up in hospital here pending an operation. Can you see your way to take his place? Our leading line is 'Romeo and Juliet.' Will you come and play 'Tybalt' for me—Forrest as 'Mercutio.' Wire me on receipt.—Yours,

BARRY OPENSHAW."

Again the twisted bitterness on Gunfort's lips and the sinister smile on his face. Then a long sigh as if some conflict had come to a successful end. Gunfort rose, and crossing the room took from a locked desk another letter the writing on which seemed to have faded with the passage of years.

"MY DEAREST GEORGE (Gunfort read). By the time you get this I shall be beyond all pain and suffering. I am writing this in St. Agatha's Hospital in Melbourne, where I am well cared for and happy—that is so far as one in my condition can be happy. It has been a hard struggle since the man who promised before God to love and cherish me left me penniless and starving all these miles from home. Nobody will ever know how I have suffered and I struggled to starvation point until a good Samaritan sent me here to die. Perhaps I was wrong to keep all this from you, but a sort of pride sustained me. But so it was, and to this day the man who so wronged his wife is still in ignorance of the fact that I have a brother who is also on the stage and playing under the name of 'Gunfort.' My one prayer is that you will never meet."

There was much more in the letter, but Gunfort read no further—he knew every word of it by heart. He locked the sheet up again and went out to send a wire confirming to Barchester. The grim twisted smile was still on his lips.

Barchester prided itself on being more or less of a cultivated centre and especially on its appreciation of the finer points of the drama. They had a saying that what Barchester thought to-day on matters theatrical England thought to-morrow. Therefore, a longish visit from the Barry Openshaw Repertory Company in Shakespeare was an event in the social calendar.

As an old hand in legitimate drama, Gunfort was pretty well known to the rest of the company. Not that he appeared on the stage too often because he was a man with private means and thus in a position to choose his own parts. Despite his talents and that picturesque appearance, he was not popular, being prone to nurse grievances and quick in quarrel.

All the same, he seemed almost to go out of his way to show attention to George Forrest, who played what the profession calls 'opposite' to him, more especially in the favorite 'Romeo and Juliet,' where Forrest's 'Mercutio' was greatly admired.

"Rather strange that we have never played together before," Forrest remarked during one rehearsal of the great love tragedy.

"Oh, I don't know," Gunfort replied. "You see I have never been out of the country in the course of my work, whereas you seem to have played all over the world."

"That's true," Forrest admitted. "Europe and Africa, also America and Australia. Fine country, that."

"So I believe," Gunfort said. "I seem to have some sort of hazy recollection that you married out there. An actress who went out with some English company and stayed there."

Forrest shrugged his shoulders, indifferently.

"True enough," he declared. "Pretty little girl but could not act for nuts. Finally went off on her own, and from that day to this I have never set eyes on her."

"Then you don't know whether she is alive or dead?"

"Quite so, Gunfort. But that's years ago, dear boy. Only hope she doesn't bob up serenely one of these days."

Gunfort's thoughts reverted to a certain yellow and faded letter which reposed in a locked drawer at his lodgings. But the friendly smile on his face did not relax as he turned the subject aside and began to talk of other things.

It was towards the end of the tour and Barchester was looking forward to the second performance of 'Romeo and Juliet' which was to take place on the Saturday night. The house was packed from floor to roof when the curtain went up and the play began. A famous young actress had been imported for the occasion and Barchester had risen in its might to welcome her. And so for a time the play proceeded in almost breathless silence whilst those on-stage waited for their calls. In the wings, Forrest, looking wonderfully fine in the dashing attire of 'Mercutio,' was passing the time with Gunfort as 'Tybalt' previous to the duel scene and exchanging what appeared to be amusing confidences with him.

"This ought to go big to-night," Forrest was saying in the hearing of a group of scene-shifters. "I never saw an audience more keyed up. A little more fire, I think, Gunfort, old man. A few more minutes of 'business,' what."

Gunfort was playing with his rapier and apparently looking to the button on the point. It was as if he was making sure that everything was on the safe side.

"Righto," he said, casually. "I never much liked these real business rapiers. There'll be a nasty accident with them one of these days, and so I told Openshaw this afternoon. But he wouldn't hear a word of it. When the old man gets worried over one of the big shows, it's better to give him a wide berth."

"Worrying about me or yourself?" Forrest smiled.

"Both," Gunfort smiled. "But not really. Goodness knows what put the matter in my head."

A few minutes later the two were on the stage together with 'Romeo' and the rest of the followers and the scene began. In the theatre the proverbial pin might have been heard to drop as 'Tybalt' flashed out his rapier and the duel began. It was acting—acting of the highest type. A fight to the death with a breathless audience hanging on every thrust and parry. Then a small object seemed to rise from the stage and go flying into the wings. And the fight went on.

A slight stumble by 'Tybalt' and a quick recovery; and then a vicious thrust under 'Mercutio's' guard and the rapiers were knocked up as directed just as the blade was withdrawn and 'Mercutio' fell to the ground.

But not to utter what was in effect his dying speech, for he lay there whilst 'Tybalt' gazed in a sort of dazed horror at the point of his rapier. Almost in a flash the wild roar of applause was hushed as the house sensed that something was wrong. For 'Mercutio' lay there as if dead to the world. A thin stream began to trickle across the stage.

"My God, he's killed!" A voice broke the silence.

Shrieks and groans broke out all over the house. Then someone more long-sighted than usual noted the sinister fact that the button on 'Tybalt's' foil was missing and proclaimed the discovery in a voice harsh with emotion. Openshaw came dashing on to the stage and gave a signal that brought the curtain down with a rush. A babble of voices behind it and more wild bursts amongst the audience. After a pause that seemed to last for ages there was a whisper for a doctor, and immediately three men rose in the stalls and were dragged over the footlights.

Behind the curtain a small group of actors and stage hands gathered about the still form of the man lying there as silent as the grave. There had been no motion since he fell.

The first medical man bent over the body as if to listen for any sign of life. He shook his head gravely.

"Dead, poor fellow," he whispered. "Pierced to the heart, if I am not mistaken. What do you say, Clift?"

He turned to his colleague, and the other stooped only to give the same verdict. Then the gaudy trappings were torn away and the bare chest exposed.

"Beyond a doubt," came the decision. "The heart has been pricked—not deeply, but enough. Just as the real 'Mercutio' would have said a few seconds later. How did it happen?"

For the first time all eyes were turned to Gunfort. He stood there like one in a nightmare dream, a look of frozen horror on his face. His eyes fascinated seemed to be glued on the red point of his rapier. Three times Openshaw spoke to him ere any reply came. And then almost a whisper.

"I didn't know," he gasped. "I seemed to slip. Fell forward. Then the button must have been broken off."

"It was," a stage hand interrupted. "I seen it myself. There it is. Flew, it did, like a bird. Yonder."

Gunfort seemed to be fighting for breath.

"I tried to make it safe," he muttered. "I thought it was safe. That was just before my entrance."

"That's right," the same stage hand went on. "I see Mr. Gunfort adoing of it. Making safe, thinks I."

"Lamentable, most lamentable," the manager, Openshaw, almost wailed. "But clearly an accident. A fortunate thing that the poor chap had nobody depending on him."

"Or on me," Gunfort said. "Not that I matter much at the moment. When you are friendly with a man——"

His voice broke and he turned away like a man who is suddenly stricken with an overwhelming grief. It was Openshaw who first of all seemed to realise that there were things to be done.

"There will be an inquest, of course," he said. "Now I must go and dismiss the audience."

The theatre was cleared at length though what the real tragedy was would be learnt later. A most unfortunate accident, Openshaw explained. But one that prevented the performance from proceeding. And so on and so on.

There was nothing more to be done but to convey the body to the mortuary and notify the police. And then the stricken body of players wended their way home.

Naturally enough, the tragedy created a wide sensation in the town, and when the district coroner opened the inquest proceedings in the Town Hall the rush to find seats was sufficient to fill the building. No relation of the dead man came forward to identify him, as it was generally believed that he was colonial born and had no status in England. Indeed, Openshaw had a sort of impression that Forrest was merely a stage name. As everybody knew, there was nothing uncommon about this, and, for the purpose of the inquest it mattered little.

The first witness called was the stage hand who had noticed the flying of the button off the rapier which Gunfort had used.

"No, sir; I didn't think much of it at the time," he said, in answer to the question. "They both seemed to be clever with the weapons, and the fight was merely a stage one."

"I find in my notes that there was some suggestion of a slip on the part of Mr. Gunfort," the coroner said. "Did you happen to notice anything of the sort?"

"I did that, sir," the witness replied. "And it's my opinion that but for a stumble the accident would never have happened. It were a most realistic fight, and I were watching it closely, never having seen anything to touch it before. Just thrilling, it were. Then Mr. Gunfort he seemed to slip, and it looked as if he would have fallen. But he recovered himself, and, as he did so, lurched forward, and the point of his blade caught Mr. Forrest full in chest."

"That was shortly after the button flew off?"

"That's right, sir. Then Mr. Forrest, he falls forward and drops on the stage all of a heap like. That's all I know."

"Is there anybody connected with the theatre who can give me any information as to whether it was possible some person or persons to handle those two foils? They appear to me to be formidable weapons with the buttons off."

One, Speechly, the baggage man, entered the witness box.

"It was part of my business, sir, to see to all that sort of thing," he testifled. "I always made it a point to see that such things were kept under lock and key. I have seen more than one nasty accident happen in my trade when actors begin to lark about with such things."

"Quite so," the coroner assented. "And in the present case you followed your usual custom, I presume?"

"That I did, sir," the witness went on. "The rapiers were in my possession until the dresser of the two gentlemen came to me for them."

"But during rehearsals, perhaps——"

"Walking sticks, or light canes, sir. No occasion for anything more dangerous than that."

Gunfort came into the witness stand presently, and a deep hush held the listeners spellbound. His face was white and drawn, and he had about him the air of one who felt his position keenly. Just a pallid picture of remorse and suffering. He spoke clearly and quietly though his voice shook as he spoke.

"I am greatly to blame," he began, "though I did my best to guard against any accident. I was particularly careful at the last moment to see that the button on the point of the foil was secure. Moreover, I am more or less an expert with the rapier. In addition, some days ago I suggested to my manager that dummy weapons might be used."

"Quite true," Openshaw interrupted. "You see, sir, I am a confirmed realist with regard to stage effects, and I much preferred the use of real weapons."

"If I had not stumbled," Gunfort continued, "I feel quite sure that the tragedy would never have happened. You see, I could not recover my poise in time, and, had I fallen, the whole thrilling illusion of the duel would have been lost. I lurched forward to regain my balance, at the same time making a thrust and, as the button on my foil was off, my weapon struck the deceased heavily on the left breast. If I could do anything——"

The witness stopped and buried his face in his hands. A wave of emotion swept the room. Above it came the voice of the coroner addressing the jury.

"A most distressing accident, gentlemen," he concluded, "and one that could not be avoided. It seems to me that some at least of our sympathy may go out to the last witness in his distress. I suggest a verdict of 'Death by misadventure.'"

"And that," said the foreman of the jury a few minutes later in a formal voice, "is the verdict of us all."

Gunfort slowly and dejectedly made his way from the court to his lodgings. He was quite alone. Once under cover he took out the faded letter and burnt it to the last cinder. The thin, bitter smile was on his lips once more.

"Death by misadventure," he murmured. "Yes, the misadventure of meeting me. Little sister, you are avenged at last. That is a story that will die with me."

THE END

THE PLATINUM CHAIN

Published in the Sunday Times (Perth, W.A.), Sunday, 6 August, 1933.

MALCOLM Anderson had worked out the whole thing deliberately. Just as he worked out those weird short stories of his in the seclusion of his cottage in the fens where he lived with his aged mother who had never quite understood the peculiar bent of her son's genius. For genius it undoubtedly was.

A man of moods, without friends, and living inside himself to the exclusion of the outside world, though compelled by force of circumstances to work for his living in urban surroundings. That is, before a distant relative had left him enough in the way of an income to enable him to retire from the strenuous life and free to live where he chose. And that had been a lonely house in the fens some three miles from Luckmere. And there he would have been content to pass the rest of his life had it not been for the fact that George Leverson was blackmailing him.

Leverson had been his only friend—if the word 'friend' is applicable—in London. The one person in the world who knew of his solitary slip from the straight path.

And now Leverson was holding him to ransom. Very carefully and cunningly in the shape of borrowed money without a single hint at a threat, nothing that could be used in evidence in a court of justice. But blackmail all the same, and getting more weighty with every letter asking for a loan until Anderson was beginning to feel the weight of financial pressure.

Physically Anderson was a fine figure of a man, one who lived a hard, frugal life by choice and one who took a deal of outdoor exercise. Whereas Leverson was a typical town product with a natural bent towards dissipation.

Leverson must be got rid of, and that speedily if Anderson was not to be bled to death slowly—in plain English, murdered. Nor was the project particularly hazardous. Anderson lived with his mother in that lonely house on the fens with no outside help save an elderly woman who came in daily for a few hours. What more easy, then than to write a note to Leverson asking down for a night, having previously arranged that his mother should not be present, since she had relations in the next county, friends whom she frequently visited.

So the stage was set in conditions that were quite normal and the friendly note to Leverson was written. Would he come down by a late train one evening and walk the three miles from the station to the house in the fens? It was quite a friendly note for, so far, there was no sign that Anderson in any way resented the constant appeals to his purse.

And so Leverson, being in sore need of cash, as usual, came in reply to the invitation. But he never reached the lonely house in the fens for the simple reason that Anderson stole out of his abode under cover of the darkness and met his victim half-way and murdered him.

A smashing blow with a cudgel, and then the unconscious body was dragged from the deserted highway and plunged into a deep boghole, selected beforehand for the purpose, and the crime was hidden for ever. But not before Leverson had put up some sort of a fight and had grappled with his assassin. Half an hour later Anderson was back in his house, satisfied that his coming and going had been entirely unobserved, and that the menace which had been so long hanging over him was removed.

But there was one thing the troubled him greatly. In the brief struggle he had lost a dozen links or more in a platinum chain to which his old verge watch was attached. There was one end holding on to the watch and the other secured to a silver sovereign purse, but the middle of the chain was gone.

What had become of it? Was it lying on the road for some curious person to pick up or was it still in Leverson's grasp at the bottom of the boghole? A clue, perhaps a vital clue pointing directly to the scaffold. And, if it fell into the hands of the police ...

Of course inquiries would be made by Leverson's relations, though he had no wife to raise the alarm. Even if the letter asking him down to the house in the fens was still intact, it would be an easy matter to say that Leverson had not turned up although he, Anderson, had expected him. Nor was there a single soul in the world who had the remotest idea that the two men were anything but the best of friends.

But the missing links in the watch chain worried Anderson terribly. A number of people knew about it; his mother to begin with, and the other clerks in the office where he had worked in London before that small fortune came his way. There was Carter, the cashier, for instance, who had under estimated its value, only to be told that it was platinum, and therefore worth far more than a gold chain would have been—and others.

Anderson sat brooding over his loss long after he got home, sitting before the dead fire in the grate, thankful that he was alone in the house. Company then would have been unbearable. It would be futile to set out in search of those missing links, and, perhaps, a danger if he did so. He cursed his perfervid imagination and dragged himself unwillingly to bed.

But not to sleep. He tossed wearily from side to side until the dawn broke and the haunting ghosts fled before the sunshine. He knew that his moody taciturnity spelt nothing to the village woman who came presently to see to his creature comforts, for she had seen him in no other temperament. And so the day passed and the next with a thankfulness of sorts that his mother was still away. She would have sensed the subtle change.

He craved for company and yet dreaded the chance. And so three dreadful days followed with no human voice other than those that came over his wireless. It was only the voice he wanted for aught else jangled on his nerves in discord. And then, on the third night, a sort of call from the grave.

"We are asked by the police to broadcast the following: 'Missing from his home since Wednesday last. George Leverson, of 16 Martindale - terrace, Amber - street, Bloombsbury . . . .'"

Anderson switched off, hurriedly. So the hunt was afoot. Listen further, he had not dared. Yet from the start he had felt that police investigation must follow the crime. Once more that vivid imagination began to work though he strove to stifle it. What if suspicion fell on him? What if Leverson's body were found with that letter of invitation on him?

And what if the police kept silence on the point whilst they made inquiries elsewhere? Clever men, those detectives, and quick in deduction.

It would not take them long to find out that Leverson's moral character would not stand investigation. Suppose they obtained an order from the Secretary of State to examine Leverson's bank transactions? If that were done, then there would be found a score of instances when Leverson paid in drafts with Anderson's name as drawer upon them.

What a fool he had been not to have thought of that before. Those transactions would fairly reek with blackmail. How was he going to explain all that away? He might have to do that even if the body of the murdered man was not found. Leverson was a bit of a boaster in his cups, which were many and he might have told a score of people that he was going to see Anderson.

And so the self-torturing went on. He could see himself in the dock, and then in the witness-box facing a deadly cross-examination at the hands of Crown counsel. Perhaps the fiercest ordeal sinful man is ever called on to face.

He saw more than that—he saw himself standing on a scaffold with the prison chaplain intoning the burial service and his spineless self swinging grotesquely at the end of a rope. Once they hanged murderers in chains—perhaps it might be a fragment of chain that would hang him.

It was not until the fifth night that Anderson slept. And then only to dream the tragedy all over again. He was back once more on the lonely high road leading from Luckmere to the house in the fens seeking the lost portion of the platinum chain. He was hunting to the verge of the bog pool in which he had placed the body. It was fairly dry underfoot now though on the night of the crime there had been some heavy rain. And it seemed to Anderson, looking down, that the dead man's face was turned up to him with accusation in the sightless eyes.

Then next day it rained fairly hard so that Anderson, wandering far and wide for distraction and physical exhaustion, so that he might sleep again, arrived home at length with boots and clothing more or less saturated though he was too distrait to notice it. And once more that awful dream again. There seemed no way of getting rid of it.

Meanwhile nothing further so far as regarded the missing man. No doubt the police were active enough in their search, but not in the direction of Luckmere. Perhaps, after all, Leverson had destroyed the letter—there was no particular object in keeping it. If it had been found surely some sort of inquiry would have reached Luckmere by this time.

Then, once again that dreadful dream, this time more poignant than ever, and much more vivid. An overwhelming desire to revert once more to the scene of the tragedy, as if he had risen in the dead of night and tramped the deserted road as far as the boghole. Horribly conscious he was of his body, too, and of a certain weariness impossible to shake off.

Here he was by the edge of the pool at last looking down at the clear imprint of his boots, a double track leading to the pool and back again. No mistaking the impression of those rubber soles with the maker's pattern so clearly marked on them. And, so far no sign of disturbance in the water. And then a change. Voices in the distance followed by the tramp of feet and then four men unmistakably officers of the law despite the fact that they were in mufti. One of them carried a coil of rope with a stout triangular hook at the end of it.

These strangers advanced to the edge of the pool and paused whilst one of them pointed down to those damning footprints.

"Been here twice," he said. "Perhaps oftener before the rain came. Before the rain came."

"Stupid thing to do," the man with the drag muttered. "Almost like signing a confession, sir."

The man who had spoken first, nodded. He was evidently in authority over the other three, an inspector perhaps.

"Something like that, Symonds," he said. "But many murderers are taken that way. It's the mad streak that infests their blood. And they do say that this man Anderson is given to self-torture. Writes stories of the most gruesome kind. I have read one or two of them in magazines. Sort of Edgar Poe stuff. It was quite a brain-wave that sent you searching for Leverson here, Cox."

"Seemed natural, sir," the man addressed as Cox replied. "Especially after you had examined those two banking accounts. Blackmail, I said to myself, and blackmail it was. Then there was the letter found at Leverson's lodgings. And the discovery that Anderson was alone in his house on the night he had invited Leverson down here. Thinks I, Leverson was met on his way from Luckmere station by Anderson and murdered. If I was right, then he was killed somewhere here and the body hidden. And no better place with all these deep bogholes about. But I did not expect to discover the marks of Anderson's rubber-soled boots crying out to be investigated. We'll have the body in half an hour, sir, with any luck."

All this was passing in Anderson's dream. It seemed to him that he was crouched behind a fringe of tall grass and rushes listening to every word that was passing. Through the green screen he saw all that was going on. And in the same dream he knew that his worst fears were realised. It would be only a few hours before the prison gates would close on him. But as to those telltale footprints. How on earth had they got there? But for them, that peat-pool might never have been searched. They were definite enough to point a damning finger at the author of the crime. And they were his footprints made by the rubber-soled shoes he always wore. By what black magic had they got there?

Meanwhile, in his land of dreams, Anderson watched the dread work going on. He saw the drag lowered into the pool and presently a tightening of the rope.

"Got something here, sir," one of the men said. "Gently does it. Easy, a bit to the right. That's better."

Something rose to the surface—a mass of matter much as if a carcase in a bag had been raised to the light of those flashlights. Something half hidden in a mass of waterweed. And out of it projecting something in the shape of an arm. An arm with a hand attached to it. And a hand, moreover, that had an object firmly in its grip.

"Ah——what's this?" the leader of the group demanded.

"Looks like a bit of watch-chain, sir," the man called Symonds replied, "Gunmetal I should say."

The man in command took the links from his officer and wiped them dry. Then held them close to one of the flash-lamps.

"Nothing of the sort!" he said. "These broken links are platinum. I have a similar chain myself."

"So has Anderson," Symonds cried. "Don't you remember, sir, that we got that information from the office where he once worked? The other clerks used to chaff him about it."

The chief smiled on his subordinate before proceeding to examine the sinister bundle which had been brought to the surface by means of the drag. The clinging weeds were carefully swept away, and a white sodden face revealed. All part of the dream that held Anderson in a grip like a vice.

Subconsciously he was struggling with all his strength to shake it off. He wanted to wake up and know that this horror was bred of conscience and the haunting knowledge of his crime. It seemed to him that he slowly rose from his hiding-place and advanced in the direction of the officers. Then they saw him and gazed at him in amazement. He stepped to the side of the corpse and looked down at the dead face.

A great cry broke from him—a cry that rang out into the stillness of the night like that of some tortured animal, loud as a trumpet call. The binding spell was broken and the reality of life came back to Anderson sweating at every pore.

"Anderson himself," Symonds cried. "Our man——"

"Yes—Anderson beyond the shadow of doubt," the officer in charge assented, "and walking in his sleep!"

THE END

THE WINGS OF CHANCE

Published in The Central Queensland Herald (Rockhampton, Qld.), Thursday 20 September, 1934.

"It seems to me," said the first conspirator, with the air of a man who makes a discovery, "it seems to me that we are lost."

"If you are discovered," murmured the second conspirator, "you are lost."

"Oh, yes, dramatically speaking, perhaps," the third conspirator put in. "All right on the stage, don't you know, but not here. If we are discovered we are saved. Driver, where are we?"

"Oh, don't ask me, gents all," the chauffeur said with absolute detachment. "I dunno. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of Regent's Park, though I ain't bettin' on it. 'Ackney coach,' 'ansom and taxicab man and boy for thirty year, and I never saw such a fog afore."

He spoke the truth—nobody had. Never had there been such a fog since London began. Four mild January days without a breath of wind had been followed by one of the most disastrous fires the Thames-side had ever known. Thousands of barrels of petroleum had lifted their dense pall of smoke into the heavy clouds, and now the falling fog had drifted the heavy, suffocating mass over the metropolis like some funeral pall. Like the plague of Egypt, the darkness could be felt.

Now, whatever atmospheric disaster the Fates have in store, the business of London must go on. Shops and offices must be attended to, and at all hazards the City of London must be achieved. The three conspirators had reached their offices some way, they had managed to get off those letters, and, perhaps for the first time in their lives, had no anathema for the telephone. For the rest, they shared a flat on the north side of Regent's Park, and, with the help of the gods, had all and sundry found their way back to dinner. You cannot easily discourage a stockbroker.

They should have been contented as they were; they had been wrong to attempt so heavy an overdraft on the bank of fate. They should have sent down to the floor below and asked Leckie—also safe back from the city—and been happy with an evening at bridge.

But they were young and ardent and flushed with success, and the black throat of the fog had no terrors for them. At any cost they were going to Lady Shoreham's fancy dress ball. There was not much more than a mile to go, their dresses were ready, and they really fancied themselves as three more or less picturesque anarchist conspirators. The dresses had a touch of the Mephistophelean, with vivid red slashed here and there; they wore black wigs, and their faces were masked. Also, they were three exceedingly well-set-up young men, with all the matchless audacity which is so necessary for success in the air of Copthall Avenue. They dreamt of the day when the big coup would come off, of the hour of the exclusive information when the big men would shiver and wonder what the trio would do next.

The inspiration had yet to come.

They managed to find a taxi right enough. A sovereign if he got them to Shoreham House within the hour, which offer in times of lesser stress would have been generous. The driver was inclined to be pessimistic, but he would do his best. Moreover, he had taken nothing all day. He fumbled his way along at a snail's pace, his heart in his mouth all the time. By the intervention of Providence he ran over nobody, he collided with no light standards, but—in ten minutes he was hopelessly lost, and appealed imploringly to all and collectively who passed to tell him where he was. The conundrum was a popular one that night, but, alas! the chosen who could answer it were few.

From out of the denseness of the fog came strange sounds. There were little cries of alarm, bleats of apology, the tinkle of metal on metal, and once the crash of broken glass. The first conspirator, who rejoiced in the name of Dick Willoughby, put his head out of the window.

"This is very interesting," he said. "Do you remember the ingenious excuse made by the city clerk for not getting to business during one foggy spell? He sent a telegram, you know: 'Sorry cannot reach offices to-day, as I have not yet got home yesterday!' Not bad, eh?"

Nobody laughed. The other conspirators, Bond and Machen, were getting anxious. It was just past 10, and apparently they were farther from their destination than ever. It was gradually being borne in on them that there was going to be no destination—if they escaped spending the night in a cab they would be lucky.

"I wish I was well out of this," Bond muttered.

A moment later and he nearly had his way. Out of the fog, barely a yard away, loomed another taxi; the driver pulled sharply to the left up a steep, grassy bank. What the grassy bank was doing there, apparently in the middle of the road, did not come for a moment within the area of speculation. For the fraction of a second, or so it seemed, the tension was great. Then the taxis cleared; there was an outline of white posts and rails, and the cab came to a standstill, apparently in a field.

"Now, where the dickens are we?" Willoughby asked.

"Somewhere out in Surrey, governor," the chauffeur growled, "unless some 'umorist 'as gone and shoved a tennis lawn down 'ere. Anyway, we're on grass inside somebody's gate. No doubt there's a 'ouse a bit farther on if one could only see it. Still, I'm in your 'ands."

Willoughby's mind was made up. In the vernacular of his clan, he was fed up with the whole thing. Besides, it was just possible that he stood on the edge of adventure, just a chance that destiny would waft a little excitement to them.

"Turn out, boys," he commanded. "We are going to throw ourselves on the mercy of the court. In other words, we are going to find the house and ask shelter for the night. Driver, here is your sovereign. If you like to look for another fare——"

"Not me, sir," the chauffeur said philosophically. "I am safe 'ere, and 'ere I stay. Inside the keb with me bit of supper an' packet of fags. Don't you worry about me."

They promised faithfully that they wouldn't, and went their way. Apparently the grounds about the house were fairly extensive, for the adventurers passed another tennis lawn before they reached what looked like a beacon gleam against the thickness of the fog. The trio were actually inside the porch before they realised the fact that the front door was hospitably open.

"Let's enter the house first and ring the bell afterwards," Machen suggested.

The suggestion was sufficiently unconventional to suggest itself to the others. They passed from the darkness and desolation of the gloom into a large square hall brilliantly lighted, warm and inviting. Never had a refined and luxurious English home looked so alluring before. A great wood fire crackled on the open hearth, there were trophies of the chase on the polished floor, some remarkably good pictures hung on the panelled walls. High up were stags' heads and racks of guns and a 'varsity oar, with a dark blue blade and Magdalen College arms mounted on a shield. The whole atmosphere was inviting and cosy to the last degree.

"Well, thank Heaven we've struck the trail of a sportsman," Bond exclaimed. "Let's hope that the proud possessor of all this splendour was in the Oxford boat with you, Willoughby. Golf clubs, too. Any odds the chap is a plus player. Ring the bell, Machen."

Machen complied vigorously. The ripple of it could be heard afar off. And no response came to the second and third summons. Willoughby laughed.

"An adventure, by George!" he cried. "Money on it, we're alone in the house. All the household has gone and lost itself in the fog. In my mind's eye I can picture the catastrophe. The hero failed to materialise for dinner. Being a fine sportsman, probably he is as handsome as a Greek god. He has a young and beautiful wife who is devoted to him. She went to look for him and lost herself. Then the butler went to look for her; and the cook followed the butler; and so on. Regular house that Jack built game."

"The fact remains that we are alone in the house," Bond said thoughtfully. "I refuse to connect tragedy with a place like this. Let's explore. Dining-room first. If they've left us some supper the measure of my gratitude will know no bounds. To be candid, I'm confoundedly hungry."

There were no less than five rooms leading from the hall. A blaze of light glittered everywhere, and everywhere was the same pleasing suggestion of comfort and luxury. The big dining-room was oak panelled throughout; there were racing and sporting cups on the old buffet, a fine army of gold-topped bottles, and on the table, with covers laid for half a dozen guests, a cold supper that suggested the Savoy or the Ritz at their best. Bond's mouth watered as he looked at it.

"Now, this is touching," he said. "This is really thoughtful. It is far more than I had expected. In the circumstances, they will hardly expect us to wait. Hallo."

The speaker wheeled suddenly round as there came to his ear a choking sound from the region of the doorway. He was just in time to grab a scared-faced page boy by the shoulder. Evidently the youth was fully under the impression that his last hour was come.

"What does all this mean?" Bond demanded. "Where are the servants, and you—er—your employer?"

"Master and missis couldn't get back," the stricken page gasped. "Got caught in the fog this side of Croydon. They sent a telegram; and if anybody turned up to supper the butler was to explain. They were to have supper first and go to Lady Shoreham's after."

"Then where's the butler and all the rest of them?"

"Next door, sir. The people are away, and the servants are giving a party. It's all right, sir—indeed, it is. You see, we expected nobody in this fog, and—and I went to see a friend on the other side. Left me in charge, they did. And if anybody turned up I was to——"

"My boy," Willoughby said kindly, "have no fear. It's a festive time, when one forgives—well, anything. Only show me the telegram, not necessarily for publication, but as a—very good. Mr. Everest will understand. We are his guests. And I am quite sure that he would not like us to wait. We are not going to disturb the servants; we are going to let them enjoy themselves. The lot of the average domestic is hard, and it is the duty of the rich, like ourselves, to treat them with every consideration. Let them come back when they like. We will wait upon ourselves. Put the cigars and cigarettes handy on the table, and go your way. That will do, George."

The page vanished. He was young; he came evidently from the country; his scruples were satisfied. And it would probably be ages before the servants returned.

"How did you get at the name of our esteemed host?" Machen asked.

"Idiot!" Willoughby explained. "I guessed that the name would be on the telegram. That was why I demanded to see the missive. Everest was in the boat the year after I came down. Gordon Everest, he is, and a year ago he married Miss Wanstead, only daughter of the Master of the Riding Hunt. Any amount of money, and a real good chap to boot. He'll laugh like anything when he hears of this little adventure of ours. Come and sup.; let us sample the flowing bowl. And may this not be the end of our night's adventures. We deserve something to make up for our disappointment. Bond, oblige me by opening one of those bottles. Here's to the gods of happy chance. May they never desert us in the the hour of adversity."

He helped himself generously to Perigord pie—it would have been bad taste, he explained, not to do due justice to Gordon Everest's hospitality. They ate gaily enough, despite the fact that they wore their masks, for Willoughby had insisted on that. He liked to be guarded against possible surprises, and at any moment the garrison was liable to invasion. And Willoughby liked to be ready. A man who means some day to be a Napoleon of the Stock Exchange must be like that.

"To our host and hostess," Bond cried, emptying his champagne glass and reaching for a cigarette. "May they live long and prosper. Upon my word, I am sorry they are not here. I am sorry for some of the other would-be roysterers at present wading about in this fog. How many are there of them at the present moment, like little Tommy Tucker, singing for their supper? Really, we ought to consider ourselves fortunate, brethren. We ought to stand by the gate and proffer hospitality to the passers-by. What say?"

Willoughby and Bond regarded the suggestion as an excellent one. All the same, Willoughby did not seem to be quite easy in his mind. He had a fancy for exploring the servants' quarters. The matter that troubled him he did not disclose to the others. He came back presently more cheerful—he was more cheerful still after a telephone call and a whispered conversation with some body at the other end of the line.

"Now I feel better," he proclaimed.

"You fellows leave too much to chance. The man armed is he who—who gets his blow in first. Ah! here they are. Now for it!"

A pink and white individual, clothed in a certain dignity and evening dress of sorts, came with none too much ceremony into the room. He was followed by a female of uncertain age, and anything but uncertain obesity, in black satin and many gold brooches. It needed no amazing foresight to distinguish these as the butler and cook to the establishment.

"So you've condescended to come back at last, Odgers," Willoughby said coolly. "Unless I am mistaken, that is Mrs. Marus behind you. You don't recognise me, Odgers?"

The butler frankly confessed himself at a disadvantage. The pink indignation had faded from his cheeks. Mrs. Marus's hysterical desire for the police was no longer uppermost in her mind. Here were no audacious burglars, taking advantage of the fog. And Odgers had passed all his prosaic life in good houses, and flattered himself that he recognised a gentleman when he saw one.

"We will remain anonymous, Odgers," Willoughby went on calmly. "Were I to remove my mask, you would know me—I mean all of us—at once. You see, we are more fortunate than Mr. Everest and your mistress—we have got here; and here we propose to stay. If your master manages to struggle home before daylight, or what passes for daylight, we will excuse them. We esteem ourselves fortunate in obtaining shelter and supper. You had better all go to bed, Odgers. No, I will answer the telephone. In all probability that is Mr. Everest calling."

Willoughby advanced calmly into the hall and took down the receiver. For a moment he seemed to listen to some message of grave import.

"Oh, yes," he said. "What? Absolutely. What! Oh, yes, we got here all right. But it was pure blind luck, I assure you. Eh? Go any farther? Not much. It's the unkindest fog London has ever seen. Where? Between Croydon and Clapham? A decent place? Well, you're lucky, old boy. You might still be prowling about the roads in the car. Yes, we are all three of us here. I fancy Odgers took us for burglars at first. We had a fancy to sup in our masks. Why, Ethel? Oh she's all right. Tell Odgers what? Oh, yes; certainly. Pyjamas in the back of the linen cupboard? Oh, for us. Thanks, old chap. So long."

Odgers looked relieved. Nothing had been said as to his escapade.

"You need not be alarmed as to your master and mistress," Willoughby said, as he hung up the receiver. "They have reached a place of safety. And I did not say anything about the supper party of yours, Odgers. Two of us will sleep in your master's room and one in the dressing-room. The pyjamas—but you heard what Mr. Everest said. You had better retire, Odgers, and leave the house to us."

Odgers raised no objection. On the whole, he was disposed to regard himself as well out of it.

"Well, you are a wonder!" Bond said admiringly. "I've been dreading the return of the vassals of the house. How on earth did you manage it, Willoughby!"

"My dear chap, it's nothing," Willoughby said modestly. "I wanted to get into the kitchen, because I felt quite sure that I should find the insurance cards there. They were in a dresser drawer—John Odgers, and Mary Marus, widow, and all the rest of them. Now, obviously, Odgers was the butler—with a name like that he couldn't be anything else. And Mary Marus must be the cook. Hence the easy familiarity with which I had their names on the tip of my tongue."

"But, my dear chap, Everest himself on the 'phone?" Machen protested.

"There was no Everest on the 'phone. I faked that call. There is an extension in the dining-room, and I rang up by lifting the extension receiver. I was afraid you would see me do it. My conversation with my good friend Gordon Everest was purely imaginary. I had to make the genial Odgers feel quite at his ease, and I flatter myself that I did so. We're absolutely safe now."

"Oh, you'll get on all right," Bond said admiringly. "But you always were a genius for finding the most ingenious way out of a scrape. Pity there are not four of us here to make up a table at bridge."

"Let's go out and find somebody," Machen suggested. "All we need is two or three balls of string, with an end tied to the front door, and——"

Willoughby held up a hand as a mysterious tapping was heard on the window.

"Here's your fourth at bridge," he said, "knocking to come in. Hope he plays 'auction.' Well?"

"Excuse me, gents." A hoarse voice broke the silence as the window was opened. "I'm your driver. Been sittin' in my keb for the last hour or more 'alf asleep. I thought I 'eard somebody callin' and I got up. A gent was standin' by the gate in the fog. Dismissed 'is keb, 'e 'ad; came an' said as the man was a fool. And now 'e—well, 'e don't know where 'e are."

"This is the hand of Providence," Willoughby said solemnly. "What's he like, driver?"

"Well, sir, as far as I can make out, 'e's rather old and thin, and in some kind of fancy dress. 'E——"

A shout of laughter drowned the rest of the sentence.

"On his way to Lady Shoreham's dance for a dollar!" Bond shouted. "Well, he's come to the right place. The people who live in this house are friends of ours, cabby. We owe you something for bringing us here, if only by accident. Show the gentleman in."

The wayfarer came, tall and thin and extra cadaverous by reason of his close-fitting tights and black jerkin. He looked exceedingly bad-tempered; his hard mouth was set firm and savagely.

"This is a nice thing!" he exclaimed. "A nice thing to happen in a city like London! I presume you people have been kept from Lady Shoreham's dance by the fog. I you happen to know me——"

An exclamation was on Bond's lips, but Willoughby laid a hand with a grip to it on his shoulder.

"We have none of us the pleasure, Sir," he said. "This, sir, is my house. I am Lord Bollinger, at your service. This is Colonel Kinlock, and here is my cousin, the Honourable John Driver."

Machen chocked slightly, but Willoughby was perfectly grave.

"We were also prevented from going to the dance," he went on, "so we supped here, and kept our masks on, trying to snatch a gaiety we do not feel. You said your name was——"

"Smith," the stranger gabbled. "John Smith. Really, you are very kind, and supper would be acceptable. I presume you have such a thing in the house as a telephone. I have to send a message to my broker. I expected to meet him at the dance, but he would hardly turn out in this weather. I will 'phone him to his own house, as I have to get to Liverpool, on my way to America to-morrow. Business in a mild way, you understand."

Willoughby led the way to the telephone, and appeared to close the door behind him. All the same, he stood so that he could hear every word that passed. So could the other two, who had suddenly grown grave and silent The air of the Stock Exchange on them now.

"What's that, what's that!" came the raucous voice in the hall. "Not come home? What! Prefer to stay in the City, as the fog is so thick! Very full all day to-morrow. Quite right. Ring off, please. .. Hallo! Is that the Exchange? Give me 01707 City. .. That you, Starley? You know whose speaking! Yes, it's me, 'Wigs on the green.' Thought I'd give you the password. I'm going to Liverpool and New York. Sell W's. Sell and sell as long as you have anybody to buy. That'll do. Ring off."

"Nice old beauty, isn't he!" Bond whispered. "Let's murder him and bury him in the cellar. He'd have a fit if he only knew who we really are. Can't we manage to——"

"We can," Willoughby said grimly. "We are going to make a jolly good thing out of this. We are acting on exclusive information. Old Gregory Hicks, who likes to call himself John Smith for the moment, has opened a great bear raid on W's which mean to the initiated Western Atlantic Rails. The old fox is off tomorrow to manipulate the stock across the water. He little thinks that he has delivered himself into the hands of three of the astutest intellects in Throgmorton Street, where—Soft! Here he comes."

Mr. John Smith, alias Gregory Hicks, one of the most grasping and unscrupulous millionaires who ever commanded respect in the City, came back looking on better terms with himself. He even went so far as to crack a joke or two, for he was not devoid of a sense of humour. He did not repudiate the Perigord pie, neither did he refuse the wine when it was red. But he refused to play bridge, and was glad enough an hour later to find himself in the dressing-room and a spare pair of pyjamas. There were baize doors on the landings, and Willoughby noted the fact with gratitude as he came down the stairs and reached for the 'phone.

"You must get him," he said. "Ring and ring, till you do. Give me your name and address and I'll send you a tenner for your trouble. What? You don't call that bribery. .. Oh, thanks, that you, Pallart? It's Willoughby. And it's Willoughby full of inside information. Now, listen carefully. Quite sure you've got all that? Now start out early to-morrow morning and sell till you're blind and blue in the face. Work the telephone or the cable all over England and the Continent."

"I'm in it, and Bond and Machen, and we're good for all we're got between us, and that's about £30,000. It would be downright flying in the face of Providence to miss a chance like this. Do we mind if you come in? Why, of course not. The more the merrier. Only do it boldly. So long."

In the dining-room Machen promptly opened a bottle of champagne. The three of them removed their masks, their faces were glad with smiles.

"Here's to Dame Fortune, who never, never deserts the bold," he said. "Willoughby, founder of our fortune, I look towards you. They say that the hour always produces the man—and it has. One drink and then we'll be off. We must not tempt Fortune too far. I dare say our cabby wouldn't mind——"

"The fog is lifting," Machen said from the window.

Without another word they crept silently from the room, the richer for a fine evening's adventure on the wings of chance, and the richer also by the sum of something that was to prove over a hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

THE END